I don't get Rashomon

Cafe Society
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Open spoilers since this movie is 63 years old.

So, since Netflix has a lot of classic movies, I figured I should watch some of them, and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon is well-known and well-respected. So I get it yesterday and watched it last night, expected a masterpiece of film-making from one of the giants.

I don’t get the big deal.

Now, my assumption is that, like Citizen Kane, many of the revolutionary techniques used in the film have been copied so many times that they almost look like a parody to a modern audience. And I assume there’s some traditional Japanese symbolism that I’m missing. But maybe the Dope can explain to me why this film was so groundbreaking and why it’s so well respected.

Now, I can tell the cinematography is good. The pace is slower than a modern movie but I understand that was normal for the time. And a lot of the moving shots are well done, especially for the time but I think they’d be good even today.

But the plot doesn’t do much for me. Ok, you have conflicting stories about the same event. Anybody that’s every asked two different people for their version of events has to have run into this, so that doesn’t seem to exciting, but Wikipedia makes out like this was the most stunning thing to happen to film in decades. But it seems just normal to me. The bandit makes a story where he seems brave and fierce; the woman makes a story where she seems filled with shame; the man makes a story where he is totally dishonored; the woodcutter explains everyone was more or less a coward.

I don’t get how this is supposed be ‘so horrible’ for the woodcutter and the priest at the beginning. They’ve both seen war, famine, plague, but conflicting stories about a rape and murder is what pushes them over the edge? Please, even the commoner points out that there’s half a dozen unclaimed bodies nearby.

Then I don’t get the resolution with the baby. The commoner steals the kimono, but the woodcutter offers to care for the baby and the priest’s faith in humanity is restored. If that’s all it took, that priest has to be the most naive and wishy-washy priest in film history. It just seems totally unrelated to the rest of the film “Alright, we’ll present four conflicting stories about this murder, and to resolve it, the woodcutter will adopt a foundling!” What?

I’m sure there’s symbolism I’m not getting, like the gate in the frame story being busted, or maybe the dress of the various characters, or how Tajomaru is constantly slapping away bugs - maybe someone can enlighten me to these.

Is this one of those films you just have to accept as being good for it’s time but hasn’t aged well, or am I missing something crucial?

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That’s not how I remember it!

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The movie is great if for no other reason than setting up such trite jokes. So, it has that going for it… which is nice.

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I admit that the only reason I opened this thread was to post the aforementioned joke.

Carry on.

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I pretty much walked away from it with the same feeling as you, OP. I submitted it to being a product of the times - if you saw it then, it excited you, but not so much now. It was all right. * shrug *

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That’s often the case with older movies - although I don’t think it’s really that hard to tune it out.

Had it been done in a movie before?

I think it’s a comment on the way they can’t take their minds off the mystery. That’s also a sensation a lot of us are familiar with.

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It was funny, when I finally saw Casablanca about two years ago, I predicted almost everything in the movie - because I had seen it in parodies. It didn’t really ruin the movie, I still enjoyed it, but it was amusing.

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You’ve basically answered your own question here. While this may seem normal to you, it wasn’t normal for movies in 1950. To the best of my knowledge Rashomon was the first movie to present a story in this way (Roger Ebert’s Great Movies article on the film says it was indeed the first). It’s been done plenty of times since then, but this sort of structure is often called Rashomon style for a reason. Although as noted by the TV Tropes entry, “Rashomon style” stories usually end with the true version of events being revealed to the audience. The differing accounts are often due to the witnesses being mistaken or exaggerating/lying for fairly obvious self-serving reasons. Rashomon still stands out from many of its imitators in that it doesn’t provide the audience with a tidy ending. At first it seems like the commoner’s version of events must be the closest to the truth, but we do learn that he’s not being totally honest about certain things. While most (likely all) of the characters are not giving objectively accurate accounts of what really happened, for they don’t always seem to be lying for their own benefit either. They seem to be mostly telling the truth as they remember it…but that’s not the same as how other people remember it.

Beyond that, as you noted yourself the cinematography is very good. Playing several different versions of the same character must also have been a challenge for the actors.

Personally, I also thought the fight scene in the commoner’s version of events was hilarious. :slight_smile:

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Too late to edit again, but where I say “commoner” above I meant the woodcutter character.

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I suppose my objection is that this has been seen in literature before, no? So it can’t have been that much of stretch for the concept to appear in film, even if it was the first. Maybe I’m overestimating audiences or I am looking too hard through the lens of history to appreciate this.

