Review of Rashomon (1950) by Hardy H — 16 Feb 2017

This film utilizes one of my favorite story-telling techniques. I love when a plot is all about flashing back to the same story, but telling it from different points of view. In fact, Rashomon might use that method more effectively than any other movie I've seen. It's just fascinating because most movies use this type of plot strictly to show different points of view, but here they use it to talk about the vagaries of perception and memory.

It's one of those movies where they leave you hanging without telling you everything in the end. The fact that I desperately wanted to know what happened is a sign that the movie was working as it should. My big struggle with the movie is that, no matter how things really went down, I don't understand why all 3 people involved were motivated to take the blame for what happened. I suspect there's something about guilt that plays into that, but it would probably take a few times watching it to understand all of that.

Rashomon is a film that I keep thinking about hours after watching it, which is a great sign. I wasn't sure how good all the actors were, because I have trouble catching on to how well actors are capturing emotions when they aren't speaking English. It felt like a couple of them were a bit overly melodramatic, and the weird eyebrow situation on the women kept throwing me off. The film looks great for a black-and-white movie, and Kurosawa does some great things with light and shadows. I can always see why he is such a lauded director, and why this film is considered one of his best.