Rashomon - Criterion Collection Rating: Release Date: 26 March, 2002 Retail Price: $39.95 OUR Price: $31.88 You SAVE: $8.07! Cast: Toshirô Mifune Machiko Kyô Toshiro Mifune Takashi Shimura Complete Cast (6 total)

Rashomon - Criterion Collection Reviews

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A CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE!
"Rashomon" has many very wonderful reviews here at Amazon, and I am glad to see that. Rashomon has always been one of my favorite films by Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa's fascinating insight into the truth dares us to look at what we hold to as "the truth." Are there any absolute truths? And if so, whose? This movie attempts to let the viewer decide who holds the truth. And it does so in a wonderful way by giving four different versions of a murder and rape: One from a witness, and three versions from the people involved in the crime. Who is telling the truth? Why are there different versions? In the film, the attempt to get to the truth is really fascinating. Toshiro Mifune is the bandit who is charged with the crime, and he does a terrific acting job. The movie also stars the great Takashi Shimura as the woodsman who discovers the crime. This classic is highly recommended.

Pretty good but overrated
This is a fairly good movie, ridiculously overrated. It is the story of a bandit's assault on a couple in the woods. Perhaps he rapes the woman. Perhaps he kills the man. Perhaps the woman prefers the rapist to her husband. Perhaps not.

The most annoying thing about the analysis of this movie is that people come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as absolute truth, that it all depends on who is telling the story. Baloney. There is such a thing as absolute truth. It doesn't all depend on who is telling the story. The opposing view is just a bunch of over-intellectualized garbage. Either the bandit killed the man or he didn't. Either the woman asked him to kill her husband or she didn't. Those who take an opposing view are just being silly and stupid. They are over-intellectualizing. Keep it simple, stupid.

How about this. I punch you in the head. Then I say I didn't do it, it all depends on who is telling the story. Make sense to you? That's the argument being used by fools who draw idiotic conclusions after seeing this movie.

It is the quantum theory of movies. There is no truth. It is one of the stupidest positions that Stephen Hawking ever took. You can't just say that one thing happened. Every possible thing happened. Gimme a break. Would a grain of common sense be inappropriate?

It seems clear that the overly heroic version told by the bandit, about his daring swordfight, about the woman begging to be his wife after she was raped by him, is a bunch of bull, because he has a motive to tell things this way. His motive is to paint himself as the kind of hero he admires.

Nobody really tells a convincing story here. One thing I like about the movie is that one of the witnesses is a trance medium who channels the dead man. He should know what happened, and he should have no motive to lie. What was his story anyway? You hear so many stories, you forget who told what. Did he say it was suicide? If the movie had more emotional power, I'd care more what happened to the characters. It is emotionless. That is its biggest weakness.

It is a bit of a comedy. The acting is overdone. The duels are overdone. The director was consciously making fun of the genre, of the Japanese movies that stage stupid duels with the same stock things happening, the sword getting stuck, the men chasing each other around a tree, one guy falling, sort of like old cowboy movies that keep showing you similar fight scenes. The woman getting blamed for her own rape. So many cliches pulled out for us. A lot of "in" jokes for the viewer, making fun of the same old same old in Japanese films.

In the end, they pull a baby out of a hat. The baby has absolutely nothing to do with the film. Nothing. It isn't the raped woman's baby. It is so completely incongruous to the rest of the movie that I thought it must be the raped woman's baby somehow, but it isn't. It's just a baby pulled out of a hat.

On the commentary, the speaker makes a big deal about how the baby symbolizes hope, and how great Kurosawa is for thinking of using this baby to symbolize hope. What a bunch of baloney that is. It is over-intellectualized nonsense. The diagonals that are shown on screen, the triangles that are shown on screen, all further the plot, all show the greatness of Kurosawa. No they don't. It is all over-intellectualized nonsense. Diagonals and triangles do not make a great film. They just give lecturers something to flimflam their audiences with. I don't doubt that Kurosawa used these diagonals and triangles purposely. I don't care either. It's just a bunch of baloney. I'm not emotionally moved by a triangle, nor even by a diagonal. The subtlety of it is just a wee bit too subtle to make an impact on me.

To sum up, this is a pretty interesting movie that is ridiculously overrated. To be great, a movie should move us. This one doesn't. It's pretty good. That's about it. Kurosawa fans be damned, I'm not lining up behind him.

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