In Rashomon one of the scences is a medium testifying in court on behalf of a dead man There are no other paranormal scenes, and no explicit demonstration she is indeed channeling his spirit, rather than lying or deluded. In Rashomon I choose to take it at face value that they are the words of the husband as the plot is better if you accept it as his. I can’t think of any other (basically) non-paranormal film where I accept a paranormal scene, that has a much-more likely real world explanation, as paranormal.
In Rashomon, are they the words of the husband or the medium? What other films have this dichotomy, and how do you generally resolve them in your head?
Such supernatural things appear more often in Asian literature than in the West. The original Judge Dee novel, titled by its translator Robert Hand Van Guklik the [i[Dee Goong An* has such a scene with a ghost giving evidence. The novel is an 18th century Chinese novel about a T’and dynasty historical figure. When van Gulik began writing his own novels about Judge Dee he composed them by taking elements from old Chinese mysteries, but was careful to either avoid such outright supernatural elements or to provide them with enough ambiguity that the reader could read them as a rational, possible event or a supernatural one.
That, I suspect, is your average Western reader’s interpretation and feeling about this (I think, in other words, that van Gulik hjudged his audience accurately).
It’s also pretty clear to me that Kurasawa meant for the audience to take the spirit evidence as the word of the murdered man. So that’s how I take it. It’s been too long since I read “In a Grove”, the short story that Rashomon is based on, to recall if it’s in there. According to the Wikipedia account, the spirit evidence is, indeed, in there (Kurasawa invented the woodcutter’s account), so the spirit evidence has always been an integral part of the story (which first appeared in 21922)
The characters discussing the events believe that the medium was indeed channelling the dead husband. The characters’ conflicted feelings draw just as much from the medium’s account of events as from the wife’s account and the bandit’s account. The characters don’t doubt the medium.
The story being told to us, the film audience, isn’t about the bandit, the samurai, and his wife- it is about the three people at Rashōmon gate and how they are affected by the recent local trial. So all that matters is that they do believe the medium was speaking for the dead samurai.
The movie “Crossroads” with Ralph Macchio and Jon Seneca.
It is about a young musician studying music at Juliard (or some similar school) but who really wants to be a classic “bluesman.” He finds a forgotten bluesman in an old folks home and tries to get him to teach him how to play the blues. The old man, haunted by nightmares, relents if the kid will help him make the trip downsouth to the “crossroads” where he claims he sold his soul to the devil. It’s a road movie and you’re not quite sure if the old man is just scamming the kid for the ride or if he’s actually trying to help him.
There’s nothing supernatural in the movie at all (the nightmares are even presented as nightmares)…UNTIL the climax which is LITERALLY Ralph Macchio versus the devil (technically the Devil’s proxy played by guitarist Steve Vai) for the soul of the old man.
In Ofelas (U.S. title Pathfinder), one of the major characters is a shaman.
He makes predictions, and they come true. Maybe he is clairvoyant. Maybe he is just old and wise.
He casts spells to attack the bad guys. (Of course, the spell usually consists of a prayer to the spirits to lead the bad guys into the trap he is setting in their path.)
In one scene, he commands all of the tribe to behave in a certain way, lest an angry spirit attack them. They comply, and no harm comes. You spend the rest of the movie wondering what would have happened if someone had broken the taboo.
I’d think so. Other Shakespeare plays too – Julius Caesar, for instance, has not only the soothsayer, but Calpurnia’s dream and a host of reported portents on the night before Caesar’s assassination.
And in at least some productions of Henry VIII, Catherine has a vision of the other wives shortly before she dies.
In TV shows, though, this sort of hint of the paranormal is a dime a dozen, especially in Christmas episodes where it turns out that Santa is real, or a real angel does the whole George Bailey thing.
I think the narrative of Rashomon makes a lot more sense (and is more compelling) if we assume the channeling is real. Always struck me as the oddest element of the film.