I agree with David Makinster that one widespread interpretation of Rashomon is a misreading.
The theme of the film is not the “subjectivity of truth.” The film portrays a number of characters who get mired in the “quicksand of the ego.” This leads them to lie, and their dishonesty reveals their moral characters. Prof. Makinster focuses on how all the major characters respond morally in the “bad times” they are living in.
It is entirely appropriate that Kurosawa treats this theme of the “quicksand of the ego” using unreliable narrators. But any storyteller making use of an unreliable narrator takes a risk. A reader or viewer who is not alert can fail to consider the unreliability of a narrator, and become misled. Rashomon involves multiple unreliable narrators and three nesting narrative levels, so it is no surprise that it is widely interpreted with some confusion. Many viewers assume this confusion is intentional, and that the storyteller is saying that knowledge of objective truth is elusive.
Prof. Makinster has not made this mistaken interpretation of the theme of Rashomon. He has a very clear grasp of the theme of the film. But this is in spite of being a little puzzled by the narrative. He never claims to know for certain when any of the speakers is telling the truth or a lie. He is willing to allow ambiguity, uncertainty.
It’s true—the murder puzzle is not the central concern of the film. We never do learn how the court resolved the three conflicting accounts. But I am less willing to accept uncertainty.
A narrative that is intentionally obscure would be more consistent with the notion that objective truth is ultimately unattainable, which we agree is not the theme of the film. And if a film examines people’s moral choices it only makes sense that the audience should have some idea—even if only intuitively or subconsciously on a first viewing—what those choices were.
I also think that structuring the story with all the central narrators lying would not work. No storyteller would do that to their audience. One of the witness statements has to be essentially the truth. The neat thing about this film is how it reverses the problem of the conventional detective or courtroom drama. There, a group of people all claim innocence. The challenge is to find which one is lying—and therefore guilty. In Rashomon, there is the bizarre situation in which three people all claim responsibility for a death, and the challenge is to determine who is telling the truth.
Prof. Makinster says that we may never know what actually happened in the grove. But, with careful attention to numerous signals that a narrator is fabricating their account, one can make sense of it, and many things become clear. I think we are meant to recognize that the bandit and the samurai are despicable liars, who pervert justice and decency. The woman is a pathetic victim, but is the one who stabbed the samurai. The woodcutter is a petty thief, and is not forthright with the court after he tampers with the murder scene.
Prof. Makinster says that in the depiction of Tajomaru’s account, he is “screaming, bugging his eyes out, and acting crazy,” to give himself “mythic stature,” and that “the sword battle is pathetic . . . because we’re seeing it through the eyes of Tajomaru,” who is not an expert swordsman. That is only part of it. The bandit’s story is reported by the woodcutter, so we are also seeing it through his eyes. His narration overlays a depiction of Tajomaru as a wild beast: lounging indolently and swatting at flies, or leaping, pouncing, snarling. This is very artful cinematic narration. It undercuts the bandit’s attempt to portray himself as fierce and heroic, signals the inaccuracy of the bandit’s story, and suggests that the woodcutter is afraid of and disgusted by the bandit. The sword battle is “pathetic” partly because it is told through two layers of narrators, one of whom is even more inexpert than the other.
Prof. Makinster says the woman is “very smart,” and presents herself as “the helpless female . . . the victim . . . She pre-empts the kinds of criticisms that she might face—the kind of discrimination she might face—and she gets everyone’s sympathy.” But the story doesn’t support this. She has the priest’s sympathy already. During his testimony he turns to her and offers his condolences. If she already has some sympathy, it seems a very risky tactic for her to seek pity and claim helplessness by saying her husband’s cruelty drove her to stab him. It would make much more sense to corroborate the bandit’s story of the sword fight, but to claim that she was able to avoid being raped. That is the only way to “turn it all around.”
I don’t see the woman as so calculating. The rape is what brings about events in the grove, but the film is not concerned with the rape and how the woman will cope with it. It is never depicted, is only mentioned indirectly, and is never followed up. The central issue is the death of the samurai, and here she is not calculating—not a liar like the bandit and the samurai, cleverly twisting the story to put herself in the best light. Instead, she appears to be so devastated by her experience that she cannot help revealing that in rage or desperation she stabbed her husband.
Prof. Makinster says: “It turns out the woodcutter saw the whole thing. . . In his version everyone comes out looking confused . . . nasty, self-concerned, lacking compassion.”
Many viewers don’t seem to see just how unreliable a narrator the woodcutter is at this point in the story. Yes, everyone comes out looking bad because that is how the woodcutter perceives them. But the confusion of his version is also because he didn’t see any actual events. He is vehement that “there was no dagger”—that the samurai “was killed by a sword.” But the commoner is probing deeper. The woodcutter, desperate to avoid exposing the truth, changes his original story, and claims to have witnessed the samurai’s death. The story he hastily concocts is based on what he heard at the enquiry. This explains why the events are implausible, the characters so inconsistent, and the depiction so wild. For instance, the woodcutter has likely never seen a sword fight, and his description is based entirely on the bandit’s testimony, which was itself a fabrication. So the distortion is compounded, and the fight he describes closely resembles a peasant brawl.
In the end, the woodcutter’s story does not convince the commoner, who says: “You may have fooled the court, but not me.” The commoner slaps the woodcutter with contempt, and the woodcutter hangs his head in shame.
So even the woodcutter is a liar. But—to get back to the central concern of the film—the priest can see that this reveals an important difference between the three people in the grove and the woodcutter. He has a moral compass, which makes him ashamed of his wrongdoings and capable of goodness.
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