Rashomon Analysis
Truth and lies are blurred in the film Rashomon where the contradiction of a person’s system of belief and actions are in a constant conflict. Characters in the film are faced with the offer of committing wicked and corrupt acts that clatter with their morals and principles. The film takes the form of an observational puzzle without an answer, engaging unreliable narrators and flashbacks through which recollection and reality become suspect. This has inspired several plots in other movies, as well as causing the courts of law to make use of the term “the Rashomon effect” to describe the tendency of testimonies clashing with each other and creating a perplexing mystery. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon tackles with the issue of subjective
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The whole film is recounted by undependable narrators, which in the end no truth can be determined. And yet, because none of the recitation can be reconciled, not even the woodcutter’s testimony, the film becomes a story of untrustworthy narrators from whom no truth can be concluded. Some form of optimism exists at the film’s conclusion, but the degree to which it can be accepted as true depends largely on the opinion of the viewer. This indeterminable vagueness continues as the film’s most captivating quality, in that connotation cannot necessarily be construed from the events in the picture, at least not within the story itself. More than one of the testimonies, if not all, together with the woodcutters, must be untruthful. The absurdity is that they aren’t lying only to the authorities; they are lying to themselves. These lies could leak into other extents of their life. For, if they continue to have confidence in the lie, they will misrepresent reality and may never be able to distinguish the fact from the fib if they continue to do so as they did in their …show more content…
The Rashomon film can be construed as a gateway between good and evil, dead and alive. The collisions of humanity that transpire in the film, and its crumbling state elucidates the fact that the discrepancy of good and evil became blurred. In the film, the camera is facing the sun, which at the time it was unheard of, through the trees. A seamless allegory to define people’s congested impression of truth as filtered through defective sources, the light glimmering through the leaves in lovely glimmers, but the sight of the sun distorted nonetheless. So, too, does the rain embody a pictorial misrepresentation of reality. When the woodcutter is telling his story during a downpour, the rain characterizes the misperception and sorrow he feels about his story. In the end, the storm discontinues as the woodcutter attains some clearness and is determined to deposit his hope in the infant child, the coming future. This symbolizes that the woodcutter decided to choose what is right instead of the wrong. The light shown through the gate suggest hope for the future, and the rain, a symbol of misfortune had passed. This is all unlike the commoner who, after stealing the kimono from the baby, departs into the downpour as a decision that he will continue to repudiate the demand to do what is
Rolf de Herr’s 2002 film The Tracker represented some human beings in the past who have been extremely naïve, barbarous, and bigoted when it came to dealing with Indigenous Australians. This film portrayed white racism in the characters of the Fanatic, the Veteran, and at first the Recruit until he becomes stronger and eventually changes his demeanor towards the Aboriginal people. Even though the Tracker experiences immense hardship throughout the movie he was always two steps ahead of his bosses since he was very familiar with the land and was also able to outsmart his superior officers. The Tracker is a gloomy film which presents the dark past of Australia that must never be forgotten.
The movie Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, follows the story of Malcolm through his senior year of high school in the Inglewood California. He lives in a poor neighborhood, with only his mom, yet he still strives for greatness. He has a couple of friends, and they all love 90’s hip hop culture. They try to do their best to stay out of trouble and away from bullies. Malcolm sees a girl he likes and ends up following her to a drug dealer’s birthday party. When the cops bust the birthday party, he unknowingly goes home with all the drugs and the gun that the drug dealer owns. This sets off a wild chain reaction, as he now has to sell these drugs to payoff the supplier, who happens to be the Harvard Alumni that Malcolm’s needs approval
The movie I was assigned was, In the Heat of the Night starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. This film took place during the late 1960’s in Mississippi, where Virgil Tibbs, a black Philadelphia homicide detective, is traveling. Upon his travel, he unintentionally gets involved in a murder investigation of a business man. He was first accused of committing this murder when a police officer became suspicious of him. After they determined his innocence’s, he was then asked to help solve the case because of his vast knowledge and experience dealing with homicide crimes. He eventually agreed to help because he knew it was the right thing to do. The process for finding the killer was determined to be difficult, but even more so when Tibbs’s efforts
When thinking of the word resistance, one gets a picture of a small, weak group of people using guns to fight against a powerful evil. Although this is a correct interpretation of resistance, there are more forms, such as spiritual and cultural resistance, that can be equally devastating to the cause of the powerful evil. A major example of all of these forms of resistance is the Bielski Otraid, subject of the 2008 film Defiance, as they actively resisted the Germans in these ways, become the physical embodiment of Jewish resistance as they drew parallels with the resistance shown by the Jewish people. The Jewish people demonstrated all of the forms of resistance, from the physical resistance seen in the armed revolts seen in multiple ghettos and some death camps, and the spiritual resistance through the attempted continuation of normal life in the ghettos and the acceptance of faith while at the death camps.
