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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 PN1998.3.K87 P75 1999
To start with, the pictorial and cinematic work in Rashomon explores the confines of a single setting, the grove where the death of the samurai character takes place. Kurosawa works within this physical spatial limitation by expanding the dynamic space for his character's emotions and psychology through cinematography and imagery. For example, Prince suggests that the play on light and shadow creates "a kind of spiritual and emotional labyrinth," hinting at the emotional depth Kurosawa bestows upon his characters. Also, camera movement gives depth to the characters as well by panning, shaking -- mimicking their emotional state. Long tracking shots and "sensuous" camera movements follow the woodcutter as he wanders through the forest, whereas jolting and aggressive shots characterize the film after the woodcutter discovers the dead samurai.
Hence, Kurosawa experiments with the narrative by invoking emotional depth in cinematography. Rashomon is quite similar to silent films, where everything is communicated solely through the characters' movements and filming techniques. Kurosawa does not settle for the dialogue as his sole means of narrative, he employs every constituent aspect of the film to this purpose as well.
The dialogue and the cinematography, both as narrative forms, complement each other and interweave to tell the five different accounts in the film. Clearly, as the accounts are conflicting versions of the same story, the dialogue is unreliable and subjective. But, because the imagery is coordinated through the perspective of the first-person, there are richer emotions projected in the film.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995 .J36 1987
Jarvie's chapter Rashomon: Is Truth Relative? discusses the film from a philosophical standpoint and examines what he calls the "Rashomon problem" as proposed by the film in the 1950's - simply, which person's storyline described in the film is true? Or is it even that none of them true as they are all mutually exclusive? Kurosawa does not imply that the samurai did not exist, or that the wife did not lose her husband. Instead, the construction of events, based on single-person perception tells "truths" based on their individual points-of-view.
In Rashomon, the audience is deliberately given too much information. They cannot coherently piece together the contradictory details and create a cogent picture of what happened. Jarvie argues that the film is more than only the truth relative to a point of view; it is also about each reality that the subjective truths attempt to describe and how those truths are interpreted through the character's perception of events.
Kurosawa uses several film techniques to show different points-of-view in Rashomon. He knows that the audience is able to transition across cuts to deduce what is going on; techniques such as eyeline matching, seamless sound, and complementary point-of-view shots, enable the audience is able to fill in the gaps between cuts. But Jarvie argues that Kurosawa goes beyond these simple editing tricks by showing the audience that in one setting, events are presented in a manner in which the mind cannot reconstruct. Hence, transitioning is made difficult, and the audience's sense of reality is thwarted. This effect is intentional and induces the audience to think about relativity in truth.
In addition, Kurosawa plays with point-of-view through the film's cinematography. Although each story is told from a first-person perspective, the cuts in the scene and the shifting of the camera do not make it clear who is speaking. The eye-witness is not in a fixed position, as to be assumed in first-person, and the point of view is shifted from one eye-witness to several. This freedom in filming that Kurosawa incorporates makes Rashomon even more of a challenge to the audience to view the chain of events as truth, which the audience may never solve.
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.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.A3 K789413 1982
Something like an Autobiography is a first-hand account of director Akira Kurosawa's thoughts concerning his breakthrough film, Rashomon. About some thirty years after he directed it, Kurosawa recalls almost every aspect of the film, from the production, to the underlying message, to the film techniques used. His intentions for the film are precisely what film scholars and analysts have hypothesized in their work: that the film is about the inability of man to tell the truth without embellishment and without tendencies towards self-preservation, and that the cinematography, lighting and editing all contribute to the mood of the film.
However, what is most interesting is that Kurosawa applies these perspectives to his own life as well. In his book's epilogue, he relates the story of a studio director who boasts about the success of Rashomon, without even referring to himself (Kurosawa) or the cinematographer. The human weakness he portrayed in the film does surface in real life. He then goes on to describe his autobiography and how it is completely possible that he left out negative facets of himself and doubts complete honesty in its presentation, once again showing tendencies to show oneself in the best possible way.