I had to go read a summary to figure out why the man and the bandit kept falling down all the time. At first I thought it was just an accident that was left in the film, but as it happened more and I realized it had to be a stylistic choice, I just couldn’t figure out WHAT they were trying to tell me. Knowing that it’s supposed to indicate that both men are terrified and not really as good with swords as they pretend to be is a good take on the situation, but I felt it was far too subtle in the film itself.

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As long as I’m getting real answers, does anyone know why Rashomon gate in the frame story is all busted? I’m sure that’s a stylistic choice but I haven’t figured out why.

I’m also still wondering why the priest, who has seen terrible things, has his faith in humanity so shaken and so easily restored. It seems unnecessarily tacked on.

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What they said. Unreliable witnesses aren’t uncommon, but in this case, even the next-best thing to dying words (usually taken as truth in US court cases, to the best of my understanding) of summoning the ghost of the dead man produces nothing but another contradictory tale. Even how the man died (honorable fight, fight between scared opponents, suicide) was in question.

In the US during the time of the Hays Code for filmmaking, criminals had to be punished for their deeds. This film, which came out during that time period, can’t even solve the riddle of who is the criminal and what misdeeds are involved!

The lighting and cinematography are also praised for their innovations, which go unnoticed now in modern times.

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The woodcutter admitted to being a thief, but when he takes the baby (who just had its inheritance stolen by the commoner), he says he’ll raise the child with his multiple other children. I think the priest sees this cowardly thief (who was initially willing to avoid testimony about this serious set of crimes in order to cover up that he’d stolen the valuable murder weapon) as a man who was only stealing to save his own children from poverty, yet is willing to add to his own burden to help an innocent child. Everyone else’s lies and crimes appeared to be purely selfish, but he stole to help his children and will adopt another one, and that helped the priest regain a little bit of faith in humanity.

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Or maybe you’re insisting that things must be a certain way because that’s how you see them. Were there books where a bunch of people presented contradictory narratives with their motives unexplained and the accounts never resolved? Probably. Had anyone ever tried to translate that to film and made all the structure and storytelling choices that go into that? Probably not, and that’s not as plain as you’re insisting it is because they’re different media.

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I did ask if I’m just looking through the lens of history too hard, geez. You couldn’t have gone with “it seems trivial today, but doing it in film was a big thing back then, which is understandably not obvious to a modern viewer”.

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I was trying to point out that you’re sort of rejecting a lot of the explanations that are being offered.

No, I don’t think that’s right. My understanding is that dying words can be exempted from rules against hearsay.

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When “2001” was re-released in the late 1970s, my dad took my brother and me to see it, and we didn’t get it, although it may have been that we were about 10 and 13 at the time. I finally watched it again a couple years ago, and didn’t get it that time either.

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In the novel, the killer ape examines the bone he has killed a tapir with.
“He did not know what he would do with this new thing, but he would think of something.”

When the star child returns, he gazes down at the Earth.
“He did not know what he would do with this new thing, but he would think of something.”

I didn’t get it either, until I read the book. :slight_smile:

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This is how I have always taken the style of the surrounding story - the men at the gate in the rain, which is that the dilapidated gate is a symbol of the breakdown of society, which is also evidenced by the behavior of nearly everyone in both the surrounding story and the inner story. The heavy, constant rain symbolizes the lack of hope for the future.

The ideals of Japanese society in the age of warring kingdoms (the century before the last shogunate established control) were very high, and norms of behavior were strict. Of course, most people didn’t live up to those ideals, but they were generally recognized as the way things ought to be. By the time of this story, all that was breaking down. Samurai were no longer brave fighters, they were becoming accountants for the daimyo lords. The country was badly managed, and farmers were over-taxed and couldn’t feed their families. Women were no longer chaste. The usual litany of how things were not as good as they used to be, I guess. (It’s not clear when the story is supposed to take place, it could be the 17th, 18th, or first have of the 19th century - things just didn’t change very much in Japan during those years. But my bet would be on late 18th or early 19th century.)

So times are tough, there isn’t much hope, and that’s all symbolized by the dreariness of the scenes set at the gate. I think all the events of both stories are pretty much designed to emphasize how much people were falling short of the society’s ideals.

Then the woodcutter redeems himself, and the sun comes out, and there is still hope for people to be better.

I think the movie is comprised of a lot of small events designed to make these kinds of points about the human condition. The conflicting stories in the main part of the movie are not, to me, the most important part of the movie.
Roddy

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Very interesting, Roderick Femm! I didn’t know about the societal issues going on in Japan in that time period. That makes a lot of the movie much clearer.