Rashomon: How Kurosawa Adapts Ambiguity | What’s the Difference?
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
- An all time classic and essential film, Rashomon has spent seven decades as the high watermark of questioning the subjective nature of truth. Often imitated, even spawning the so-called Rashomon Effect, the film about conflicting accounts of the death of a samurai and assault of his wife illustrates that one version of events many times just isn’t enough. But Akira Kurosawa based his masterpiece on far more ambiguous source material, the short story In a Grove by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. So how did Kurosawa adapt ambiguity itself from page to screen? It’s time to ask, “What’s the Difference?''
Famous for their Samurai collaborations like Yojimbo, Sanjuro and Seven Samurai, Rashomon is a much quieter film from Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. But the questions posed in the 1950 black and white, Japanese cinema staple, are no less intriguing. From films like The Usual Suspects, Hero and the more recent Ridley Scott film The Last Duel, The Rashomon Effect is still impacting film and filmmakers to this day.
This episode of What’s the Difference was written and Rashomon’d by Clint Gage, Alex Stedman, Siddhant Adlakha and Casey Redmon.
It was edited by Clint Gage with animation by Casey Redmon.
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From a Japanese point of view, the short story "Rashomon" (not "In the Grove" but by the same author) is required reading for all students in Japan and is considered the representative example of early modern Japanese literature. With that in mind, when you watch Rashomon for the first time, the first thing to strike you is that you are watching the wrong story. Yes, the story is set at the same stage, Rashomon, the dilapidated gate to the old city of Kyoto (which does not appear in "In the Grove"). But nothing else is the same. If you had already read "In the Grove" (a less famous story than "Rashomon") you would know that Kurosawa had switched stories on you. That is the first shock of the movie. It's not what you signed up for. And THAT is the real setup for the movie about how stories can be deceiving.
It intrigues me how every story influenced by Rashomon always miss the point that there is no concrete story as all of the witnesses are untrustworthy.
I would argue that there IS an objective truth but that each persons subjective viewing of the story influences their interpretation of the truth. Do you know the parable of the blind men and the elephant? Do you think that the blind men actually found a spear and a snake because that is how they interpret what they experienced? Is the elephant no longer an elephant because no one saw an elephant?
We may not be sure that what we see is The Truth but we must be sure that truth exists if we ever hope to understand the world we live in.
@@bluecarrotrm You're right. I probably should have phrased my comment a bit better.
@@chrisdaily2077 It is very popular to believe just as you said. I am not even educated enough to know what philosophers I should cite to back up what I said. I certainly can't claim that I have access to what is true. I believe that there IS an objective reality, though, even if I can't view it through my layers of subjective experience. Objective reality is the setup for Schrodingers joke about the cat.
@@bluecarrotrm Objective truth exist but humans are incapable of knowing it. That's what Rashomon was trying to tell us.
@@bluecarrotrm I think there is some truth to each story, and they may see things differently, but the characters are definitely lying or exaggerating about certain aspects of their interpretation.
I believe the woodcutter's viewpoint is not definite either. Remember, the commoner deduces that the woodcutter stole the dagger, and is trying to cover it up by trying to act as passive of an observer as he can be.
The reason: he has children to go home to.
I just finished this movie. I understand the point of the movie but I believe the woodcutter's story could be the truth. What does it matter if the wood cutter stole the dagger? His story makes helps the viewer understand why everyone lied to protect their self image.
@@Hakbushicomics but you cannot be sure. The fact that the commoner proves the woodcutter lied about the dagger is great because you can't be sure about him either. Maybe even he didn't say it 100% like it was
@@Hakbushicomics It's not the "truth", but I think among the 4 witnesses it's the closest to the truth. But still untrue, because he had his own agenda as well.
Does he?
This is one of my all-time favorite films. I remember when I was in university here in Japan I had to read a short story in Japanese for my language class and since I don’t like reading I chose the book with Rashomon in it so I could have an easy assignment and learned the hard way that the book and film were quite different.
this really could not have been better timed.
I JUST WATCHED THIS, THIS WEEKEND AND I AM STILL REELING!!!!
Thank YOU.
