“Rashomon” is a classic Japanese film from 1950 that set a new standard of storytelling among filmmakers and television producers alike. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, the film depicts a Bandit, Tajomaru, who desperately wants the affection of a samurai’s wife. In the end the Samurai is dead and there are 4 conflicting stories of what exactly happened.
Overall the film is amazing. Its use of light, nature, and philosophy combine together for a truly moving film even 61 years after its birth. “Rashomon” is an ingenious film allegorical to the recent post-modern philosophy and the objective truth. Kurosawa uses water as a metaphor for the inherent arbitrary nature of truth itself. Throughout the scene at Rashomon, where the story is told from each perspective, it pours down rain until the very end. When the bandit Tajomaru is initially captured he falls off his horse near a lake because he drank water from a spring. The symbolism of water is all over the film and water, like truth, has no exact shape. Water is a seamless entity that assumes the shape of its container for it has no shape of its own. If it rains on the ground the water takes the shape of a flat surface; into a glass it takes the shape of the glass, etc. In “Rashomon” the idea of truth is water itself; it only takes the shape of the person presenting it. No character of the film presents the same truth as another character because each character has their distinct differences giving the truth its distinct shape.
I came into "Rashomon" expecting a horribly dated movie but I left with an experience and philosophy I won’t soon forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment