Both Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Makhmalbaf’s A Moment of Innocence deal with the human form, morality, and universal social struggles. Both films are trying to recreate something that has happened in the past. As with any interoperation of an event, things will not be exact.
Each film takes a different approach to proving this point. Rashomon uses a more literal method, and has four different characters recount their own versions of the same story. Moment uses a more surrealist method, using different cuts of the same footage, with time repeating itself, and then finally pausing indefinitely in the end. Both films prompt similar questions of trust and viewer interpretation.
There are many symbols in Rashomon which are meant to show how the truth is being obscured. Kurosawa says that this film deals with the psychology of human error. This idea is a concept that can be seen throughout his work and in his other films. Rashomon deals with the ideas of rape, killing, and honor, all of which are examples of human moral errors. Kurosawa shows, through each different character's retelling of the story, how each person views the world differently, and interprets things differently, and how truth and morality as not as concrete concepts as the viewer might think.
What one character believes to be the truth may not necessarily mean they the viewer believes the other character’s story to be a lie. Rashomon is a film that questions what the truth means and how it is interpreted, but it also questions how different minds weigh different events.
The film’s main point is to show how difficult, if possible at all, if is to come to an objective truth through the vehicle of individual human consciousness. It is left up for debate whether there is a tr...
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...he viewer completely up in the air. Was the guard stabbed? Was he really stabbed or was it acting? The list of questions is endless.
Makhmalbaf makes the viewer questions everything they have just witnessed. More importantly, he makes the viewer question why it all happened.
Rashomon ends much more concretely, but still the truth is not fully guaranteed. The narrative structures of both films are very different, but in the end leave the viewer with similar levels of ambiguity. Rashomon uses a more straightforward structure, retelling events in various flashbacks. Moment’s structure is more misleading from the start, with the false sense of documentary already deceiving the viewer, and then repetitive cuts of the climax of the films to further disorient the viewer from reality. By the end of both films, the viewer has no concrete idea of what is real and what is not.
film seems to be praising man's achievements, and on the other, one could view the film's ending as
Also, in order to fully understand the meaning of this film we must answer two
whole story. The film aims to equip the viewer with the experiences of a particular institution
We are not only given the thoughts of the character but are also provided with a
At this point, the readers create their own movie in a way. They will determine important aspects of how the character speaks, looks like, and reacts. Whereas, in the movie, the reader has no choice but to follow the plot laid out in front of them. No longer can they picture the characters in their own way or come up with their different portrayals. The fate of the story, while still unpredictable, was highly influenced by the way the characters looked, spoke, and presented themselves on screen.
What exactly is “truth”? And how do we arrive at the truth? Over these past weeks I have successfully be able to study two different but very closely linked methods of arriving at what we human beings know as truth. Introduced to the method of pragmatism by William James, I have concluded that pragmatism uses an approach in which reason is used to find what is true but what also has to be considered is that the truth is subject to change. Which distinguishes it from Rene Descartes' method of pursuing what is true. Essentially they follow the same procedures. Although at the final moments of my research, I began to find myself pro-pragmatism. I disbelieve Descartes claim that the mind believes everything that is perceived through the human eye which leaves no room for an imagination. Both James and Descartes differ in some areas while maintaing similarities in others. Whether its concerning the way their visions are presented, their interpretations of the truth, or how applicable the idea of it is to our lives.
are better people then they really are. It even shows this need for flattering falsehood going
...r, with investigation into the visual elements of this film, meanings of this film expand beyond the literal dialog and -- existing in the film.
-the read must put more trust in the narrator in this type of situation in believing what they say is the truth
In conclusion, details involving the characters and symbolic meanings to objects are the factors that make the novel better than the movie. Leaving out aspects of the novel limits the viewer’s appreciation for the story. One may favor the film over the novel or vice versa, but that person will not overlook the intense work that went into the making of both. The film and novel have their similarities and differences, but both effectively communicate their meaning to the public.
This play is like a story from a book, you get inside of the main actors thoughts just
...the predominant theme of disorientation and lack of understanding throughout the film. The audience is never clear of if the scene happening is authentic or if there is a false reality.
Since both the movie and the book focus on that one line, they are both more similar than different.
...n (Director) mistakenly seems to believe can carry the whole film. On the strength "based on a true story", he has rejected attention-grabbing characters, an imaginative plot, and unforgettable villains.
The films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa have had wide ranging influence over contemporary films, with his ronin films Seven Samurai and Yojimbo influencing countless westerns and mob movies. Arguably, however, Rashomon has been the most instrumental of all Kurosawa’s films because it asks a question that lies near the heart of all cinema: what is reality? Today, any consumer of television or cinema has seen various permutations of the plot of Rashomon numerous times, probably without realizing. In the film, a rape and consequent murder are told five different times, by a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who seems to have witnessed the event, a bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who committed the rape, the wife of a samurai (Machiko Kyo) who was raped, and the ghost of the samurai (Masayuki Mori), who is channeled by a medium after his murder. In each telling, the viewer is presented with five realities that, through the use of various frame stories, are totally incompatible with one another. Throughout, Rashomon is a study in simplicity. The beautiful yet frugal cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa and the minimalist plot, skillfully directed by Kurosawa, force the viewer to contend with two dissonant notions: that everything they have seen is real, but that none of it can be true.