Rashomon (1950)

“It’s human to lie. Most of the time we can’t even be honest with ourselves.” – Commoner

Number of Times Seen – Twice (9 Oct 2008 and 18 Apr 2020)

Brief Synopsis – An injustice in the woods is told from numerous perspectives trying to help understand what truly happened.

My Take on it – This is a movie that I heard so much about for years and finally got a chance to see it a bit over 11 years ago.

The premise of telling a story from numerous perspectives has always fascinated me and when I finally saw this film, I was mesmerized by it.

The idea of telling a story that proves the fact that a narrator can be unreliable is great, especially when we have multiple unreliable narrators claiming to be telling the truth.

The best part about this movie is the fact that despite having 5 different versions of a story, we never truly know (for sure) which (if any) tells the actual truth as to what transpired in the woods that day.

This movie does a wonderful job of showing us how it can be possible for different people to perceive the same event in very diverse ways even if they all are directly part of the event.

This is a film that has inspired so many stories, movies and TV shows as they attempt to find a way to capture the unique storytelling technique that this one presents.

The story is quite powerful and poignant in what it tells us due to the very unique and original premise.

The characters of the story are all standard stereotypes but that actually helps enhance things because we can then clearly see that the main character of this movie is the story itself.

Bottom Line – Amazing film that is able to take the idea of an unreliable narrator and bring it to a new level. The story is told from 5 different perspectives and we never truly know which (if any) is the entire truth of what really transpired. The film allows us to get a better understanding of the way that different people see similar events even if they are directly part of those situations. The movie has inspired so many different stories that use this kind of perspective on events and that helps make this story so powerful and poignant because of its unique way of telling such a story. The characters are all standard and fit certain stereotypes but that helps keep the identities of the characters inconsequential to the story itself which is the real main character of the movie. Highly Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – This film is often given credit for the first time a camera was pointed directly at the sun. In Akira Kurosawa’s biography, he gives credit to his cinematographer for “inventing” it and himself for using it, but years later, during commentary that preceded the TV showing of the film, the head of the studio claimed credit. Kurosawa bitterly denied this claim. (From IMDB)

Rating – Oscar Worthy (9/10)