The way in which Kurosawa relates the theme of Rashomon to his own life leads the reader to think about the film's relation to their own life as well. Because the director self-analyzed himself in the book, the reader's drive to self-analyze is made stronger. In addition, the degree of variation to the stories in Rashomon is large enough that it may render the film a bit unrealistic. The points-of-view of the characters are just so different that attributing it to the relativity of perception may seem like a stretch. However, Kurosawa's autobiography brings the theme of the film down to earth and emphasizes the question proposed in the film: how do humans represent themselves?
In a way, this first-hand account of Rashomon validates the analysis done on the film. The fact that the views of those behind the camera and those who only see post-production coincide is a testament to the effectiveness and success of the intent and the techniques used in the film. One should take this into account in assessing Rashomon's impact on cinema.
Call#: Van Pelt Library--4 East--Temporary Location Annenberg PN1998.3.K87 G66 1994
In his book, Goodwin carefully examines each of the five points-of-view presented in Rashomon. He suggests that the overarching motivation of the conflicting accounts reflects each character's "egoism," each tells their story in a manner that is most favorable to themselves. In particular, the woodcutter emphasizes his non-involvement in the crime, even though it is later implied that he is guilty of stealing the woman's dagger. The bandit projects an image of heroism and romanticism, and that "grand passion" was the motive for his actions. The wife's story emphasizes herself as the victim in the situation, with the bandit taking advantage of her and her samurai husband ultimately betraying her. Similar to the wife, the samurai perceives himself as the victim in the situation, reflected in his suicide as a desperate act of passion. Finally, the story goes back to the woodcutter who is led to re-tell his version of the events. This time, he discredits the other characters to maintain his own innocence and credibility.
Through Goodwin's picking through the details of Rashomon, the truth in the first-person narrative is examined. One could deduce that all of the characters in the film are lying. But, it is also reasonable to hypothesize that the intensity of the situation the characters were in could have forced a change in their perception of the situation. From the way the Kurosawa directs the film, each account is made ambiguous because each character is trying to project a positive image for his/herself, either deliberately or accidentally. The film, as a whole, then brings to mind questions beyond finding the crime's solution and the explicit credibility of the characters. The film instead raises higher-order questions examining the motives in which the events are told. Thus, Rashomon is not only to be looked at for the veracity in first-person narratives, but also for the driving forces influencing the characters behind those narratives.
Call#: Van Pelt Library--4 East--Temporary Location Annenberg PN1998.3.K87 R5 1996
Similar to other sources, Richie emphasizes the relativity of truth in Rashomon. But, after a comprehensive analysis of the different versions of the story that are told, Richie comes to a conclusion slightly different from other analyses: "No one - priest, woodcutter, husband, bandit, medium - lied. They all told the truth." In this he says that Kurosawa doesn't question what truth is in the film, he questions reality.
In other words, what can define reality considering that everything is based on the subjective truth perceived by humans? To an individual who is emotionally distraught, reality changes and the line between illusion and reality is blurred.
Not only that, but Richie argues that one of the main points of Rashomon is that sometimes, humans are unable to distinguish real from unreal. It's not that they don't want to, but extenuating circumstances make them incapable of doing so. In the case of the wife, she is traumatized and disconcerted after the bandit takes advantage of her and after she is disowned by her own husband, she is led to believe that she killed her husband. To her, this is the truth, although to the audience it is just a perception of reality. Consequently, Richie attributes this condition to the natural weakness of humans; that they must unconsciously deceive themselves of the truth.
Richie's argument is an extreme one - it relies too much on the weakness of humans as being unable to judge reality. Perhaps he doesn't not want to admit that humans can be deceitful, which could lead the characters to portray the events differently as well. With his argument, reality is an illusion; he avoids the possibility that humans can consciously distort reality (lie) for self-preservation.
