Kurosawa's Rashomon: The Manufacture of Truth
Kurosawa uses different narrators with flashbacks to narrate Rashomon story. The story is a crime-drama highlighting a murder of a samurai and the trial that is ensuing. Using flashbacks, the stories from three narrators -woodcutter, a priest and a commoner- differ drastically with a slight constant truth that the samurai was tricked by the bandit, tied up and his wife was raped. With respect to the facial expression, behavior, actions, and moods of the characters, their sides of the story lack conformity and their truths have been manufactured and the woodcutter later states that, he actually witnessed the murder but his story, which is more believable, has loopholes. The film is a clear depiction of how the truth is manufactured and the fact that there is no objective truth when an encounter is filtered through experiences and the human heart.
The Significance of Rashomon: Evaluating Human Conditions
Rashomon relates to other issues that are remarkably important, the murder in the story has been used to evaluate human conditions such as desire and guilt. The contradicting stories expose a terrifying truth that the ego of human beings causes their inconsistencies. Throughout the film, it is clear that people choose to believe in their own truths based on the experiences they have had with the world. The truth is not natural but rather manufactured through their experiences. The woodcutter, for instance, reveals a story that fits his and so does the bandit.
To some extent, it is because they are lying and to another extent, it is because that is how they unconsciously believe in the truth. The commoner states that "it’s human to lie…most of the time we can’t even be honest with ourselves". Ultimately, the film states that nobody should be trusted because the answer to the question "who is the most trustworthy" in nobody. Precisely, truth is limited to circumstances and conditions because we could be telling the truth based on the event that happened and it’s still fresh in our minds but the possibility is that we might not know the whole truth because we might not know everything that happened making us only limit our truth to our personal judgment of our personified condition that results in inescapable bias (Martinez, 2009).
No Objective Truth: The Ego and Human Condition
At the most essential level, every one of the four narrators could be deceitful, and, to some degree, they probably all are. Nonetheless, regardless of whether they are not lying or whether they truly trust they are coming clean, their accounts will in any case not prove. This is on the grounds that, as Kurosawa uncovers with the usage of flashbacks, each character's story depends on their emotional experience with the world. Nonetheless, this dependence isn't tried and true, given that issues, for example, reality, discernment, and truth, are twisted by the human condition – the self-image.
With all its factors, for example, feelings, contemplations, and recollections, the ego twists one's recognition, which thusly twists one's view of the world, which tampers with the truth. Actually, there can't in any way, an abstract record of truth – the questionability of the human condition does not allow this. The two renditions of the swordfight between the samurai and the bandit show this idea that the sense of self, misshapes recognition, reality, and truth. The film reinforces the notion that there is no truth in what the narrators say but rather, there are fragments of truths found in each one of them and this brings up a bigger truth which is the fact that the absence of truth in the stories is more saddening than the murder and the rape.
Conditional Truth: The Elusive Nature of Reality
The movie doesn’t actually legitimize truth but rather brings out the aspect of conditional truth. The woodcutter who witnessed what took place in the woods speaks the truth about his encounter with Samurai, Samurai’s wife, and the bandit who shamelessly lied about their disgraceful acts. Due to some reasons, the woodcutter at some point failed to be truthfully true to end because, during his narration, he didn’t conceal the fact that after Samurai’s death he stole the knife. Woodcutter almost succeeded in legitimizing the truth but due to selfishness and self-defense, he decided to hide some truth to his advantage (Martinez, 2009).
What Kurosawa portrayed is a hypothetical mindset about reality, rather than granular, as both self-serving and official. The title Rashomon names the demolished entryway in Kyoto where, in the long run, hoodlums and criminals used to hide. It's especially a place. In any case, Kurosawa's film turns it into something more: a condition of being. This scenario clearly tells us that not all things that appear real are true in its sense but rather the truth will always have several dimensions depending on who narrates the story, to whom it is narrated, and the truth itself. Additionally, from the story, each person wanted to appear honest and selfless not admitting that they can’t be true making their stories unbelievable. Generally, there can be such thing as truth or that there is no such a thing as true but the bottom line is it is really hard to obtain it (Heider, Karl, 1998).
Works Cited
"Distortion Of Truth – Kurosawa Akira's Rashômon." Aesthetics Of The Mind, 28 July 2011, aestheticsofthemind.com/2011/07/25/distortion-of-truth-kurosawa-akira%E2%80%99s-Rashomon/.
Heider, Karl G. "The Rashomon effect: When ethnographers disagree." American Anthropologist 90.1 (1988): 73-81.
Martinez, D. P. "Remaking Rashomon: From Subjectivity to “the” Truth." Remaking Kurosawa, 2009, pp. 43-64.
