My experience with 'Rashomon'
Rashomon is one of the most celebrated films of Kurosawa and, hence, one of the most celebrated japanese movies.
It is heralded as the film that awakened the world to the existence of japanese cinema; one of the reasons for this was the critical acclaim it got on international award ceremonies, such as Venice Festival or the Oscars.
The movie explains the crime through several witnesses in a court house, as the jury (and us, the audience) try to navigate the subjectivity of the different tales to untangle the truth. That's basically it, in a very simplified way.
Now, the first time I watched Rashomon, in a movie theatre in Barcelona, something like two years ago, I felt a sort of indifference and, oddly enough, a sort of irritation towards what I had just seen. I always wondered the reason for this reaction. I have yet to see it again, but as time passed I started to enjoy more and more what I remembered of the movie. I also continued watching Kurosawa's films (although Rashomon wasn't the first movie by him I had seen), which seemed to help shape my memory of it (!). All the other Kurosawa films made a big impact on me; I regard them as works of art, specially Dersu Uzala (1975) and Ikiru (1952). Still, the memory of both indifference and animosity regarding Rashomon lingered in my mind.
A week ago, reading Kurosawa's autobiography, I had a sudden and distinc realization. I realized why I had not enjoyed Rashomon on my first viewing. There are several reasons, which, althought they are interconnected, I have listed individually below:
· I underestimated the movie
One of the most basic, simple reasons for not enjoying a movie is misunderstanding its most fundamental essence. I probably had only seen Yojimbo and Ran up to that point. I did not consider Kurosawa, for some reason or another, capable of making such a complex, ambiguous, confusing and intellectual movie such as Rashomon. I entered the theatre expecting an obvious, commonplace cinematic experience, but instead before my eyes the simplicity that is embedded in other movies was being torn apart, and in the screen a tale of confusing contradictions and lies that complicated the search for the truth started unfolding. As the movie progressed, I started to realize that the truth might not be found. And that, I think, more than anything, irritated me, because I began the movie expecting a simpler story, where the truth is obvious or, at least, explained to the audience at the end. Sort of like a Hitchcock film. Roger Ebert wrote about Rashomon: "The film's engine is our faith that we'll get to the bottom of things". Intead, well, I got a more philosophical piece. The plot is not about a story, but about the different tellings of such story. Therefore, it was extremely frustrating to slowly learn that the movie was entering unknown and unexpected territory, far from my little (even infantile) expectations. Of course, now it all seems absurd. Why would I not enjoy a movie that makes you think and question important issues such as the search for truth? I don't know. The change of path, from my expectation of the movie to what Rashomon really is, increased my annoyance of not knowing the truth... which brings me to the second reason for my discontent.
· The truth remains hidden
As I said before, I started to realize the audience would not be presented with the truth somewhere half-way through the film. That made me somewhat angry. I wanted to learn what had happened. Who lied and why. Who misremembered. I wanted to establish an objective reality. Not knowing, at the end of the movie, what had really happened was confusing. I probably had never seen a film like this, in which you are presented with images that you know are not true, but distorted by someone's mind. This movie points out something obvious, but very, very, frightful: it is nearly impossible to find the objective, complete truth of certain things, events of the past in particular. I'm talking about the way we see the world, the way our mind alters our memories from the past. Kurosawa wrote, in his book Something Like an Autobiography: "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themsleves without embellishing. This script portrays such human being - the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they are in reality. (...) You say you can't understand the script at all, but that's because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it." He said this to his assistants when they claimed they could not understand what the script was about, but he could very well be talking to me, or anybody that didn't approach the movie as it should be approached. The explanation is incredibly helpful; it makes you understand that this is not a simple movie with a simple plot, but an attempt to depict the human heart and the human experience.
· Distrust of postmodernim
Several years ago, I read a bit about post-modernism. It was a word that people threw around now and then and I had never understood its meaning. It is a difficult one to pin down, but I read on until I got it (kinda).
Since then, I have developed a great distrust toward anything close to postmodernism, because of its obvious ills. There's revisionism, the rise of absurd rejection of facts (however hard these are to get exactly right), the establishment of false narratives. It is probably one of the most important reasons for the popularity of Donald Trump (at some point in the movie, a character says " I don't care if it's a lie, as long as it's entertaining"), which shows how powerful the manipulation derived from postmoderist ideas can be.
The movie can be viewed as a defense for postmodernism; and, in a way, it is. Postmodernism, I've come to realize, developes quite valuable points about the way we, individually and as a society, create narratives that cloud and hide the truth. It is with the more radical branch of postmodernism that I take offense with. The kind of ideology that denies the existence of the truth, or the impossibility to find it. It is necessary to face the fact that absolute truth is rarely found. Even our memories are full of inconsistencies with what really happened. On top of that, as Dr. House would say,"everybody lies". The truth in some cases is so perfectly hidden behind a fog of false narratives, inconsistencies and lies that it feels impossible to find it. In some cases, unfortunately, the truth is never reached. Such is the case in Rashomon. But we should never falter in our search for it, in our attempts of approximation.
There are more things to be said about Rashomon, most of them already told by better writers, and I will someday write about the movie itself (about the plot, about its genius cinematography, about its locations, about what Kurosawa wrote about it...). Now, as Sheakspeare would put it, is the winter of my discontent with Rashomon. I will watch it again someday, and I know I will be readier than the first time; because I believe there are movies out there that one's not ready to see yet. Films that one ough to wait to watch.