Richie’s analysis of Ikiru focuses on the translation of the title, Ikiru, which is “to live.” Richie touches on Kurosawa’s fondness for Dostoevsky, an existentialist, in order to frame Ikiru as a story of a man trying to validate his existence. As Watanabe “layer after layer peeled away,” we realize that it is Watanabe’s actions that make him exist both while he is alive and posthumously. Richie explains how Kurosawa highlights the “irony of the film,” by splitting the film into two parts: one told by an omniscient narrator while Watanabe is alive and one told by the attendees at his wake. The men at the wake, mostly Watanabe’s co-workers, misrepresent Watanabe’s actions at first, but when they finally begin to understand what Watanabe accomplished and why, they are too drunk to follow through with anything. Only one of the office workers takes Watanabe’s actions to heart, but as Kurosawa shows us, after being reprimanded, “he disappears behind his piles of papers as though he were being buried alive.”
An interesting element that Richie brings up in his analysis is the music used in the film. The classical piece used in the opening, is known as a ricercare, which, Richie explains, “means to search for again, to hunt for, or to follow.” While Richie acknowledges that there is nothing to suggest whether this was intentional or not, “this, after all, is what the film is about.” Watanabe’s search for meaning in his life is the impetus behind the action in Ikiru. Perhaps because of this, Richie’s analysis seems correct, because we all, as humans, search for meaning in our life and hope that our actions can speak for themselves both during our lives and after we are deceased.
Richie’s final conclusion (which is actually a quote by Richard Brown), that “the meaning of [Watanabe’s] life is what he commits the meaning of his life to be,” is a very positive take on the film, but the films beauty comes from the fact that it can be read many ways. Richie harms his argument though, by using lengthy quotations from the film, which are not always completely relevant and ending his analysis with a description of the film by Kurosawa himself which does little to enhance Richie’s argument and only serves to show Kurosawa’s unhappiness with both the film’s creation and the final product. The negativity of Kurosawa’s own analysis of his film puts a damper on the positive reading by Richie and the sense one gets after seeing the film that he or she has just seen one of the greatest films of all time.
Discussing the film Drunken Angel, Kurosawa recounts, “As background to the characterizations, we decided to create an unsightly drainage pond where people threw their garbage” (156), which is an image that returns in Ikiru, although it has a different allegorical meaning. Many plot elements and images from Kurosawa’s films were taken straight from his life (a point made by Goodwin in his book ), and Ikiru is no different. Kurosawa says of the studio he began his career at, “Management theory at P.C.L. regarded the assistant directors as cadets who would later become managers and directors” (95). The bureaucratic elements in the management system at P.C.L., that Kurosawa criticizes, has echoes in the stagnant and immutable Japanese civil service in Ikiru.
Events from his life also influenced Kurosawa in the existential themes he deals with in Ikiru. Kurosawa recounts, in the chapter “A Horrifying Event,” an early scene from his childhood, when he and his brother walked around the city looking at the death and destruction caused by the Kato Earthquake. His brother uncomfortably forces him to look at the hundreds of dead bodies, but when Kurosawa goes to sleep, he does not have any nightmares. When the young Kurosawa asks why he didn’t have any nightmares, his brother responds, “If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened. If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.” This message has deep significance to Ikiru, because Watanabe is only able to live when he confronts his cancer head on. When he lies in his bed at home and cries himself to sleep, when he goes with the writer to experience the decadence of modern Tokyo, he is, in effect, trying to ‘shut his eyes’ to the cancer and ignore its existence. Only when he faces it head on, does he realize that he has the power to give his limited life meaning. There are many other events in Kurosawa’s life that have relevance to Ikiru, because it is a film about life itself and the search for meaning in life. Kurosawa’s past offers insight into not only why the author chose to write about this subject, but also why he comes to the conclusions that he does.
