Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
10 Dec Rashomon (1950)
Nested, Folded, Parallel Narrative
Superficially about truth, this is more fundamentally about the nature of nested and floating narrative.
Kurosawa is one of three men who invented film, and this is his most influential one. Much is made of the construction of the story, which you can read elsewhere. I’d like to focus here on what I think is the rarest of Kurosawa’a abilities: the way he changes the eye of the camera — and the composition of the world it creates for us — for each of the narratives.
Some are impressionistic; some flat and full of contrast; some deep. Some are composed around people, some around the environment with people in it, some around fleeting motion. Sometimes the words are the organising principle, sometimes images.
I know other directors who can do this once within a film: to twist the consciousness of the viewing eye to match the perspective of the narration, even some capable of a dual view within and without. But I know of no one else capable of doing so multiply within the same film and with such obvious link to the story.
The DVD is astonishingly clear. It has an introduction by Altman which says nothing interesting; but watch his hands. The DVD has a commentary which is horrid — just the sort of talky vapidity about apparent insight the film criticises!
Posted in 2002
Ted’s Evaluation — 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.
No Comments