What Makes "Rashomon" Great.

People like Kubrick, Spielberg, and Scorsese have all stood at near the very top as the greatest directors of all time, but the master of Japanese cinema Akira Kurosawa deserves that praise and consideration to, not only as one of the best but the best. Rashomon is a perfect example of his amazing version. An amazing and masterful take on the who done it? genre.

While on paper Rashomon may be a murder mystery, It is first and foremost a film about the nature of humanity. The film is told through four different perspectives, the bandit who killed the samurai, The wife of the slain samurai, the murdered samurai from beyond the grave, and the woodcutter who found the body. each separate story is radically different and each one cannot be fully interrupted as the truth of what really happened. It is here that the film explores its the primary theme of the nature of humanity. There is no single truth in regards to human nature, if you look for truth when it is simply not there, you will only more and more lies. This is exactly what happens in the movie as when we're told the other stories with all their differences, we are left with even less of a straight answer then we were at the beginning. The film begins with the woodcutter and a priest in a depressive and affected state of the events that have transpired and telling the story to a person who walks in on their contemplation. In many ways at the end of the movie, we are those two people at the end of the movie, unsure and lost. This important theme of the film is also helped from some very memorable characters with Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune standing out as the over the top bandit.

The film is also shot beautifully by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Feudal Japan looks great as it always does in a Kurosawa film, with the sun shining on the forest, as well as the downpour of rain on the temple where the three discuss the story adds more of a sense of dread to the film, which is very fitting.

As for what the ending means with the baby at the end, the abandoned crying baby they find outside the temple is supposed to represent innocence and truth. There is no lying in a crying baby with no parents, it renews the sense of humanity in the characters. They end up taking it in because humanity must be better then what they were just told.

Rashomon deserves to be seen among Kurosawa's best work, right up there with Seven Samurai. It's a film that rewards multiple views and offers a unique, psychological look at people.