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Call#: Van Pelt Library PN212 .C47 1990
In the chapter A New Kind of Film Adaptation, Chatman counters the critique often aimed at film adaptations based on literature: that film adaptations take away from the audience's use of imagination by displaying everything on screen. Noted scholar Wolfgang Iser is quoted by Chatman saying that, "The point here is that the reader is able to visualize the hero virtually for himself. The moment these possibilities are narrowed down to one complete and immutable picture, the imagination is put out of action." Chatman argues that the imagination is not excluded by the visual medium of film and much can be left for the audience to imagine. In particular, dialogue and narration do not always present what the characters are thinking or feeling in film. For example, body language and expression often go unexplained by direct conversation or even diegetic context in the film.
Chatman mentions Rashomon as an excellent adaptation that invokes the audience's imagination. Although Kurosawa directly translates the dialogue and storyline from which the film is based onto the screen, the film still leaves it to the audience's imagination to try and resolve incongruities and figure out what actually happened. Each of the stories in Rashomon represents what the characters think and believe, however, imagination is not limited by this straightforward presentation of the characters' perspective. In fact, it turns out that these presentations are not straightforward after all. Although everything is presented to the audience visually, there is room to play with and entice the imagination of the audience.
In many ways, the term he uses, imagination, may be inadequate. What he is referring to is the workings of the human mind in its entirety. Rashomon inspires thoughts that do not fall under the scope of imagination, namely critical-thinking, rationalism and emotion. These thought processes make the audience active participants in the film.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PL801.K8 A2 2006
The film Rashomon was based on the combination of two short stories written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa: Rashomon (1915) and In a Bamboo Grove (1921). Rashomon tells the story a slave waiting beneath the ruins of the city gate, anxious of what strong rain will bring him after it stops. The slave had been recently discharged by his master and was struggling for survival. The story provides a poignant account of the devastation sweeping the city.
In a Bamboo Grove tells the story of a murdered samurai and of his wife's rape from several points of view. The accounts provided by the characters are conflicting and the story provides no resolution to the crime. The reader can only hypothesize as to what really happened in the grove.
Kurosawa uses the short story Rashomon for one of the settings in his film. He omits the characters, and focuses instead on Akutagawa's vivid descriptions of the city in decline. In a Bamboo Grove, on the other hand, provides the plot for Rashomon. The film is an almost exact adaptation of the story to the screen, except that Kurosawa hints at meaning behind the conflicting accounts by tying in elements of the short story Rashomon. The city gate ruins are where the woodcutter and the priest retell the curious events of that day, which contribute to the overall mood of the film. The setting is a devastating image of the city, and similarly, the manner in which the characters acted is found to be depressing. The priest brings together this metaphor: the strong rains and dark skies represent his loss of faith in man. Also, the ending and the change in the setting provide some symbolic explanation about the characters as well. As the priest's faith in man is restored, the sun appears and the skies clear up.
The synthesis of the two short stories allows Kurosawa to provide a unique interpretation of the narrative in In a Bamboo Grove.