CompleteMartialArts.com - Rashomon - Criterion Collection
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Manufacturer: Criterion
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki
Directed By: Akira Kurosawa
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 9780780024595
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 0780024591
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2002-03-26
Running Time: 88
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1951
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Editorial Reviews:
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Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, Rashomon is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife. Toshiro Mifune gives another commanding performance in the eloquent masterwork that revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema to the world.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very Bad Movie
Comment: If you are interested in film history, you might find this movie interesting since it is directed by Legendary director Kurosawa. If, however, you want to watch a good movie, then you should skip this, because this is absolutely one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
The movie starts out with 3 bums seeking shelter from a downpour in a ruined temple. One of the bums tells the story of a murder victim he found and the resulting inquest. In his story, he tells of the 3 people involved in the crime: the bandit who is suspected of the murder; the woman the bandit rapes; and her husband, the murder victim. Each person tells their own version of events, including the murder victim who tells the story through a medium. Each version differs greatly.
The problem with this movie is that it is boring, the plot is completely not interesting in the least, the acting is absolutely over-the-top atrocious, and none of the characters is even remotely likeable.
And the fight scenes! Oh my. It's like watching mentally disabled people trying to whack each other with sticks after drinking a fifth of whiskey. Falling, tripping, clumsily grappling and missing, and flailing around in the dirt like spastic monkeys.
And while Kurosawa may indeed be a legend, I have to wonder why in the world he chose to do some of the things he did in this film. For example, when the bum begins to tell his tale, he says he was walking through the forest to cut some wood. The scene then cuts to a backflash of the bum walking through the woods. This walking-through-the-woods scene goes on FOREVER. It's just the bum ... walking through the woods ... from 1000 different angles ... while incredibly annoying drum music is playing in the background. And that's all there is: bum, woods, walking, and drums, and it lasts a ridiculously long time. If that is an example of what good directing is, I'd hate to see what qualifies as bad directing.
To sum up: I've seen Star Trek movies that are more artistic and more skillfully executed than this abysmal waste of 2 hours. You've been warned.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the Best
Comment: This is one of the BEST movies I've ever seen. Although the rape and murder are told from four different perspectives, I left the movie thinking what really happened (that is, what truly happened) was actually yet another story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great, but end bombs
Comment: Akira Kurosawa had been a filmmaker for almost a decade, since his 1943 debut film Sugata Sanshiro, and had some renown in his native Japan, when, in 1950, his film Rashomon rocketed him to international acclaim, including the Academy Award For Best Foreign Film, after winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival brought the film and its director, and Japanese cinema, a Western audience. He deserved every plaudit he received for it, as well as every ticket sold, because it is an excellent film. Yes, there are some flaws- minor, such as the all too sunny (literally) ending, and some of the over the top hammy acting of Toshiro Mifune as the bandit Tajomaru, but given what was coming out of Hollywood at the time- mind-numbing musicals and grade B comedies- Kurosawa brought filmmaking style back to an earlier, simpler place, even as he many times over increased the bar for narrative complexity. Given that the film is not even an hour and a half long, the many interpretations of the multifarious actions of the characters are all the more impressive.
The story is as familiar as it is simple. The central ostensible narrative concerns the rape of a woman (Machiko Kyo) and the murder of her Samurai husband (Masayuki Mori), both unnamed, in the 11th or 12th Century, in a wooded glen. The main suspect is the notorious bandit Tajomaru (Mifune), yet, the viewer cannot be certain, for never do we get a single unbiased version of the events that transpire. All three of the main characters tell self-serving versions of the story of how the lady was raped and the Samurai murdered....The film does stretch real reality, a bit, in that while it is well known that minor differences crop up in people's versions of singular events, such glaring inconsistencies as whether or not the Samurai died of a knife or sword wound are implausible, even given the film's setting. But, we allow for this dramatic license because the resonance of the tale's moral is so profound, as well the fact that Kurosawa does not cop out by giving us a `real' authoritative version. That said, the end of the film, after the differing tales of the crime have been discussed thoroughly by the woodcutter, priest, and commoner, Kurosawa seems to stumble, as if he did not have a really good way to end the film. The commoner hears a baby, who's been abandoned at the temple. He steals its blanket, and the priest and woodcutter try to stop him, claiming him evil. He responds by implying that the abandoning parents were evil, and that the woodcutter is a liar, and possible killer. Off into the rain he goes, with his booty. The priest and woodcutter stand with the child until the rain breaks and the sun emerges. The woodcutter offers to take the babe as his own, that he has six children already, and another mouth will hardly matter. The priest feels that his optimism about life and mankind, so tested by the events he has seen, is reaffirmed by the woodcutter's generous offer, and the sun shines through the clouds. That such a terrifically subtle and ambiguous film ends so tritely (the emergent sun and abandoned and rescued baby are a simply awful and heavy-handed use of symbolism), and preachily, reminded me of the greatly disappointing ending that Fyodor Dostoevsky tacked on to Crime And Punishment, in his two terrible epilogues that hammer the book's themes into a reader's head, for he distrusted his own book's ability to convey those themes. The visual and musical aspects of the film's ends do much to mitigate the narrative drop to the floor Crime And Punishment bears, and Rashomon is still a great film, partly because its ending is not as bad as Crime And Punishment's, and partly because it reaches greater artistic heights, and dares more conventions, than Dostoevsky's novel. Still, there's no excuse for its veer from even greater heights, even if the last few minutes are not the heart of the film.