Goodwin also shows how Kurosawa uses editing techniques and objects as narrative devices: “the photograph of [Watanabe’s] wife at the center of the altar is the psychological frame through which Watanabe begins to look into his past in narrative flashback.” In the flashback in which Watanabe and his son are follow his dead wife’s hearse, Goodwin states that, “Metaphorically, the sequence places death as an immediate prospect within life and it suggests the narrative’s own patterns of approach and withdrawal from its protagonist’s death.” Both of these are examples of scenes and objects that offer a self-reflexive view of the film that acknowledges the techniques of filmmaking.
Goodwin’s book is different from the other works in the Bibliography, because it analyzes specific images and scenes in Ikiru, searching for allegorical meaning and self-reflexive commentary. The book definitely takes the position of Kurosawa as an auteur, suggesting that Kurosawa purposefully creates a continuity among the symbols and images in the film, in order give a deeper meaning to the film.
Russell also shows the similarities in setting among various Kurosawa films. She writes, “Ikiru is also an important film in Kurosawa’s cinema because it deals directly with the issue of urban development.” Most of Kurosawa’s non-period films have an urban setting, but the city itself is integral to the plot of Ikiru, because Watanabe’s quest is against Tokyo itself, the stagnant bureaucracy, the icy social interactions, etc. and this is all embodied by the cesspool, which is a product of urban life. Russell also notices that the “extreme weather conditions […] In city films, they soften the urban setting into a site of humanist compassion, exemplified by the final soft snowfall in Ikiru.” The urban setting provides a good backdrop to the actions of Kurosawa’s gangster films (“gendai-geki” ), but it provides the impetus behind the action in Ikiru. Russell’s article separates her discussion of Kurosawa into two parts, his movies about “men with suits” (of which Ikiru is one) and his movies about “men with swords,” which is ironic considering the two-part structure of Ikiru and many other Kurosawa’s other films. Russell makes some interesting points that are not touched on by other authors, because, like Prince’s book, she analyzes the film in comparison to other Kurosawa films.
Yoshimoto follows this with a shot breakdown of the opening scene in Watanabe’s department and surmises from the shots used by Kurosawa that, “Watanabe is consistently denied the subject position of the look; instead he is placed in the position of the other’s look.” This establishes a theme that Yoshimoto then expands on, the theme of Watanabe as a subject, which is a offshoot of the theme of self-reflexivity. Another self-reflexive image Yoshimoto recognizes is in the silent scene in which Watanabe leaves the hospital. “On the wall behind Watanabe are many identical posters, advertisements for “Morinaga Penicillin Ointment.” The medical reference reminds us of the immediately preceding scene at the hospital, and the word “penicillin” also emphasizes the incurability of Watanabe’s disease.” Kurosawa also allows for self-reflexivity in the ‘nightlife scenes,’ “Mirrors are sued to disorient our perception of scenes’ spatial unity.” All of these examples highlight Kurosawa’s use of self-reflexivity in the film, which bring the viewers attention on the process of watching the movie. Yoshimoto argues that Kurosawa is commenting on the film itself and the audience’s perception of events in the film. The audience members thus becomes aware that they are watching a film, which succeeds in distancing them from the protagonist, Watanabe, and calling into question the images on the screen (i.e. the ‘stories’ told by the coworkers at the wake). In relation to this last idea, Yoshimoto writes, “[Ikiru] demonstrates the problematic relation of narration and subjectivity.”
The most interesting self-reflexive element in the film I found was the actual structure of the film. Yoshimoto writes, “when the protagonist of Ikiru abruptly disappears about two-thirds of the way through, his death surprises us as something utterly shocking, even though it is totally expected,” and this is because “We assume that biological death and closure of our lives somehow coincide with each other. What surprises us is that this is hardly the case.” Yoshimoto’s argument concerns self-reflexivity in Ikiru and how this aids the goals of the film. The questions that the two-part structure forces the audience members to ask themselves are just one example of the various techniques Kurosawa employs to force the viewer to change with Watanabe; the movie itself becomes catharsis.
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