- A man's body was found in the forest. He'd been stabbed. A woman's hat, a man's hat, and some rope were all discovered nearby. That much the characters in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon can agree on. The rest is a matter of some debate.
- During the murder trial, eyewitness testimonies have been offered, several of which disagree with one another. The woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) claims that he found a series of clues that led him to the body of the dead man (Masayuki Mori). A bandit named Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune) admits to killing the man, but only after a duel in which both men fought honorably for the affections of the man's wife (Machiko Kyô). The wife, on the other hand, claims that Tajomaru forced himself upon her, and that her husband stared at her with vacant eyes, blaming her for the assault. Maybe she killed him, fainting in the process. Just when you thought things couldn't get any more confusing, a surprise witness shows up in the form of a medium who channels the dead man. In his version, the shrewish wife was all-too-eager to run away with Tajomaru, as long as he would be willing to kill the man, who commits suicide instead. Who to believe?
- As a deluge of rain falls on the whithered Rashomon shrine, a wanderer (Kichijiro Ueda) listens to these tales with great interest. A priest (Minoru Chiaki) concludes that the whole affair is "worse than fires, wars, epidemics, or bandits," while the woodcutter can only note that none of the stories makes any sense. Complicating matters further is the fact that the seemingly honest woodcutter changes his story partway through the film. When confronted about a missing knife, he admits that he saw the entire thing. His version is the bleakest one yet, with the wife goading the men into fighting in the most cowardly and clumsy fashion imaginable. Is this what really happened, or is it true that men "can't tell the truth, even to themselves?"
- Later in the same decade, 12 Angry Men would struggle with similar issues of witness reliability and the true nature of justice, but only Rashomon would dare to ask if the gods had abandoned humanity. Rather than simply hearing about how deceptive people can be, the audience sees it with our own eyes through a variety of strongly warped lenses. While unreliable narrators had made appearances prior to this film, as in 1945's noir Detour, this was the first time you really couldn't trust any of what you saw. The effect was novel and striking enough that Rashomon is almost always cited in discussions of films like The Usual Suspects that try to take the audience for a ride. So is there hope for humanity? Well, by the end of the film, the wanderer steals clothing from a baby and, quite frankly, it doesn't get much lower than that. But in the midst of all this dreariness, Rashomon allows us one moment of optimism, so long as men like the woodcutter are willing to admit their mistakes.
- Incidentally, I watched this, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Blow-Up all in the same week. That combination would make a great "What just happened?" film series.
