Rashomon

Rashomon. Among the most influential of all films, this 1950 Akira Kurosawa classic is better after the first viewing. I first watched it in the 90s and although certain scenes stayed with me over the years, something felt missing. Its contradictory accounts of rape and murder, told by four characters, seemed unresolved.

Movies and TV shows I’d grown up with used what’s called the “Rashomon effect,” but they always revealed the truth in the end—a detective interviews multiple witnesses, each with a different story, and then through some Holmesian insight or Columbo-style unraveling exposes what really happened. I carried that expectation into Rashomon, trying to sort out the liars and red herrings, waiting for the reveal. But what comes instead is a different kind of anagnorisis: the search for truth and morality is the point, not the truth itself.

The second time I watched it was a decade or so ago in the countryside near Joetsu, Niigata, stretched out on tatami mats, with crickets chirping through the screens in the summer breeze. This time the film felt right, my expectations having been stripped away. What struck me most was the interplay of light and shadow: leaves flickering across faces, the camera pointed straight at the sun, the dagger slipping from the wife’s hand, the woodcutter running through dense forest, and the bandit (Toshiro Mifune) gazing at the clouds before telling his version. These images linger, even many years after.

The third time, not so long ago, I found myself laughing, something I don’t recall doing before. In the woodcutter’s version, Tajomaru appears almost foolish in love, and the clumsy, almost farcical duel between bandit and samurai is unexpectedly funny, as is the wife’s shriek.

I was also struck this time by the medium delivering the dead samurai’s account. When she collapses, the way her bound hair tilts and drops is eerie, almost otherworldly.

It’s remarkable that Kurosawa struggled to secure funding for Rashomon, working with a relatively modest budget, yet produced something so visually outstanding and enduring. Filmmakers from Francis Ford Coppola, Federico Fellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese to George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick, Hayao Miyazaki, Ingmar Bergman, and Roman Polanski have cited his influence.

Spielberg once said, “I have learned more from him than from almost any other filmmaker on the face of the earth.” Scorsese put it more simply: “Akira Kurosawa was my master.”