I've come to believe that the central message of RASHOMON the movie is that we should not equate "absolute truth" with "goodness" in the world. The priest character believes this and loses his faith in the world when he finds out that just about everyone at the trial was lying and the cold actions of the commoner at the end. It is the charitable act of the woodcutter, who may in fact have been the actual murderer of the samurai, that restores his faith. Kurosawa is I believe saying here that we may never know the "absolute truth" of what happened beyond the bare facts that a woman was assaulted, and a man was killed. But that doesn't mean that the world is cruel and hopeless without it, hope and kindness can still be found if you are willing to look beyond "absolute truth". Here Kurosawa shows himself to be (at least at this point in his life) more of an optimist than "In the Groove" author Akutagawa. I say this cause by the end of his life, Kurosawa had become quite a bit more cynical around the time he made KAGAMUSHA and RAN. It would have been very interesting to see what that Kurosawa would have done with adapting the story.
Incidentally the title of the film and the actions of the commoner in the movie actually come from another Akutagawa story of the same name, written seven year prior to "In the Groove" in 1915. The two stories are often published together these days along with a selection of his other stories.
The interesting thing about Rashomon: it's just another perspective, now of In The Grove. This is how Kurosawa read the book.
This was a wonderful way to show the power of interpretation/comprehension of media and how unreliable narrators work, well done. Rashomon really is the perfect example to use to show it, more so using multiple views to reinforce it.
Glad u guys are still making these videos they are the best they have got me into so many book I didn't even know existed
This is not only one of my favorite movies of all times, but one of my favorite Simpsons references:
Marge: "Japan will be fun, you liked Rashomon"
Homer: "That's not how I remember it"
Fantastic video. This channel has really nurtured my love of movies and their language.
Absolute masterpiece. Kurosawa is a legend.
so are cinefix team members
That was amazing 👏 hands down, you are my favorite film essayists on YT
Thank you everyone who made this video possible! I love this series! You all should be proud of your work. You're loyal viewers will always love CineFix.
This was a great format - loved the different perspectives.
The scene you described just shows how Kurosawa was truly one of the greats.
I studied this film for a college class for a couple months as a film the student chose on their own. Nice to see your guys’ interpretation of a movie there was a lot to interpret haha.
I hope this series returns
Cinefix is the best investment IGN ever made.
Such an interesting way to analyze Rashomon. I really do love this framing.😊
Its about time a new WTD video is uploaded!
Do Ringu the book, the movie and the American adaptation, for Halloween please.
Good choice
Eh, just watch Linkara's coverage.
So glad to see What's The Difference back!!
What a great episode, how fun
Ok. Here’s what I thought. I tried watching it like a mystery at first but soon I was sense how unreliable everyone’s testimony was. The basic plot points were there of the case, but everyone had a different view. It was fascinating
Thank you.
Thank you for reviewing an old movie we never heard of
Great video
Just wanna say that the last time they did one of these was Oct 15, 2021. 10 months ago...
Really interesting analysis 🤔
I’m glad to see more “What’s the Difference”
I love your wats the difference video
7:37 one very sassy difference
It's back, baby
Hey Cinefix! I have an idea for a new list (maybe?). I recently re-watched Primal Fear and completely forgot how much I loved the back-and-forth Laura Linney and Richard Gere have in that film. Then that got me thinking about other movies with great back-and-forth. A Fish Called Wanda, Six Days Seven Nights, Midnight Run, The Goodbye Girl, Running Scared, etc. I always thought Crystal and Hines had some of the best on-screen chemistry in Running Scare. Ooh, ooh, and Ellen Barkin and Allison Janney in Drop Dead Gorgeous. Duchovny and Jones in Evolution. Best on-screen chemistry back-and-forth? That makes sense, right?
Requests:
•We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story
•Shrek
•Jumanji
•Charlotte’s Web
•James and the Giant Peach
•How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
•The Cat in the Hat
•The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
•Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Nice job, Clint & Co. You keep doing you.
Awesome! Hold on. Let me watch Rashamon. I’ll be back
remember humans don't care about truth we care about convenience the moment the truth becomes inconvenient we discard it and the truth can be oh so inconvenient most of the time....
This reminds of that episode of the Punisher where everyone gives a different account of the events in the episode.
What soundtracks are used here? Form the movie?! I love them
Moral of the Story: Truth is ambiguous. *Sagely nod.*
I really, really, really miss “Things You didn’t know, Probably”.
What happen to this channel it use to be saturated with content, history buff comes out with more content
I literally just watched this movie for the first time randomly two days ago, that’s crazy timing for this video to come out. Gotta be honest and say I wasn’t super crazy about it though.
I'd be interested to know though, who were you inclined to believe?
@@TraceyOfficial I mean, none of them. I feel like that’s kinda the point.
