Film: Rashomon
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Country: Japan
Released: August 1950
Runtime: 88 minutes
Genre: Thriller
Studio: Daiei
Influenced: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Alain Resnais, Bryan Singer, Zhang Yimou, Christopher Nolan
Dominant strands in cinema in the immediate post-WWII period included continuations of pre-war trends (notably film noir and gangster movies) and the new movement of neorealism, but along came a series of films in 1950 that would upend the status quo and change the film industry forever. Wilder's Sunset Boulevard was Hollywood gazing in on itself, Cocteau's Orpheus was an artist's self-reflective gaze in the mirror and Kurosawa's Rashomon was the gaze of multiple perspectives all observing the same event. Often this film is perceived to be about relative truth, but in fact Kurosawa wanted to make a film about relative reality. Another notable theme is how humans are incapable of not lying, even to themselves.
Rashomon's setting is medieval 12th century Japan and some of the film's language is classical and poetic ("A human is truly as frail and fleeting as the morning dew"). The use of the commoner and his interrogations drive the film's action, involving four witness accounts of the same story from multiple perspectives, starting with the woodcutter. His account is initially told purely through visuals, as if to suggest that dialogue is not always as helpful to understanding what happened as seeing the action played out. In doing so, Kurosawa is making an appreciative nod to the power of silent cinema. After seeing the woodcutter's discovery of the dead body, we then hear his account in front of a judge.
Then we quickly cut to the story of the priest, who recounts how he saw a Samurai escorting his wife on horseback the same day as the murder, and we notice that the wife is wearing the same hat we've just seen in the woodcutter's section. We then quickly cut again to the policeman's account of the story, involving the accused Tajomaru (played by legendary actor Toshiro Mifune) having a stomach ache after drinking dirty water from a river, and suddenly we get the dizzying feeling of stories within stories and a narrative structure similar to that of Chinese boxes or Russian dolls.
Legendary cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, who later worked with Mizoguchi and Ozu, is responsible for the film's impressive tracking shots and the way the light, shade and sweat appear in an expressive way on the characters' faces. The film is noted for being the first to point a camera at the sun. Fumio Hayasaka's score is also inventive, using instruments to good effect such as the plodding woodwind to denote trekking through the forest that is interspersed by the sound of the celesta when the bandit sees the face of the Samurai's wife (played by the phenomenal Machiko Kyo). Kurosawa's fast-paced editing is what makes the film so ahead of its time, many cuts so rapid you don't even notice them.
The duel between the samurai and the bandit is Kurosawa riffing on the tradition of Japanese swordplay films, a genre called "chanbara". Another version of the duel at the end of the film is hilariously bad in terms of swordsmanship, two amateurs flailing at each other, as if to underline again (in a more comic way) how different perspectives can warp reality. Most movies want to tie up all the loose ends, however Rashomon makes you come up with an ending and then Kurosawa takes joy in loosening it. This film was showered with awards, announced Japanese cinema on the international stage, gave rise to its own brand of storytelling ("the Rashomon effect") and went on to influence a raft of similarly non-linear films and TV shows, for example Lost.
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