Summer Journal # 7

Rashomon

Movie: 1950, b/w, 88 minutes

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Actors:

Toshirō Mifune,

Masayuki Mori,

Machiko Kyō,

Takashi Shimura,

Minoru Chiaki

Four accounts of what occurred in the woods of Japan are told by three of the people involved and a narrator who witnessed the occurrence.

How does Kurosawa play with framing?

Kurosawa really uses the set and actors for frames in his film. In one particular scene at the beginning of the film when the narrator discovers the body, the frozen clenched dead hands and arms of a corpse enclose his face. The expressive face of the actor is framed by the very thing that is causing him to be so taken aback, a genius composition with dual meaning on Kurosawa’s part. Another scene where a utilized framing tool is used like that is when the characters are walking through the woods, Kurosawa frames one of them between two trees and he plays with framing in different ways as he again does the same in the courtroom with the narrator placed in the back of the frame of the psychopath/rapist recounting the events that occurred in the woods. This is symbolic having seen the end because it as if he is looking on the crime once more. a new crime of that which is lying.

What are some allegories in Rashomon?

Some allegories are truth as a light in the darkness of sin. Kurosawa displays this message throughout the entire films as he shows this in filming the sun’s streak through the branches, leaves in the sky. That there is a innocence which is truth in a place of darkness like where the crime was committed. Another one is the idea that faith is something very scary to people. To believe in another’s words as the truth and to be surrounded by 4 different account all lies produces a ignorance in refusing to believe someone else like at the very end of the film.