I must defend the film's "easy" ending. It highlights a shift from the culture of shame (the witnesses glossing over their base motives while also taking pride in the act of killing, whether a murder or a suicide) to the culture of guilt, or conscience (the woodcutter affirming life and nurturing the next generation in the figure of the baby). Could the main difference be the time of the writing as opposed to the time of the making of the film, namely Akutagawa's short story was published before World War II and the collapse of the Japanese colonial empire, while Kurosawa's film came out afterward? What really is the big lie behind the testimonies is the old honor code proven to be shallow and inhuman since it culminated in the war and the atomic bomb? The rubble making up the "stage" of the frame story is a further indication of collapse and apocalypse that also work as a threshold to the future and not just to the ruins of the past. This symbolism is especially poignant in the film, even though the gate motive is taken from another Akutagawa short story, the one actually titled "Rashomon," also published, as "In a Grove," before World War II. By the way, I do not claim to be the sole inventor of this reading, so please do not quote me. ;) Someone has probably published on this subject.
I realize all things move on... but I still miss what CineFix used to be and how much you guys used to upload stuff similar to this video.
I agree but hey on the bright side all the old vids still exist and I feel they are super rewatchable so there’s those plus the occasional new classic style cinefix vids
@@RugbyRyan yeah I'm really glad they haven't done a purge of old content. I regularly head to the "What's The Difference" playlist so that's a plus.
@@jakejutras5420 I’m a big movie list guy, love those ones, really introduced me to art films
Can you guys do an episode on “No Country For Old Men”?
Ok I’m back. Let’s do this!
Yesssss
It's nice to have what's the difference back I was worried you guys were never going to return
Rashomon is my favorite film, yet one thing I can't figure out besides what really happened, is how the Samurai could be such a fool to be conned and subdued by the bandit, especially after watching other Kurosawa samurai films, it seems so un-samurai-like. Leaving his wife there, vulnerable, in order to dig up swords and mirrors, when the bandit could've had other bandit friends descend upon her, while he lead the samurai away...It was just really amazingly dumb of the samurai but there would've been no movie, without his being duped and beaten in the fight.
Shit, a great Cinefix upload and I haven't seen the movie... I've only seen "Seven Samurai" so I shall return to this comment tomorrow once I've watched "Roshomon". What a dose
Well, it took a month but I've finally seen it!
*SPOILERS*
Kurosawa did, as always, choose some AMAZING shots of perspective and visually this was a joy to watch. However, I have to disagree with some of the acting, especially from the husband's wife. If you made a compilation of every time she wept with her face in the dirt it would probably be 15 minutes long and it eventually just became irritating. Also, throwing that random baby in at the end was ridiculous. How would they not have noticed it there the whole time? It was just a forced metaphor and completely unnecessary. Anyway, Kurosawa remains a master of his craft regardless, but I won't be in a hurry to re-watch.
🔥🔥
It's been nearly a year.
NPR intro type beat
Rashomon is 1of Best Movie ever made that thought provoking + give the audience moral lesson in a very very good way👍
A request to the cinefix team can you guys make 8-bit Cinema on the new indie game Stray or at least do a review...
What's The Difference : into the WTDverse
Yaaay
My buddy, a fellow film student, said today that Kurosawa's later films were superior. But I corrected him and said Roshamon was his best.
Rashomon is good but Ran was his best work.
This is a great video but I don't understand why you guys didn't talk about the other short story by Akutagawa Ryunosuke that this film is based on....Rashomon, the short story Rashomon. The film is based on both, why only talk about In a Grove? Still really enjoyed the vid tho!
I was wondering that as well. It is fascinating how Kurosawa combines the two stories into one.
I was wondering that as well. It is fascinating how Kurosawa combines the two stories into one.
How often do guys you get requests to do a WtD on Jackie Brown vs Rum Punch?
I remember not reading it yet, does that count?
I think I need to watch it again the only time I watched the movie I was way too shocked the ending for me was still ambiguous we don't know if the baby is actually going to be taken care of it was just the priest's trust.
فیلم های حقیقت گرااا
همیشه تاثیر خوبی داشته
حداقل اینکه از درون یه تکونی میخوریم
I wonder if the movie Joker was mildly inspired by this concept of the untrustworthy narrator.
Lmfao, I discover this years-old IGN movie channel the year I first get into Criterion
Give us twd part 4 plssss
lol i've fallen asleep during 95% of movies i've seen in theaters since they switched to the comfy chairs
God man!!!! Ive missed Whats the Difference soo much! About eleven years ago, your content on Whats the Difference lead to my first failed channel! 🤣 Really wish Clint and team would do so, so many more of these!
I remember Rashomon being a film that I couldn't really get into. This was a fabulous video, though.