(First draft)
It is heralded as the film that awakened the world to the existence of japanese cinema; one of the reasons for this was the critical acclaim it got on international award ceremonies, such as Venice Festival or the Oscars.
The movie explains the crime through several witnesses in a court house, as the jury (and us, the audience) try to navigate the subjectivity of the different tales to untangle the truth. That's basically it, in a very simplified way.
 |
| Toshiro Mifune, on the left, portrays the bandit, and appeared in many Kurosawa's films |
Now, the first time I watched Rashomon, in a movie theatre in Barcelona, something like two years ago, I felt a sort of indifference and, oddly enough, a sort of irritation towards what I had just seen. I always wondered the reason for this reaction. I have yet to see it again, but as time passed I started to enjoy more and more what I remembered of the movie. I also continued watching Kurosawa's films (although Rashomon wasn't the first movie by him I had seen), which seemed to help shape my memory of it (!). All the other Kurosawa films made a big impact on me; I regard them as works of art, specially Dersu Uzala (1975) and Ikiru (1952). Still, the memory of both indifference and animosity regarding Rashomon lingered in my mind.
A week ago, reading Kurosawa's autobiography, I had a sudden and distinc realization. I realized why I had not enjoyed Rashomon on my first viewing. There are several reasons, which, althought they are interconnected, I have listed individually below:
· I underestimated the movie
One of the most basic, simple reasons for not enjoying a movie is misunderstanding its most fundamental essence. I probably had only seen Yojimbo and Ran up to that point. I did not consider Kurosawa, for some reason or another, capable of making such a complex, ambiguous, confusing and intellectual movie such as Rashomon. I entered the theatre expecting an obvious, commonplace cinematic experience, but instead before my eyes the simplicity that is embedded in other movies was being torn apart, and in the screen a tale of confusing contradictions and lies that complicated the search for the truth started unfolding. As the movie progressed, I started to realize that the truth might not be found. And that, I think, more than anything, irritated me, because I began the movie expecting a simpler story, where the truth is obvious or, at least, explained to the audience at the end. Sort of like a Hitchcock film. Roger Ebert wrote about Rashomon: "The film's engine is our faith that we'll get to the bottom of things". Intead, well, I got a more philosophical piece. The plot is not about a story, but about the different tellings of such story. Therefore, it was extremely frustrating to slowly learn that the movie was entering unknown and unexpected territory, far from my little (even infantile) expectations. Of course, now it all seems absurd. Why would I not enjoy a movie that makes you think and question important issues such as the search for truth? I don't know. The change of path, from my expectation of the movie to what Rashomon really is, increased my annoyance of not knowing the truth... which brings me to the second reason for my discontent.
 |
| Akira Kurosawa |
· The truth remains hidden
As I said before, I started to realize the audience would not be presented with the truth somewhere half-way through the film. That made me somewhat angry. I wanted to learn what had happened. Who lied and why. Who misremembered. I wanted to establish an objective reality. Not knowing, at the end of the movie, what had really happened was confusing. I probably had never seen a film like this, in which you are presented with images that you know are not true, but distorted by someone's mind. This movie points out something obvious, but very, very, frightful: it is nearly impossible to find the objective, complete truth of certain things, events of the past in particular. I'm talking about the way we see the world, the way our mind alters our memories from the past. Kurosawa wrote, in his book Something Like an Autobiography: "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themsleves without embellishing. This script portrays such human being - the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they are in reality. (...) You say you can't understand the script at all, but that's because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it." He said this to his assistants when they claimed they could not understand what the script was about, but he could very well be talking to me, or anybody that didn't approach the movie as it should be approached. The explanation is incredibly helpful; it makes you understand that this is not a simple movie with a simple plot, but an attempt to depict the human heart and the human experience.
· Distrust of postmodernim
Several years ago, I read a bit about post-modernism. It was a word that people threw around now and then and I had never understood its meaning. It is a difficult one to pin down, but I read on until I got it (kinda).
Since then, I have developed a great distrust toward anything close to postmodernism, because of its obvious ills. There's revisionism, the rise of absurd rejection of facts (however hard these are to get exactly right), the establishment of false narratives. It is probably one of the most important reasons for the popularity of Donald Trump (at some point in the movie, a character says " I don't care if it's a lie, as long as it's entertaining"), which shows how powerful the manipulation derived from postmoderist ideas can be.
The movie can be viewed as a defense for postmodernism; and, in a way, it is. Postmodernism, I've come to realize, developes quite valuable points about the way we, individually and as a society, create narratives that cloud and hide the truth. It is with the more radical branch of postmodernism that I take offense with. The kind of ideology that denies the existence of the truth, or the impossibility to find it. It is necessary to face the fact that absolute truth is rarely found. Even our memories are full of inconsistencies with what really happened. On top of that, as Dr. House would say,"everybody lies". The truth in some cases is so perfectly hidden behind a fog of false narratives, inconsistencies and lies that it feels impossible to find it. In some cases, unfortunately, the truth is never reached. Such is the case in Rashomon. But we should never falter in our search for it, in our attempts of approximation.
There are more things to be said about Rashomon, most of them already told by better writers, and I will someday write about the movie itself (about the plot, about its genius cinematography, about its locations, about what Kurosawa wrote about it...). Now, as Sheakspeare would put it, is the winter of my discontent with Rashomon. I will watch it again someday, and I know I will be readier than the first time; because I believe there are movies out there that one's not ready to see yet. Films that one ough to wait to watch.
(First draft)
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