The ‘Rashomon’ effect, explained by Akira Kurosawa: “I think you will grasp the point”
There are some directors who are able to articulate inner thought processes and moral dilemmas that are fundamental to the human experience, yet so rarely seen on screen.
It could be the secret battle between what our ego wants and what is truly meant for us, or the age-old scramble to meet certain societal expectations or the wobbly meaning of truth that seems to differ for every human being. There are many emotions and experiences we all share that collectively shine a light on the darkness of the human psyche, yet through our inability to talk about them or even know how to articulate these feelings, they evade being captured on film.
While most mainstream films choose to focus on less challenging and sometimes vapid points of connection, there are some arthouse directors who make it their mission to shine a light on the subject matter that disturbs us all, something that Akira Kurosawa was a true master at. Whether it be through Seven Samurai or Ikiru, there was nothing he couldn’t realise on screen, making him one of the most astute and profound filmmakers of all time.
But through this ability, his work has also puzzled many people over the years, with a quality that could be perceived as evasive to some, with the director revealing the true meaning behind one of his most infamous films.
Rashomon is a story about perspective, ego and different versions of truth, all coalescing in one story about the various and conflicting accounts of the same crime. Its mysterious qualities proved to be confounding even to some members of the crew, with the director sharing some insights into the story and why people struggle to make sense of Rashomon.
When discussing this, Kurosawa described how one day before the shoot, three of his assistant directors spoke to him and said they didn’t understand the script and it didn’t make sense to them. The director responded, “Please read it again more carefully. If you read it diligently, you should be able to understand it because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible.”
But after a little while of mulling it over some more, they exclaimed that they had read it again and still didn’t understand it. Kurosawa then described his explanation of the film, saying, “For their persistence I gave them this simple explanation: Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.”
It’s the kind of response that gets at the crux of his entire creative philosophy and cinematic interests, explaining, “This script portrays such human beings—the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave—even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem.”
His answer points towards the audience’s inability to comprehend such a story because it conflicts with their very understanding of themselves, expanding on this by saying, “This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you can’t understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand.
While his assistants might not have understood the breadth of the script upon first reading it, they certainly gained clarity from his expansive insights, with the director ending by saying, “If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it.”
