Toshirō Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Takashi Shimura, Masayuki Mori, Minoru Chiaki, Kichijirō Ueda, Noriko Honma, Daisuke Katō
Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
Rashomon beguiles through the torrential downpour of fabrication. “It’s human to lie. Most of the time we can’t even be honest with ourselves”. Honesty. Deceit. Contradiction. A crucial part of human preservation is the requirement to lie. Intentional or accidental, it’s within our ancestral blood. The unprejudiced can succumb to the immoral values of deceit, either through meticulous storytelling...
In what seems like an endless, almost biblical, rainstorm we meet three people sheltering in the ruins of an old gatehouse. Each has their own story to tell of the rape of a woman and of the murder of her husband. It was the woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who discovered the body and who alerted the authorities. It was those authorities that conducted a trial at which a priest (Minoru Chiaki), the wo...
**A good movie.** Despite acknowledging the quality and attention to detail, I can't really enjoy Japanese cinema. Maybe because it's so different from what we have around here. But even being so different, we have to recognize the talent of those who have it. Akira Kurosawa is a director with a sharp eye and detail, who knows how to direct the people under his command and extract from each one...