Rashomon Reconsidered - Unreliable Narrators
*** THERE ARE 'SPOILERS' IN HERE *** (and they're not covered up)
Probably like a lot of people I was impressed with this film, and wrote about it from memory. And like a lot of people, what I remembered most prominently was four different “versions” of events in the grove, and an unsolved puzzle. This led to the thought that the theme of the film is the unknowability of objective truth. That appears to be a very common interpretation of the film.
But it has percolated in my head since then, and I have realized that I did not pay enough attention to its three story layers and its subtle use of unreliable narrators. The film begins with and keeps returning to the three men discussing the different stories in the Rashomon gatehouse. What concerns them is not how the samurai died: what has disturbed them was seeing people willing to be thought a killer if it meant they could maintain the image they desired.
With that, everything fell into place. I purchased the film and studied it with this clearer understanding, and the film made perfect sense, and was more clearly focused for me on what Kurosawa wrote about it and is included in the Criterion DVD:
Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. 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.
- excerpt from Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography
Don’t rely on your memory. View the film again. Things that seemed odd to you or caught your notice the first time will pop out as indicators that the original narrator is not being truthful. Some of the narratives contain a discrepancy or an inadequately explained loose end. Some lack an internal logic or have inexplicable, abrupt reversals in a character’s behavior. Some actions are just implausible. The reactions of the woodcutter in the gatehouse and in the courthouse garden are revealing.
Suggestions that a narrator is unreliable appear in the first of the accounts. The woodcutter’s story of finding the corpse and reporting to the police has discrepancies. He sees the little amulet case in the leaves, but fails to notice the corpse until he trips over it. He lets slip that he told the court that he also found a “shiny amulet case with a red lining.” The inclusion of this seemingly insignificant detail in the story draws the viewer’s attention to the fact that the woodcutter has not been forthright. Later, the commoner will figure out he picked over the scene, removed the dagger from the body, and kept it.
The woodcutter then relates the testimony of two witnesses the viewer assumes are implicitly trustworthy—the priest and the policeman. They establish the undeniable facts: that Tajomaru (a bandit with a reputation for murder and lust) had managed to tie up a samurai and rape his wife, that the samurai had somehow been killed, and that the woman and bandit went separate ways.
Finally, the woodcutter relates the bandit’s testimony. Tajomaru claims he was sick, not falling-down drunk, when captured, and he probably embellishes his account of the woman’s fierceness and submission to enhance his reputation for bravado and sexual prowess, but it essentially makes sense up to the point he starts to make an easy getaway after having had his way. He would logically have left the woman distraught and the man tied up. But to enhance his reputation and go out in glory he fabricates the account of the woman’s bizarre melodramatic request that they duel to the death. He does not know how the samurai died, but the last thing he expects is that the real killer would reveal how it actually happened. The court draws attention to an awkward loose end: the woman has not stayed to go with the winner.
The woodcutter removed the dagger, so he knows that the samurai was not killed in a sword fight. That the bandit would make such a claim is one of the things that so puzzles him, and why he comments to the men in the gatehouse that the bandit was lying.
The relating of the witness testimonies is taken over by the priest. He begins describing the wife’s story by observing that she was pitifully docile, without a hint of the fierceness the bandit described. This undercuts the bandit’s story once again, suggesting that he was embellishing when he claimed the woman suddenly attacked him fiercely with her dagger.
The priest goes on to describe a woman traumatized by the events in the grove. She cannot keep from telling a story that relates how she cut her husband free with her dagger (which would account for the cut up rope the woodcutter finds), and then strongly suggests that, enraged or distraught that he rejected her after he had failed to protect her, she stabbed him. She hasn’t the presence of mind to deny her crime (letting the bandit take the blame), and can only vaguely recall anything that happened after she stood in front of her husband with the drawn dagger. Due to her mental state, the woman cannot provide a complete story, but ironically, even though she is the killer she is not capable of being an unreliable narrator.
The priest begins to tell of the samurai’s testimony, given through a medium. This clever plot device allowing the dead man to provide testimony has to be accepted by the viewer as possible in the world of the story. That the samurai’s voice issues from her mouth indicates that she reliably channels his account from darkness and torment.
The woodcutter interjects that “his story was also lies.” He asserts this because he knows the story ends with the revelation that “someone” pulled the dagger from the dead man’s heart, and he does not want anyone to ask what happened to the dagger.
The priest says that he cannot imagine any dead man would be so sinful as to lie, but this causes the viewer to consider that indeed it is a possibility that the samurai is also an unreliable narrator.
