Rashomon

Unreliable narration is taken to a new level in this landmark film, one of Akira Kurosawa’s finest, which introduced post-war Japanese cinema to international audiences.

A murder takes place in a forest. A samurai is killed. A court convenes and three testimonies are heard: a bandit, the samurai’s wife and the samurai himself, from beyond the grave. Each testimony differs in significant ways. These sequences are presented in flashback, told by a commoner to a woodcutter and priest as they shelter from a storm underneath Rashomon city gate. However, these three also have their own perspectives on what actually happened.

Adapting Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short stories Rashomon and In a Grove, Kurosawa and co-screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto (Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress) make the most of the fragmented narrative structure to question the nature of truth and objectivity. Kazuo Miyagawa’s cinematography, particularly the use of ‘dappled’ light in the forest scenes, creates further ambiguity, while the heavy storm in the framing scenes add tension, particularly in the climactic confrontation between the three men.

The film won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and an Honorary Oscar for the most outstanding foreign film. It remains one of the key works of Japanese cinema.

Asif Kapadia and Ian Haydn Smith

Venues

February 2023

From 9 February
Eden Court, Inverness
Pontio Bangor

From 10 February
BFI Southbank

March 2023

From 19 March
Everyman Belsize Park

From 26 March
Phoenix Cinema, Falmouth
Savoy Cinema, Penzance