While Mexican Americans were considered white by law, the documentary A Class Apart sheds light on the struggles and eventual triumph of Mexican Americans in the their journey for racial equality within the United States. Following the Mexican War, Mexican Americans were subjected to a Jim Crow style of discrimination. Despite retaining U.S. citizenship, Mexican Americans were treated as second class citizens. Frustrated by social, political, and economic disenfranchisement, Mexican Americans sought the assistance of the United States Supreme Court, in what would become a landmark case, to secure the full rights afforded to them as United States citizens.
This movie goes to show how such crucial facts and minuet evidence if not processed fully and clearly can change the outcome in such a big way. In this jury you have 12 men from all different walks of life, 12 different times, and 12 different personalities. Who have an obligation to come to one conclusion and that's whether or not the young man on trial is guilty of murdering his father or is innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. Under much frustration and lack of patience these 12 men began to get unruly and unfocused. Throughout this distraction key terms get misused, facts get turned around and more importantly emotions start to cross making it hard for these men to produce a verdict.
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
"Fed Up (Soechtig, 2014)." narrated by Katie Couric, focuses on the growing link between sugar consumption and the obesity epidemic. The film aggressively attacks the food industry, advertising, and the government who, it claims, all contribute to the U.S. sugar-dependent, obesity problem. The film sets out to prove the government, and food industry is knowingly causing an increase in the amount of obese children. It reserves its most critical comments for government advisory panels who make and enforce food and health policy, and its failure to properly regulate the food industry. They claim lobbyists for the sugar board have been instrumental in the removal of negative statistics from research papers worldwide. Instead
For several years now, Disney seems to be determined not to offend anyone in order to keep its audience; indeed we are confronted with animation films full of compromises; they are not as degrading for women as Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), but they are nonetheless still filled with clichés. Films such as The Princess and The Frog (2009), Tangled (2010), Wreck-it Ralph (2012), have in common the sense of being progressive and however we can notice the resurgence of harmful gendered stereotypes on the subjects of the social scale, women’s role in society, or the status quo. Frozen comes in and turns out to be no exception. Though it includes several encouraging and gratifying elements, it contributes insidiously to spread numerous
In the documentary “Fed Up,” sugar is responsible for Americas rising obesity rate, which is happening even with the great stress that is set on exercise and portion control for those who are overweight. Fed Up is a film directed by Stephanie Soechtig, with Executive Producers Katie Couric and Laurie David. The filmmaker’s intent is mainly to inform people of the dangers of too much sugar, but it also talks about the fat’s in our diets and the food corporation shadiness. The filmmaker wants to educate the country on the effects of a poor diet and to open eyes to the obesity catastrophe in the United States. The main debate used is that sugar is the direct matter of obesity. Overall, I don’t believe the filmmaker’s debate was successful.
In his documentary Classified X, Martin Van Peebles describes three areas where African-Americans could be receive some sanctuary from the racism that pervaded almost all Hollywood films. These three places were: the Hollywood version of an all-Black film, the church, and entertainment. Black culture and music is prominent in mainstream society, but the people behind this culture don’t always receive recognition and respect for their creations. Mainstream White pop culture excitedly consumes and appropriates Black culture, but disrespects the source.
I chose to analyze Despicable Me, an animated film geared towards a younger audience, because I was interested in examining underlying theories and messages that this film would be relaying to its viewers. Often times, when watching animated films, children are not aware of these messages, as they are absorbed by the characters, special effects, and humor. But as we have learned throughout this semester, our brains are subconsciously primed by the various surroundings we are exposed to. Since we also studied the impacts of entertainment, such as television and video games, on children, I wanted to see how a popular children’s film might also affect them.
It is a story that provides the ultimate explanation of how two different people who are witnesses to a crime give completely different psychological recollections of the same event. The author reminds us that truth depends on the telling. Someone must step forward and tell that truth.
Christopher Nolan’s 2010 action thriller Inception provides a discerning outlook into the specificities of human thought processes and dream meaning through exceptional cinematography, labeling it an exemplar of filmmaking. The film follows the ambitious corporate thief Dom Cobb as he attempts to infiltrate a man’s mind and place an idea through the act of inception. Employing “dream sharing”, Cobb controls both the appearance and feel of the subconscious world, but at the alarming cost of being trapped should he fail his mission. Nolan brilliantly combines mise-en-scéne elements of setting and sound design, with inimitable cinematography and editing styles to project the dream world on a film medium, narrating a story that reveals the blurred line between fantasy and reality. By doing so, the film builds upon traditional conventions of moviemaking while developing its own style and motifs that are remarkably distinctive.
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is a Steven Spielberg science fiction drama film, which conveys the story of a younger generation robot, David, who yearns for his human mother’s love. David’s character stimulates the mind-body question. What is the connection between our “minds” and our bodies?