The samurai knows that after the bandit left, he was cut from his bonds and killed with a dagger. He does not know the bandit has been caught and claimed responsibility. To be killed by a woman would be degrading for the samurai. Perhaps this is even more dishonourable than being tricked by a loutish brigand into a situation of humiliation and powerlessness. To commit suicide is more consistent with his heroic code, and he is willing to let his wife get away with murder in order to put forward a version of events that minimizes his embarrassment and shame.
He tells a story that suggests his wife was weak and unfaithful, to draw attention away from his failure to protect her and his callous treatment of her. It reveals the contempt the woman says he displayed. He says that the bandit was “cunning,” told the woman he loved her, and that she should marry him. Then the bandit is appalled when the woman tells him to kill her husband. But the character of the brigand has already been established. Both sentiments would be entirely out of character for him. Similarly, the story of the woman suddenly running away, the bandit being unable to catch her, and returning hours later to set the samurai free does not make good sense, but is necessary to result in the two of them leaving separately, leaving him alone, in despair, and unbound.
There are two revealing glimpses of the woodcutter during the relating of the samurai’s story. During the medium’s testimony the woodcutter is visible in the background, noticeably apprehensive. He had no idea the court would be able to hear from the dead man, and he is afraid that the medium will reveal that he stole the dagger. Fortunately for him, the samurai no longer had his sense of vision after he died, and could only say that “someone” pulled the dagger from his heart. At this point the woodcutter looks relieved.
But the dagger has been mentioned, and so, as the priest narrates the story in the gatehouse, the woodcutter paces nervously, and again says that the stories are “not true.” He insists that there was no dagger—that the samurai was killed by a sword. He says he was a witness, but that he did not tell the authorities because he did not want to get involved. This does not ring true because the woodcutter did report the murder.
The commoner realizes that the woodcutter is hiding something, and challenges him to tell what he really knows. The woodcutter needs both men to believe that the samurai was killed by a sword, or he risks having his petty theft revealed. He must concoct a story to convince them. He claims that he came upon the scene after the rape, and that he observed from behind a bush.
Since he had never seen the three people in the grove until he saw them in court, the woodcutter’s story of the incident is based on their testimony. He incorporates aspects and incidents from all the accounts.
His description of their personalities can be based only on their behavior in court or in the characterizations the others gave them. Since the stories of the two men were lies, the characters in the woodcutter’s version are doubly distorted. This is one reason the acting in the flashback of the woodcutter’s story strikes some people as unusual— exaggerated, over-the-top, unnatural. It is why the demeanor of the characters fluctuates wildly. At times the bandit is childishly simple, confused, even sheepish, then conventionally brutish. The samurai is disdainful and proud, but suffers the wife’s derision, fights pathetically, and ends up cowering in fear. The wife cries pathetically one minute, and then laughs hysterically, maniacally vilifying both men.
This flashback is not as artful as the others. There is no accompanying music, for instance— only the ordinary sounds of birds and insects, rustling leaves, panting. This suggests that the other narrators, basing their fictions on actual events and personalities, can create a more evocative description.
As he scrambles to piece together a sequence of events, the logic and plausibility suffer. The bandit allows the woman to cuts the samurai free. Somehow, the samurai has his sword. The samurai allows the bandit to start walking away. When the samurai derides his wife’s tears, the bandit briefly objects to this “bullying.” The wife incites them to fight, but then recoils in horror.
The depiction of the sword fight is most revealing. The undignified travesty of combat corresponds to the woodcutter’s inexpert description of a fight that never happened, involving skills he has never seen used. It more closely resembles something he would know— a school-yard scramble or a peasant brawl.
The commoner does not believe the woodcutter’s story any more than the others. The priest bemoans the mistrust that makes this world a hell.
Then they discover an abandoned baby. When the woodcutter berates the commoner for stealing the baby’s clothing, the commoner condemns the parents, and says that no one is honest: he hasn’t been fooled by the woodcutter. He knows the woodcutter must have stolen the dagger. The woodcutter’s look betrays his guilt and sense of shame.
Like the bandit and the samurai, the woodcutter has lied to preserve his reputation. Their lies reveal their lack of morals. They do not care that they are portraying themselves as capable of a most heinous crime. But the woodcutter’s lie reveals his basic decency. He does not want people to think of him as a petty thief.
When the woodcutter says he will take care of the baby, the priest feels he can “keep his faith in man.” As the woodcutter walks away the sun shines again. The film does not end with the resolution of the murder, the achievement of justice, the reassertion of order, and the reassurance that life makes sense (as would a conventional murder mystery or courtroom drama). It ends with the acknowledgement of wickedness and deceit in the world, and the consolation that there is also some caring and kindness— that the world is not totally bleak. share