Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon Film Essay

Ngozi Onyema
Film 3000
October 18, 2011
Film: Rashomon
TRT: 87 minutes
Language: Japanese with English Subtitles
Date of the Film: 1950
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Awards:
• Blue Ribbon Awards (1951) - Best Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto
• Mainichi Film Concours (1951) - Best Actress: Machiko Kyō
• Venice Film Festival (1951) - Golden Lion: Akira Kurosawa
• National Board of Review USA (1951) - Best Director: Akira Kurosawa and Best Foreign Film: Japan
• 24th Academy Awards, USA (1952) - Best Foreign Language Film

The topic in Film Theory that I feel is involved with this film Roshomon is Epistemology. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of human knowledge. It basically asks the question “how do we know what we know is the truth?” In this film there are four different interpretations of the same event. This has the audience question what is the truth and if there is such a thing as a single truth. Another topic I see in this film is allegory as I see the symbolism of this film compared to the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II.

In the first article by Paul Tatara, Paul gives a summary of the film, the effects the film Rashomon had on the film industry, critics of Kurosawa and most notably Kurosawa’s recounting of his explanation of the script in his memoir “Something Like an Autobiography”. In his memoir Kurosawa said “Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. The script portrays such human beings the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel better than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattery falsehood going beyond the grave – even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through the median. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and discharged by the ego.” In the second article by Roger Ebert he pretty much does the same thing summarizing the film but he also gives a psychological and more analytical view of the film. He gives an explanation of the film that involves both Kurosawa’s explanation of the film and the expected interpretation of the audience to the film. In the third article by Hideo Hama titled “Ethnomethodology and the Rashomon Problem” Hideo Hama speaks about Harold Garfinkel’s dissertation which critically examined Talcott Parsons’ classical formulation of the problem of order referred to as the “Hobbesian problem”. Garfinkel’s examination spoke of how congruency theory replaces the correspondence theory. Hideo Hama proposed to examine the “Hobbesian problem” but instead use the name “Rashomon problem”. Hideo Hama’s article basically examines the film Rashomon to try to figure out what truly happened.

These articles relate to the screening in a sense that they acknowledge the true explanation of the film which is given by Kurosawa himself and they acknowledge the interpreted explanation of the film which is by the audience because of the inconclusive ending of the different stories in the film. Roger Ebert says “The genius of “Rashomon” is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, “Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk aobut themselves without embellishing.” This goes back to the epistemology about how do we know what we know is the truth. We are given different accounts of the story and are left wondering what the truth is.

As far as the film I couldn’t help but feel that it was a little over the top as far as the acting part of it. That may be due to me not being used to Japanese films. I was also kind of disappointed to find out that Kurosawa gave an explanation of the film by saying all the stories were a lie. I was under the impression that this was a film about different interpretations, about seeing things differently from others. When you say that the different accounts are lies then it is no longer an interpretation but lie. At the same time all of the accounts can’t be a lie unless a truth is known. Kurosawa doesn’t go on to tell us what the truth is but he does tell us all accounts are lies so we are still left wondering what the truth is.

Bibliography:
Ebert, Roger (2002, May 26). Rashomon (1950). Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved October 18, 2011 from http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020526/REVIEWS08/205260301/1023

Tatara, Paul (2011). Rashomon. Turner Classic Movies Film Article. Retrieved October 18, 2011 from http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/136021|0/Rashomon.html

Hama, Hideo (1999, October). Ethnomethodology and the Rashomon Problem. Human Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2/4, pg 183 – 192. Retrieved December 18, 2011, from JSTOR