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context: movies > some films
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Toshiro Mifune looks at his victim, possibly |
Rashomon
1950. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Toshiro Mifune.
This was the first Japanese film to gain real Western attention, when it won the Golden Lion at Venice. It remains as overt a use of the idea of unreliable narrators as has ever been seen in movies, with its four accounts of a noble couple attacked by a bandit (Mifune) in a forest. The woman is raped and the man is killed. It's adapted from two Ryunosuke Akutagawa stories - less from Rashomon than In The Grove, which is the one with the multiple contadictory accounts that are never resolved. There is no way to work out what really happened, why, or why some of them are lying - note that the three main participants all claim to have killed the husband. This was early in a magnificent run of films by Kurosawa, and is gloriously directed. I am particularly fond of the wrecked temple in the rain and the fiery performance of Mifune.