If part of the goal of this life were to life memory and allow the ramifications of meandering, half-remembered flashbacks to dictate the moral centeredness or valuation of belief, how then does the fact that we always remember inaccurately affect moral identity?
Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon examines, like Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, dives deep into the subject of memory. But unlike the playful teasing non-event that "Rosebud" is (or is it a transcendent signifier, for if I remember correctly the NAME on the first sled that the young Kane holds is NOT "Rosebud" -- if I remember correctly ...), Rashomon works out morality against memory, a difficult pairing indeed. For one is fickle, interior and composed of image and the other is spoken, acted upon, enacted.
Rashomon is essentially a story told over and over. A rogue Samurai/Bandit, played by that Kurosawa stalwart Toshiro Mifune, played strangely with gasping inexplicable gestures and hysterical laughing, meets a Samurai and his wife along a deserted path in the forest. He wants her. He wants her without having to kill him. So he tricks, tempts and ties the Samurai up, has his way with the Lady and then ... And then is where the film begins. The Samurai is found dead -- that much we know. Everything else in-between, in those moments that films never dwell upon, between the "rape" and the death of the "victim" (not the Lady in this case but the Samurai who has to witness the rape of his wife) is thrown up for grabs. And memory sets to work.
What happens in-between is told first by the Bandit, then by the Lady, then (and this, except in the hands of Kurosawa, would otherwise be cheesy) by the dead Samurai, through a Medium and finally, by a peasant who just so happened to be in the woods. Each telling remembers differently, has the scene replayed in a reconfiguration of details. Was it an epic battle between the Bandit and Samurai? Was it the Lady who wanted her husband dead? Was it all a silly accident? Memory slips according to the position of each subject, according to the unearthed desires that shape the Memory's course.
Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon examines, like Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, dives deep into the subject of memory. But unlike the playful teasing non-event that "Rosebud" is (or is it a transcendent signifier, for if I remember correctly the NAME on the first sled that the young Kane holds is NOT "Rosebud" -- if I remember correctly ...), Rashomon works out morality against memory, a difficult pairing indeed. For one is fickle, interior and composed of image and the other is spoken, acted upon, enacted.
Rashomon is essentially a story told over and over. A rogue Samurai/Bandit, played by that Kurosawa stalwart Toshiro Mifune, played strangely with gasping inexplicable gestures and hysterical laughing, meets a Samurai and his wife along a deserted path in the forest. He wants her. He wants her without having to kill him. So he tricks, tempts and ties the Samurai up, has his way with the Lady and then ... And then is where the film begins. The Samurai is found dead -- that much we know. Everything else in-between, in those moments that films never dwell upon, between the "rape" and the death of the "victim" (not the Lady in this case but the Samurai who has to witness the rape of his wife) is thrown up for grabs. And memory sets to work.
What happens in-between is told first by the Bandit, then by the Lady, then (and this, except in the hands of Kurosawa, would otherwise be cheesy) by the dead Samurai, through a Medium and finally, by a peasant who just so happened to be in the woods. Each telling remembers differently, has the scene replayed in a reconfiguration of details. Was it an epic battle between the Bandit and Samurai? Was it the Lady who wanted her husband dead? Was it all a silly accident? Memory slips according to the position of each subject, according to the unearthed desires that shape the Memory's course.
2 comments:
hmm, this seems very interesting, the way the plot will unfold in different perspectives?
i wonder if singapore has any of this..
Very cool design! Useful information. Go on! 1.6 1993 405 gli peugeot
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