There’s a dearth of Akira Kurosawa reviews on the site and, as I get older, I feel brave enough to readdress this scarcity. That few director’s works feature as often among my all-time favourites is further impetus to remind myself (and the very rare reader unfamiliar with his work) of the legacy of one of cinema’s true greats.
A woodcutter and a priest sit in melancholic silence at an abandoned temple. Interrupting this moment is a wanderer who asks what has caused this moment of introspection, a question that leads to details of an extraordinary crime. Told from the perspectives of each man, the crime is the assault of a young bride by an impetuous bandit who sees her travelling with her samurai husband through a forest. The husband is killed following the assault, but just how and why is open to interpretation. Version one is told to the court by the defiant bandit himself while subsequent versions are told by the priest, the woodcutter and even a Shinto mystique claiming to be channelling the spirit of the murdered samurai.
‘Rashomon’ is a word that, thanks to this film, has passed into the cinematic lexicon. Based on a pre-war short story, it tackles a major crime in a sober, yet discreet way and plays with the idea that even an obvious crime has many layers hidden beneath the surface. It’s remarkable to watch such thoughtful and at times playful storytelling in an era when we are increasingly nudged to join one side or another with absolute fealty. Kurosawa leaves the story with more questions than answers and from a nasty, yet straightforward crime told by the febrile Toshiro Mifune comes a number of other twists that show events in a new light. Kurosawa plays with these multiple perspectives, from the somewhat credulous (priest) to self-serving (woodcutter) and fashions a great work of cinema from the threads.
Kurosawa uses the weather and the surrounding environment with such passion in his films and the torrential downpour, abandoned temple and sunlit forest all become characters in the story. It’s something we would see again in the seminal ‘Seven Samurai’ and is used effectively in ‘Rashomon’. Would I rank ‘Rashomon’ among my favourites? Definitely not – we’ll come to those in future reviews – but it is still a startling work of cinema and a fine introduction to the Kurosawa canon.
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