Rashômon

City Paper Grade: A-

by Sam Adams

ANIMAL ATTRACTION: The perspective of Toshir Mifune's feral bandit greatly differs from that of the wife (Machiko Ky).

[ CITY PAPER GRADE: A- ]

Akira Kurosawa's four-way account of a man's murder, re-released on a new print, has become so associated with its central device — not to mention its myriad offshoots — that it requires an effort to see it only for itself. Whatever the meaning of the "Rashômon effect," Kurosawa's 1950 film is less an example of postmodernism avant la lettre than a mournful examination of human deceit, both of others and of oneself. Truth is not elusive because it does not exist, but because humans are too flawed to face it. The one incontestable fact is the victim's body, and even he comes back from beyond the grave to offer his own unreliable account.

Not even the dead are immune from self-delusion. Apart from its conceptual framework, what holds the movie together are the robust performances of Kurosawa regulars, particularly Toshirô Mifune's feral turn as a bandit who may be the culprit, although even those who agree he struck the fatal blow diverge on his motives. Famously instructed to mimic the predatory slink of a hungry lion, he tacitly embodies the movie's contention that humans are never far from regressing to their bestial origins.

Overlooked, too, in the focus on the film's structure is how Kurosawa and cameraman Kazuo Miyagawa integrate its layers of meaning into the visual plan. The trial court where witnesses are called to testify is squarely framed, shot at tatami level in bright sunlight, but the subjective flashbacks are handheld, reflecting the fact that even the processes of law are insufficient to overcome mortal fallibility.

The rain-drenched framing sequences, set at a crumbing city gate, incarnate Kurosawa's despair, leavened only slightly by a half-hearted bid for last-act optimism. Many filmmakers have aped Rashômon's uncertainty, but few have mustered its moral anguish.