While all the actors are wonderful, too much attention has been given to Toshiro Mifune's loony overacting (sometimes a necessity for the comic and divergent elements to emerge) as the bandit. Yes, this film made him a star, but the best performance in the film is by Masayuki Mori, already a major film and stage star in Japan. His is a far less showy role than Mifune's, but he conveys the slight differences all the versions the others tell with none of the easy visual pyrotechnics Mifune's almost boobish bandit is allowed. The raising of an eyebrow can mean the difference between truth and lie, and Mori is expert at walking the line between those ends. Machiko Kyo, as the wife, is the least notable performer.
This motto of the film is not only true, but so powerfully true that the term Rashomon Effect was coined to signify the differing perceptions of individuals over singular events, and has been used in both psychological and jurisprudential venues. Ultimately, the film is about even more than the difficulties of interpreting reality and truth, but about how and why they swerve under the force of mere human egoism. Of course, the beauty of the film really lies in the fact that all of its viewers think it's about something other than what it may ultimately be about, which only recapitulates the internal characters' dilemmas, further binding us emotionally in their angst, making us feel what they live. In this empathy Kurosawa cinches and twists that bind, and we are turned from mere percipients into purveyors of an art and reality for our own selves that we, unfortunately, too rarely experience.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Kurosawa's synoptic story
Comment: Everytime I watch "Rashomon," I'm reminded of the problem of the synoptic gospels. How can three accounts of the same person differ so much in detail? And do the differences between them render them false?
It seems to me that Kurosawa invites viewers to reflect on memory, narrative, and accuracy in this gripping synoptic account of the murder of a husband and the rape of his wife. That the two crimes took place is indisputable. But the four witnesses to them--a woodcutter, the wife, the criminal, and the victim (through a medium) all famously give different accounts of them. Kurosawa deliberately leaves the viewer in suspense as to the "correct" account. Accuracy isn't what's important here so much as the four different narratives and the psychological reasons why the four witnesses experienced the same event so differently. If there was ever a compelling argument against taking eye-witness reports literally, this is it.
And yet truth emerges from the four accounts, as from the three synoptic gospels. It's not literal truth, but is what might be called existential truth. We learn something valuable about the way in which memory reconstructs events and about human passions, fears, hopes, and yearning.
So much has been said about Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography here and elsewhere that I've nothing to add. It's really genius the way he manages to capture the dappled light of the forest, and his ability to switch back and forth between the faces of the witnesses without in any way blocking the story's flow is admirable. The acting, while a bit overblown in places for western tastes (particularly Toshiro Mifune's portrayal of the criminal), isn't bad at all.
The Criterion edition is, as usual, nicely transferred. Robert Altman's accompanying video commentary on the film is worse than useless--rambling, full of platitudes, repetitive. But the accompanying booklet is well-written and informative.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I wouldn't call it a masterpiece
Comment: Let me start off by saying I love Kurosawa and have seen many of his films, but this one was a little slow and felt too simple and shallow. I got the point of what he was trying to say almost immediately (truth is relative and depends on the person and that everyone's version of a story is told to make him or her look best), and didn't need to go through every character's perspective to get that point. It felt like he painfully belabored the point and not much else was added to make the plot interesting. And in some places the acting was overdone for the plot/genre and was actually a little bit distracting to me. I'm not saying that I disliked the movie, I just didn't think it was that it could qualify as a masterpiece.
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