Rashômon (1950) – 2/5

Not a film that supports the claim for Kurosawa to be an all-time great director

„Rashômon“ is a Japanese live action movie from the exact middle of the 20th century, so this one is from the year 1950 and at under 1.5 hours not a long movie at all. As you may have guessed from the year, this is a black-and-white film and except the US and very few other countries that also released the occasional color movie by then (also my country Germany I think, at least before that), black-and-white was really the standard there. This film is still very famous today and a key reason for that is that the writer and director is Akira Kurosawa, considered by many one of the finest filmmakers who ever existed. This is maybe not his most known film nowadays, but surely among his most known, maybe top5. It is also really self-explanatory if a film from the year 1950, especially a film that is not in the English language, is closer to 200k ratings on imdb than to 100k ratings. Kurosawa himself was under the age of 40 when he made this, so it is one of his earlier efforts, even if he had already been in the industry for a decade approximately at that point. He is not the only writer credited with this movie. The writer of the base material was Ryûnosuke Akutagawa who was only in his mid30s when he died from suicide in the year 1927, so he did not live to see this film’s success. There have been many other releases based on his works over the years, but this one is by far the most known and most successful. In terms of the screenplay, Kurosawa collaborated with Shinobu Hashimoto and it was not the only shared project between the two. With Hashimoto, one very interesting thing to say is that he lived until the summer of 2018, became him a centenarian. Japanese people really do reach old age.

I am not an expert on Japanese movies, but if I look at the cast, I see a handful names and actors that have made an impact on Japanese cinema also through other projects and collaborations with Kurosawa (and Hashimoto) back then. Toshirô Mifune comes to mind immediately and he may be the closest to a lead this film has. His energy and screen presence are always easy to identify. Another one would be Takashi Shimura who has been in so many Kurosawa films, also playing much bigger characters than he does here. Of course, as the film is over 72 years old now, it is unlikely to still find anybody who was part of this and who is alive in the year 2022 or soon 2023. Maybe the baby is, the one we see at the very end almost. I think it was a boy. But he would be an old man now too. Still must be interesting for him to watch this film and see all the people surrounding him. Anyway, this film is currently in position 150 in the imdb top250, so the rating is extremely high. This is what got me really curious (apart from the name Kurosawa) when I saw that the film was shown again here as part of a film series on Asian movies. This series has been going on for quite a bit now. Really awesome that they are bringing back old films to movie theaters this way and this was maybe the oldest film so far that they brought back. Simply because it is considered a classic by many. I cannot really agree with that though from my perspective as you perhaps already saw from my rating, but before I go into detail there, let me say that this film was also nominated for an Oscar for its art direction and set decoration and this nomination happened in 1953, so quite a while after the movie’s original release. This long it took for the film to get to the Oscars. One of the two nominees also got in again a few years later for Kurosawa’s perhaps most known film. But today we will keep talking about this one here and you can also add that it won an honorary Oscar in 1952 already and was picked as the best foreign movie. More praise arose from the BAFTAs, Director’s Guild, National Board of Review, New York Film Critics and many others. The film also won the prestigious Golden Lion in Venice in 1951 already, so Europe apparently liked it earlier than America.

Okay, now let’s look at the story and I will try to explain why I did not like the film too much: I watched the Japanese original with subtitles, but on a side note let me say that the German title is really awful and absolutely not fitting at all. One of the worst I have ever heard in this context. It sounds like some mix between romance and music like many other German films from the 1960s mostly. You can kinda split this film into two parts and there is constant jumping back and forth between these parts. The first would be the now in which a few characters talk about what events from the not-so-distant past and the second part would be the depiction of what happened back then. It is the story of a couple who run into a criminal in the forest. He is interested in the girl. These three characters tell us in detail what happened and we also have another, a fourth character, namely a woodcarver who also gives us his take on the events, but turns out he almost saw nothing, but fled because he was scared. The narrations vastly differ, so we cannot be sure about the actual events and this also does not change at the end. We do not know what happened. We only know what the characters want us to believe. The truth was maybe somewhere in-between. We do not know exactly how the girl reacted for example, although it seems at least that she was not as innocent as she claimed to be. I mean she did not kill her man, but it could very well have been the case that she told the criminal to kill him and take her with him, so she would simply become the criminal’s girl and the shame what he did with her would not be as shameful anymore. We also do now know if the criminal simply wanted to leave or was really crazy for the girl, even after he had her. We can only assume and everybody may have a different idea what the reality looks like for them.

I actually thought the introduction was pretty good when we find out the male from the couple dies. This is almost the only thing we know for sure. We cannot say for sure if he died in battle or if he even took his own life. The latter is what his perspective suggested. A ritual suicide. What we can be kinda sure about though is that the bad guy tricked him to catch him and tie him up, but he did not kill him in such a deceitful fashion. So the killing was not even necessarily a crime. Just a sword battle for life and death. The bad guy even praises the man for how long he managed to survive in the fight and that he was an almost equal opponent. I kinda liked some inclusions from the beginning like how we find out the man would die already when we see him in his first scene as he is entering the forest with his woman and I also liked how the villain Tajômaru (Mifune) told us about the wind in the forest and how it was a breeze that started it all, namely how he ended up seeing the female protagonist’s face this way. Interestingly enough, Machiko Kyô is the only one from the cast who scored a bit of awards attention for her portrayal here. She was decent. None of the cast were bad. It is also interesting to see how the fact that she was probably raped by the criminal (unless she really gave consent as you could assume from one flashback with how she put her arms around the bad guy) was such a non-factor here in this film and how she was nonetheless in almost every scenario depicted as one of the least likable characters too. This could never happen in film today. She would be the full-on victim already because of political correctness reasons. It is a bit sad that this is getting in the way of things nowadays and I say that despite not liking the movie a lot.

I definitely liked these flashback sequences more than what happens in the now, namely when the characters are talking about the fateful events in the forest. The „now scenes“ did nothing for me almost and are a key reason why I give this film a negative recommendation. I also found it difficult to put them into context. The way I understood it the goal in the end was not to tell the audience what happened exactly, but tell them that everybody lies. House would loved it I guess. Everybody lies to make themselves look better and everybody is evil in a way. The film still ends on a moment of good when completely out of nowhere a baby shows up and we find out what is going to happen with it. Who will take it and make sure it is alright. There we also had a skeptic character who then realizes he ran into the good of humanity when his initial thoughts about what the other man would do with the baby turned out wrong. I found all this really absurd. I mean where did the infant even come from? First I thought it is maybe an orphan of the couple from the forest, but then I realized that the woman is not dead and that there was most likely no connection between the kid and said couple. It was just there all of a sudden. This was one key flaw for me. Apart from that, it is of course up to you to decide if you like the idea how the man killed in the forest talks to us through a medium. It was not my favorite scene, but it could have been worse. Definitely very special scene, but also not really in a good way. So there are supernatural elements in this movie too. Maybe many people like this film because of the fight sequences, but after seeing it I would say that the Japanese here and there get away with something that old films from other countries would not get away with. It did seem fairly exaggerated at times. On one occasion, the people in the audience were even laughing about how the two men were moving through the dirt there ready to fight each other. It did look absurd, not gonna lie. This was the only moment when people laughed during this film. There is no comedy to it at all otherwise. 100% drama. But even if I did not like the film a lot and I felt it got worse and worse the longer it went, I am glad films like this are shown at movie theaters nowadays. Audience reception was strong too. I still say skip the watch.