Rashomon Effect Essay

Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 classic takes us through the story of a brutal rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband through differing versions of the events by four different witnesses. Kurosawa stages this through a trial-like setting in which the witnesses address you, the viewer, and give their interpretation of the events. This unique storytelling method has since coined the term ‘The Rashomon effect’. By definition, this is contradictory interpretations of the same event by different people. This method has been referenced by, or used in, many films since Rashomon to varying levels of success. Here I intend to argue what is unique about this method and also compare it to other, more contemporary films that have adopted it.

Rashomon

“The bandit admits to killing the husband; the wife admits to killing the husband; the husband admits to killing himself. There is no shifting of blame. Each pleads guilty.” This is generally untypical of cinema where more often than not we see films adopt a platform similar to Rashomon but with the emphasis on the proving of innocence rather than the admittance of guilt. Why is this relevant? Metaphorically, Rashomon is a study of the human condition and the murder story serves as the tool in which we can study this. Essentially, what Kurosawa says is that our ego dictates the way in which we interpret events that we see and, the difficulties in deriving truth when the truth is subjective the individual. “At the most basic level, each of the four storytellers could be lying, and, to some extent, they likely all are. However, even if they are not lying, even if they genuinely believe they are telling the truth, their stories will still not corroborate. This is because, as Kurosawa reveals with the utilization of flashbacks, each character’s story relies on their subjective experience of the world. However, this reliance is not dependable, given that phenomena, such as reality, perception, and truth, are distorted by the human condition – the ego. Along with all its attributes, such as, emotions, thoughts, and memories, the ego distorts one’s perception, which in

The latter is a film in which the story focuses on an assassination attempt on the President of America, as seen from the various ‘vantage points’ of different characters. Unlike the philosophical and subjective approach in Rashomon ,which ultimately tries to piece together the different perspectives to reveal a “truthful” account, Vantage Point instead reveals the assassination attempt from various points of view although each point of view is not a flashback as is in Rashomon. Here we are handed a certain and direct view (from each of the eight witnesses) of the event whilst the narrative attempts to move forward. It can be argued that although both films immediately seem similar in terms of approach, they are in fact almost polar opposites. The main objective of Vantage Point is to determine exactly who was behind the event and to all go home satisfied. In Rashomon, we are asked to travel to the deeper echelons of storytelling and question provenance, subjectivity and the flimsy composition of