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Summary: Everyone needs to get the meaning of this movie . . .
Review: The movie Rashomon is intended to be conflicting, to the point that the viewer is left with the task of finding the truth. Each character tells some truths and some lies, therefore all the testimonies are both true and false. But beyond the truths and lies is personal interpretation, which is reduced to the individual viewer's subjectivity. As in with life itself, there is no such thing as true objectivity, everything is a variation depending on one's prejudices, motives and background and more so because these variations occur on different levels from materialistic to philosophical. Speaking of philisophical: the meaning of Rashomon is that we can not be honest with our selves about our selves. Our egos drive us to actions that are always self-centered. Each character tells his own story for his oun gains. As the stranger says "we can not survive unless we are what you call selfish".
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Summary: Keep the faith.
Review: Maybe there's no 'absolute truth' which exists independent of our mind. Maybe those turths we think we have in our mind is just an illusion formed by our desire. We see many people suffer and even die becuase of what they thought was truth, but was not. We fear that obscurity, that helplessness. Men seems to be all bunch of hypocrats. Hey, but our existence is absolute, whatever the truth ourside our mind is. And we can get back our faith in human while we try to preserve human existence. By keeping the 'baby'.
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Summary: Rashomon's images reminiscent of the mute language of images
Review: From its opening sequence at a ruined temple, to the last shot revealing both the temple's and the movie's name, this Kurosawa film is a masterpiece of the silent language of images. A great film is more than the sum of its parts, but ultimately the history of film bestows a special favour on the role of Image in conveying the medium's message. Film is an image oriented art form, although, like Opera, the success of a particular movie depends on several elements. The greatest compliment I could offer many of Kurosawa's films is that the subtitles, and indeed, the dialogue itself, are not entirely neccessary to experience their full power. Nothing could be truer about this film. Whether it is the wind blowing aside the veil of a beautiful woman, a revelation which initiates a robber's violence upon her; whether it is the radiance of the sun reflecting on her face, or the bestial, mute struggle between the woman's samurai husband and the robber, or even the picture of three silent, despairing men who cannot understand the irrationality of human suffering -- this film's images speak far louder than its words. They communicate beyond time and space, and attain to a beauty that transcends culture, a beauty that sees "into the life of things" and speaks in way that the terse (and often incomplete) subtitles clearly fails to do. This is pure cinema.
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Summary: A classic, but way oveer the top.
Review: OK, OK, this is "a classic film"--very influential, introducing ground breaking film techniques, and all that. And yes, it ushers in the New Age by convincing us all that there is no such thing as objective Truth--just "personal perspectives." But holy over-acting Batman! Can anyone say that they ever, for one second, believed in these clownish characters? I know--I'm supposed to allow room for "Japanese cultural standards of film making," but I have some Japanese friends, and THEY sure don't act anything like these over-the-top performances. Frankly my dear, I don't see what all the fuss is about. Blame me for being so ethnocentric, but I say skip this stuff and read Shakespeare instead.
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Summary: This film is excellent! I would recommend it to all.
Review: This film has set a precedent in film making. A masterpiece in every sense of the word.
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Summary: Rashomon; A masterpiece on celuloid.
Review: Rashomon is unlike anything that you have seen before. True, the methods that Kurosawa employed in this film have often been copied, they have never been matched. This is the story of a rape/murder that takes place in fedual Japan. The crime is told from four different points of view. The three individuals involved and a bystandard. Rashomon explores the darkness of the human heart. The characters are richly textured, and the set is outstanding. Mifune gives an outstanding performance, as the bandit. Rich in symbolism, and seeped in irony, this film should be on any serious film buff's shelf.
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Summary: What are you doing reading his? Go and get THIS MOVIE!!
Review: Cinema would not be the same nowadays without this fil
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Summary: A brilliant masterpiece -- one of the top ten greatest films
Review: Kurosawa explores the ambiguous nature of truth, reality, honor, and human goodness like no other filmmaker. His humanistic insight, the power and sheer beauty of his images, and poetic sensibility in this film are incomparable. Worth adding to a collection of the greatest, most influential films of all time.
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Summary: The one that set the standard
Review: When Akira Kurasawa released this film in 1950, it was not expected to do well. When it won various awards around the world, including the Academy award for best foreign film, the reaction was one of some surprise. Now, over 50 years later, Rashomon stands as a benchmark in cinema, a film that has been copied and ripped off countless times, but never duplicated. The camera work, storytelling, script, and setting are flawless, giving us the proper mood right from the start.The start is a torrential rainstorm, where several men sit around discussing a trial they have either witnessed, or taken part in. The trial concerns the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife, apparantly at the hands of a famous bandit (played by Toshiro Mifune, a Kurasawa favorite). The story of what actually happened is told through the point of view of the bandit, the woman, the dead man (through a spriritual medium) and a woodcutter who was there and now is standing with these men at the beginning of the film. The interesting thing is that we as the audience are left to assume what really happened, as the film gives no definitive solution. The subject is really the nature of man, and how point of view will change the perception of a scenario to favor or in some cases, cast a negative light on events that transpire. This was the first film to shoot directly at the sun. In fact, the beginning shot of the woodcutter traveling into the woods to cut lumber is breathtaking, the camera weaves in and out, up and down, through branches and leaves, showing just how far out of the way these things will be happening. The excellent DVD has a feature on the camera work, which you will find interesting and will help you when you go back to the film for a second viewing. Also included with the disc is a booklet with the two short stories Kurasawa used as the premise for the film (most notably "In the Grove")along with an excerpt from Kurasawa's book about the shooting of the film and the apprehension of the Japanese film companies about the fact that the story seemed to have no good ending. Kurasawa explained that the story was not about the solution of the murder as it was about the nature of man. Film fans need to see this movie. So many movies made in the last few years (Snake Eyes, The Usual Suspects) owe themselves to Rashomon, movies which show us points of view that are not necessarily the truth. The fact is that four people can see a situation but report it four completely different ways. What's the truth? The truth is--that's just human nature.
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Summary: Classic stuff
Review: A man travelling with his wife in feudal Japan is murdered by a bandit... or is he? As the main protagonists - the bandit, the wife, a passer-by and (I kid you not) the man himself - tell their versions of events, a series of contradictions emerge. Who, if anyone, is telling the truth?
Rashomon's Byzantine plot structure was unique at the time, and still feels fresh over half a century down the line. Presenting no easy answers (there is reason to doubt the motives, and thus the stories, of all of those involved), it leaves the audience to make up their own minds about who to trust. Fans of latterday head-spinning efforts such as The Usual Suspects and Memento will find plenty to get their teeth into here.
It all looks gorgeous, to boot (Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography is done justice by an excellent DVD transfer here), and the performances - especially Toshiro Mifune, as the bandit Tajomaru, cackling hysterically and pausing mid-fight to swat mosquitoes on his neck - are superb. If I've got one gripe, it's the slightly pat "redemptive" ending, but that's a minor fault at best.
Otherwise, Rashomon is downright essential. It's too easy to get all rose-tinted when trying to assess a long-established "classic", but this is one that's more than stood the test of time.
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