Rashomon (DVD)

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The great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa first made an international name for himself with 1950´s "Rashomon." The film played at the Venice Film Festival, and it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Over the years, the film has become a sort of adjective, as in "That movie was Rashomon-esque."

What is Rashomon-esque? Well, if you´ve seen "Courage Under Fire," the Denzel Washington-Meg Ryan flick about a search for the truth, then you´ve seen Rashomon-esque. Basically, "Rashomon" involves the use of varying perspectives where different people have different views on what exactly happened in a pivotal event. Every character was present at the situation in question, but everyone offers a different take on the truth because of personal motives. It is up to a third party to find out what really is the "truth."

"Rashomon" begins with a shot of the ruins of the Rashomon gate. Since it´s raining, a woodcutter and a priest are sitting in the ruins for shelter from the elements. A commoner joins them, and he hears the two men muttering about "something horrible." His curiosity aroused, the commoner asks the woodcutter and the priest about what in the world the "something horrible" is.

Thus begins the tale of the bandit (Toshiro Mifune), the nobleman, and the nobleman´s wife. The nobleman has been found dead, and the nobleman´s wife has been raped. The woodcutter and the priest relate the story of how, during judicial proceedings, the bandit, the rape victim, and even the dead man offered their separate accounts of what happened to the three of them in the forest.

The key to understanding the movie is that there is no real "truth." The bandit, the nobleman´s wife, and the dead nobleman all have reasons for spinning his/her own version of the events, and these descriptions of what happened in the forest are being told through a filter, that of the woodcutter and the priest. Basically, unless an objective third party observer was there to witness the scene, there is no reliable way of discerning who is lying and who is telling the truth.

Personally, while I admire what "Rashomon" is trying to do, I don´t think that the movie is a masterpiece. There are hints at Kurosawa´s genius, but the film itself is rather lightweight. The rape of the noblewoman and the manner of death of her husband are too slight to inspire a truly involving mystery, and I found it rather comical that the woodcutter and the priest would be so shocked that "the truth" was nowhere to be found.

Video:

The quality of the black-and-white 1.33:1 (full-frame on 4:3 monitors) video image varies wildly. Some scenes look fairly clear and free of specking. However, most of the movie suffers from an assortment of grain, shimmering, dust, and vertical lines/scratches. Also, the image jitters a bit once every so often, so print stability may be an issue. Of course, "Rashomon" is more than 50 years old, so it´s possible that none of the negatives that exist are in pristine condition.