Eeees yay this series isn't dead!!! I'd love to see a What's the difference of One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Wait it's the og vantage point lol
We are flawed thinkers who are poor personal historians with flawed epistemology, memory, physiology, and our opinions are shaped by familial and cultural pressures, indoctrination (not just religious), psychology, sociology, confirmation biases, ego, and etc, etc. This was a beautiful movie (haven’t read the short story) that holds a mirror up to us.
Can you guys make what’s the difference more frequently
I like what you're doing here but feels more like a discussion about rashimon which is not a bad thing but it's not a what's the difference
Did they not know that the frame narrative comes from another short story of the same author, this one just called Rashomon?
Of course, this premise is nothing new. Remember what Pontius Pilate asked, "What is Truth?" A 'sigh' from a world-weary ruler of many peoples in Roman times.
Also, 'eyewitness' testimony is the least trusted evidence by police/DAs, as it is notoriously unreliable and highly (and provably) subjective.
That said, this is a mesmerizing movie, where the medium (film) is a powerful reminder of how potent images (illusions?) are to us all....
I can't stop hearing how Clint doesn't pronounce the "r" in Kurosawa, and it drives me nuts.
Just as a sidenote: I wonder if anyone else had the thought that the baby rescued by the woodcutter was perhaps to be abandoned by woodcutter. As in the woodcutter cane to hell gate to abandon the child, but the priest and thief caused him to change his mind? Just something that occured to me now
Do the review of the movie rrr
YEAH BABY THIS IS THE VIDEO IVE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!
Cinefix 🤤
Whats the point of a poll if you were always gonna do a video on Rashomon?
To give you the illusion of control.
Damn I missed these!
“The subjective nature of truth?” Truth isn’t subjective, it’s true objective fact, or it’s not truth. A better opening would be “the subjective nature of perception,” but this would also be wrong since the film follows three completely differing accounts and only one (if any) are factual. It’s more about how one’s self perception manipulated events to fit one’s ego.
The film tries to simplify the book story (In a grove), removing mother caracter, adding a forth testimonial and an external caracter in the Rashomon gate.
If you want to understand the story, best is to concentrate only on the book story elements.
A good starting point is to write comissionner asked questions, you will figure out that he knows certains things before it is told (like the horse presence ...) and you will notice that he is not trying to understand who kills the husband, but something else !
Note also all stranges things told and try to understand it, your brain zap it in the first reads as it looks unnecessary but it's not, as examples:
"In killing, I use the sword I wear at my side.
Am I the only one who kills people? You, you don't use your swords. You kill people with your power, with your money.
Sometimes you kill them on the pretext of working for their good. It's true they don't bleed. They are in the best of health, but all the same you've killed
them. "
What does Tajomaru talk about here ?
"The wound had dried up, I believe. And also, a gad-fly was stuck fast there, hardly noticing my footsteps." ".... hardly noticing I arrived." (in French translation)
What does Woodcutter mean by this ?
Why a Samourai wears a thick sword ? It's a fine one normally ...
Why the mother talk about the husband, telling "He does not come from Kyoto. He was a samurai in the town of Kokufu in the province of Wakasa.
His name was Kanazawa no Takehiko, ...."
Cats are not assholes!
I’ve taken the wrong message from this, haven’t I?
I was disappointed by the movie. I didn't feel that each witness had a different point of view, but rather that they were lying.
A Book to Movie to a Video essay Loved it .The way You guys structured and wrote this video it is Entertaining, informative and Showing Difference Between Mediums of Story telling. This one of the best What’s the Difference? video
I just saw this and was thrilled. Rashomon inspired me to read both Rashomon and In a Bamboo Grovee by Ryunsuke Akutagawa and he's now one of my favourite authors.
I think we forget another element. The medium might not actually be really chanelling the samurai's spirit and could just be making up another story.
Those two new people are annoying. That's my perspective.
Are you going to review more modern movies like the Halloween 1984 greatest story ever told OK that’s an old one but it would be more famous to see the differences in the Bible in the movie about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and of course are you going to review one of the more popular novels Fifty Shades of Grey
One thing's for sure, they knew how to make an alibi.
One of my top 5 movies of all time.
We’re is Jon he used to be funny in homage movies
This videos format leaning into fake conversations and blathering on about personal asides really took away from the subject
I just finished this movie. I understand the point of the movie but I believe the woodcutter's story could be the truth. What does it matter if the wood cutter stole the dagger? His story makes helps the 3 understand why everyone lied to protect their self image.