Rashomon

Different genres utilize the camera and its subjects differently, and Kurosawa notes these differences throughout Rashomon. Tajomaru’s story is intentionally very comedic. He is an over-the-top character, coming off as slightly unhinged at times, but never ultimately unreliable. Throughout Tajomaru’s retell of events, the camera is very subjective. The audience is seeing the action almost entirely how Tajomaru is seeing it. In fact, the audience is so closely connected to Tajomaru’s point of view, that we are given a glimpse of how he hopes to be perceived, which is as a gallant hero wandering through the forest. Dramatic music complements this brief fantasy of his. While the scene is obviously very comedic, it does not discredit Tajomaru. In fact, it actually brings viewers closer to understanding him. In comically portraying Tajomaru as vulnerable, Kurosawa…

A modern plot technique which Gabriel Marquez utilizes in his novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is the "Rashomon Effect". This literary device makes reference to the 1950s’ film Rashomon, which used a distinct plot device, “involving various characters providing the alternative, self-serving and contradictory versions of the same incident” (Wikipedia). Use of that device allows the author to present divergent points of view of the same event. The story leads its reader to ask, “Who is…

“Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.” According to director Akira Kurosawa, this is the meaning behind his film Rashomon. The film is an adaptation of the short story “In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagwa, a mystery regarding the murder of the samurai Takehiko. It is told through the points of view of the people involved, including the dead samurai himself. Because three of the main characters did plead…

matters beneath the boundaries of morality. Films like Perez and Rashomon, setting aside their cultural differences, share rather worrying similarities in human perspective relating to our ill-fated ways and tendency to deceive others and ourselves. Two films, two time periods, two languages, and two different countries yet one central concern- humanity.…

Rashomon - The Loss and Gains in the Transition of Medium Whenever a movie is created based off a novel, there is a common debate on whether the movie was better than the novel or vice versa. Sometimes, the debate ends quickly for both sides have the same opinion on the movie or the novel. However, in some cases the debate lengths, for one side prefers the movie over the other due to reasons such as the gains or losses on making the novel into the movie. In the case for Rashomon, a similar…

Rashomon is another masterpiece from Akira Kurosawa, yet this film was also remained as a black and white classic film in movie history due to it’s epicness. Akira adapted this story from Akutagawa Ryunosuke, a well-known and talented writer in Japan. I had already read some of Akutagawa’s selected short stories before I watched this film. I found that Akira had combined two stories into his movie, which was “In a bamboo groove” and “Rashomon”. In fact, the main storyline in this movie was…

The historian must filter through the multiple voices, brand away the objectivity, take into account the subjectivity and come to an accurate conclusion on how to properly represent the time period not based off of biased readings. Such a concept can be synthesized into the term Rashomon effect, a term coined in the 1950 film Rashomon directed by Akira Kurosawa, which stems from the films plot in which a murder is detailed through multiple witnesses whose tells end up contradicting one another…

This process will continue until the first and last person in the circle compare what was heard to what was actually said. A vast majority of the time, the resulting message is not at all similar to what was originally spoken. This simple example illustrates just how easy it is for the truth to be polluted. Akira Kurosawa in his film Rashomon illustrates a similar idea. He paints the viewer a portrait of a crime scene in which a woman has been raped and her husband murdered. However,…

The Effects of Lighting: An Analysis of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon is about how humanity cannot be honest with themselves. The film technique that I focus on is lighting. Through the sketch, the lighting is different from the original scene suggests telling a different meaning on what is happening to the samurai. The first panel in the sketch the lighting is dark,…

Some movies are crystal clear. The plot is simple, the jokes are understandable, the theme is graspable, and the question is answerable. It does not take a scholarly film critic to figure these motion pictures out. On the other side, some movies are extremely intricate and take some deep meditating and even then one may not be able to fully put together what they have just spent two hours watching. Citizen Kane, Rashomon, and Stories We Tell are three pictures that fall somewhere between these…