At the beginning, there is a big natural disaster attacking Rashomon, so we find the main characters– the commoner, the woodsman, and the priest– in a broken down building. The woodsman is hung up on the murder that he in part got to witness. It involved a man killing another with his wife around. Since he was a witness, he showed up to trial. The priest was also there around the time the murder took place. More importantly, however, the perpetrator Tajomaru, tells his side of the story. He sees who would eventually be his victim (Takehiro Kanzawa) with his wife Masako riding a horse. He couldn’t get his eyes off her and wanted her himself, so he devises a plan to get her. He approaches Takehiro and tells him about weapons he found somewhere. Takehiro is interested, so he follows him, but then Tajomaru tackles him and ties him to a tree. He tricked him. Tajomaru ends up killing Takehiro by stabbing him in the chest. He may have his own recollection of events that led to Takehiro’s death, but Masako is there to tell her side of the story, and so is Takehiro himself in the form of a medium. In court, however, the woodsman said that he only found the body. In reality, though, he did see it all, but said he didn’t because he didn’t want to get involved. Toward the end, he appears to be disgusted at how everyone lies, even though he did so himself.
I remember how in the 10th grade, I read a book called Lord Of The Flies which had 3 main characters, which were said to represent each part of consciousness. I’d like to say the same about the main characters in this movie. The commoner represents the id, an instigator trying to cause havoc. The woodsman is the ego, trying to reason with the commoner. The priest could be the superego, who in some instances, tries to mediate between the two.
The main ideas are focused on who to trust when reality can be so easily manipulated. This is relevant today because of how readily available information about current events are to everyone, but we don’t know how true they are at least when they are reported, because reporters are biased, and we may get more of what they think than of what happened.
The structure of the film is important to telling this story to really bring to light how difficult it is to get an unbiased point of view.
I found the woodman’s story most believable because there are noticeable flaws in everyone else’s story. For one, in Tajomaru’s story, Masako fell in love with him, but that’s not true in the other stories that the others had to tell. In Masako’s story, she says that she fainted and woke up to see her husband dead. However, in each of the other stories, she incited violence in some way, leading to her husband’s death. In the story of the medium speaking for Takehiro, Takehiro kills himself. However, that is not true in the other stories, and in the others, he actually fought Tajomaru. Tajomaru wants to erase responsibility by almost fully putting the blame on Masako, especially by saying he originally had no intention of killing Takehiro. Masako cries, denying her role in this, to get the judge to believe her, because of how she is a woman, it would be harder to believe that she was in the wrong. Takehiro’s medium says he kills himself, because he would be immoral for fighting Tajomaru, who he was trying to kill. So, everyone involved tried to cover themselves up, which is biased. However, the woodman wasn’t involved, so he would have nothing to lose by lying, so naturally, he would be unbiased. And so, it is, because there doesn’t appear to be anything true in his story specifically, that is false in each of the three other stories. So, I believe him.
This scene at the end was probably added to add on to the woodsman’s selflessness. He already appeared that way in the way he told the story, but it is enhanced by showing how he’d go out of his way to take care of someone when he doesn’t have to. It already appeared that the baby was with someone who could take care of him because he stopped crying the moment he was in the woodman’s arms.
The film enhances the original story by showing different perspectives, which wasn’t present in the original. Also, being able to see the story take place makes it easier to follow along, because one would try to visualize a written story anyway. I guess the movie, however, diminishes the terror of the natural disaster going on, because there is no storm in the setting of the main story, and it isn’t raining when everyone in court gives their testimonies either.