"Rashomon" is a representative film of Akira Kurosawa. It is a black-and-white film, shot almost half a century ago, and is considered the pinnacle of Kurosawa's cinematography. In this film that can be described as captivating, Akira Kurosawa's ideological and artistic excellence in film, as well as its broad vision, is fully demonstrated. (.
Rashomon tells a very simple story. It revolves around a murder incident, and the camera is aimed at ordinary beings who witnessed the incident. With their narration of this event, they reflect the complexity of human nature from different angles, and most importantly, show the dark side of human nature. The story is about a robber who covets the beauty of a samurai's wife and humiliates the samurai's wife. The samurai was later found dead. There are four main characters around the death of the samurai, a robber, a woodcutter who accidentally saw the process of the incident, a wandering monk, and the wife of the samurai. . The crux of the question is: how did the samurai die? Faced with this question, everyone's answer to this question does not justify their claims. The samurai describes himself as a tall and powerful man, his mighty power overwhelms the samurai and conquers the wives of the unruly samurai; while in the samurai's wife's account, the robber and the samurai are described as two cowardly As for her humiliation, she was unable to resist the violence of the robbers. The focus of her narrative has always been to express herself, that she is an out-and-out virgin. In the narration of the Resurrection Warrior, however, the wife is depicted as a vicious woman who is lewd and wants robbers to kill her husband. For the narratives of these three core characters, no one can make an accurate judgment, and whoever said it is infallible with the facts. It is easy for the audience to think that they, out of their own needs, seem to be extremely beautifying themselves and demeaning the other two. To solve this problem, the author uses another so-called omniscient perspective to set up the role of a woodcutter who inadvertently witnessed the event. However, Shiio, who seemed to be relatively telling the objective facts, was exposed by a rogue figure, for he pointed out that the woodcutter, although he seemed to be telling the truth, had no doubt that the samurai had a thorn in it. The jeweled knife is gone, where has it gone? It is possessed by the woodcutter, so even if the woodcutter does not seem to have many conflicts of interest with himself, how much of his statement can be trusted in comparison with his stealing behavior? At this point in the story, the audience who originally wanted to get to the bottom of the incident had to cycle back to the original confusion again. As the story draws to a close, the truth that everyone expects to emerge becomes more and more puzzling. The death of the samurai has become a mystery that has been solved forever. Under such circumstances, Akira Kurosawa used the vision of a pessimistic wandering monk in the movie to give this dark world a seemingly bright future. The wandering monks, the rogues, and the woodcutter take shelter from the rain under the Rashomon, and they provide an outsider's analysis of the whole incident, but No results. They finally found an abandoned baby in a corner. The woodcutter, who was exposed by the rogue, took the abandoned baby home and raised it, and the pessimistic wandering monk saw bright hope in it. At this time, the rain passed, and a bright sky appeared in the distance, illuminating the hellish ruined house of Rashomon, and a glimpse of light illuminated the sky, and the story came to an end.
In this two-hour film, Kurosawa tries to show the audience the intricate purposes of a human being. As for the clues that run through, that is, what happened to the death of the samurai, I am afraid that no one can give a complete answer. In this helpless ending, Akira Kurosawa wants to tell the audience a question: Due to the complexity and darkness of human nature, under the surface of many things we see, we may never find an objective answer. Everyone is deliberately demeaning others for a purpose of self-glorification, greater or less. Since the narrative appearance of the characters is linear, it is impossible to conduct a live confrontation of the whole event. Akira Kurosawa's artistic technique of not telling the story clearly but instead further blurring the story has become the most outstanding creative core idea of this film.
In addition to the ingenious narrative perspective and deep ideological inspiration, Akira Kurosawa's handling of movie shots is undoubtedly superb. The part where the robber took the hand of the warrior's wife through the woods, the perfect harmony of rhythm, light and shadow is like a symphonic movement. In advancing the rhythm of the development of the plot, it can be said to be completed in a rhythmic manner, which will always make people full of expectations, To unravel the suspense of the mystery, even if the audience's thoughts are resolved one by one by the director and begin to comprehend the intention of agreeing with the director's twists and turns, it will not feel abrupt and absurd, but will enrich the film and make the audience fall into some kind of thinking. Akira Kurosawa can be said to be a master of maze-making. For such a work full of wisdom and genius, all I can express is a strong and lasting respect. He can be called a great figure in the history of film who turned corrupt into magic.
His films are always surprising and intriguing. It's very, very difficult for me to do this.
February 8, 2006
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