Rashomon [1950] [DVD]

A man is dead, a woman was raped, and that's all that can be definitely said. Somebody has committed murder, but nobody knows whodunnit.

Legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" is a classic for its skillful direction, suspense and wonderful acting. It's one of those movies you think must be vastly overrated until you see it, and are blown away by it.

At the Rashomon Gate in eleventh-century Japan, a man (Kichijiro Ueda) takes shelter with a priest (Minoru Chiaki) and a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) during a rainstorm. The woodcutter is depressed and the priest is horrified, over a recent crime: the vicious bandit Tajômaru (Toshirô Mifune) was arrested for murdering a man named Takehiro (Masayuki Mori) and raping his wife Masako (Machiko Kyô). But when taken before the police, Tajômaru claims that he had his fun with the woman and killed her husband honorably in a fight.

But Masako begs to differ; she claims to be the victim first of the sadistic bandit, then of her cold-hearted husband, whom she says she stabbed. And when a medium calls up the spirit of Takehiro, he claims that Masako was unfaithful, asking the bandit to murder him, then spurned by Tajômaru. Her actions drove Takehiro to suicide. But the woodcutter himself claims to have seen the altercation -- and his version is wildly different from them all.

During the filming of "Rashomon," director Akira Kurosawa stated that the film is a reflection of life, which doesn't always have clear meanings. The same could be said of truth. Questions are raised by the events of "Rashomon," but given no easy answers -- sometimes no answers at all (my biggest question was how Masako's gown stays so white if she's always weeping on the ground).

Light and shadow whirl and dance in a frankly beautiful woodland setting, serving as a pretty backdrop for some very ugly acts. The fight scenes are masterful -- they look like real fights, as opposed to choreography. Tajômaru's are more stylized, whereas the woodcutter sees two guys rolling and staggering around with swords, obviously freaked out. Kurosawa was even brave enough to touch on the unique idea of having the deceased testify. The spinechilling seance scene, starring a downright spooky, stark-faced Fumiko Honma, is a haunting classic scene.

Are Kurosawa's insights dark and depressing? In a fascinating, hypnotic way... yes. But while calmly pointing out the ability of human beings to lie even to themselves, he acknowledges that there's good in there too, by including a scene where the woodcutter adopts an abandoned baby. We lose our illusions and innocence as the priest loses his, forced to look on how despicable people can be, but while being comforted with the knowledge that people aren't all bad, and that unadulterated truth isn't really necessary to have good in you.

Toshirô Mifune chews the scenery with gusto as the barbarian bandit, laughing and jerking like a hyena just to see people jump. At first glance, Machiko Kyô seems to be overacting, until you see how unhinged her character has become by whatever happened. Masayuki Mori doesn't get to act as much as the others (the poor guy spends most of his time tied to a tree), but is good when the camera zooms in on him. Minoru Chiaki and Takashi Shimura add an extra dimension as the innocent young priest and the tormented woodcutter.

Gloomy, thought-provoking and ultimately quite freaky, "Rashomon" still defies conventional filmmaking, brilliantly crafted and exceptionally directed. And that's the truth.

In Akira Kurosawa's classic film "Rashomon," a woodcutter, a thief, a wife and a dead husband each relate in turn a "rape" and "murder." Everyone has seen this movie ripped off (or homaged) on television shows from "All in the Family" to "The X-Files," so seeing the original at this late date is certainly a distorted endeavor. However, the important thing to remember is to WATCH THIS FILM TWICE. Not that further proof of the mastery of Kurosawa is needed, but each narrative in this film is told in a different cinematic style. The second time around pay attention to how the composition of the shots, the music in the background, the editing technique are all unique to each version of what happened in the woods. There are those who say this film is about the ambiguity of truth, arguing that what really happened is never depicted in the film. I do not buy this interpretation at all. At the end we do indeed get the "truth," which is why a second viewing of the film is so wor!thwhile, for it allows us to reinterpret each narrative to reach an understanding of why each person distorts their telling of the tale. Their distortions, omissions and lies are not random, but strategic given each individual caught up in this situation. The historical note that this film "introduced" Japanese cinema to the Western World is an interesting footnote. But this is a psychological drama that transcends culture, which is to say that the film is not as inherently "Japanese" as other Kurosawa efforts (and I make this comment cognizant of the stilted American adaptation of the tale which was set, like most adaptations of Kurosawa, in the old West).

Perhaps even more influential than Kurasawa's other classics (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo), Rashomon is based around the investigation into a rape and a murder in feudal Japan. A series of witnesses come forward to tell a series of stories, with each storyteller having a different spin on events. As visually arresting as the rest of Kurawasa's work, it is a more intellectual film than Yojimbo, and is often cited as an indication of postmodernism (with its unstable narrative and unreliable narrators).

You can't possibly say that you have an interest in cinema if you haven't seen this film.

So seminal is this film that it even inspired a Simpsons joke:
Homer: "I don't wanna go to Japan."
Marge: "You liked that movie, Rashomon."
Homer: "That's your story."