This is a clip from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. In ancient pickets, the dead told the truth through the mouth of a witch. The voice of the man in the witch kept performing and speaking, trying to frame the scene in the audience's mind. It's an eerie and mysterious sight. The witch's white robe fluttered in the gust of wind, and her red lips shrank and grinned from time to time, hurriedly sending out strange words one after another. The Japanese woman's long bushy hair dances with the wind and her footsteps, dancing in concert with the progression of the plot. But when she fell, the mystery in the play was even more difficult to unravel.
The story is actually simple. A couple passed by in the forest, and a cool summer wind blew the woman's veil, which made the robber Tajomaru, who was resting on the roadside, be very excited and determined to get the woman. But at the time he didn't want to kill the woman's husband. So he followed the couple and set up a scam to deceive the husband into a secluded place and tie it up. When he returned to the woman to tell her that her husband had been bitten by a poisonous snake, the worried look on the woman's face made him jealous. He took the woman to the place where the man was bound, and raped the woman in front of her husband. In ancient Japanese society where patriarchy was extremely developed, women were faced with the question of which man to choose, and the doubts in the story also came from here. The final result was that the husband was killed, the woman was found in a nunnery, and Daxiang was killed. Maru was also brought to court for being poisoned by drinking stream water.
The movie actually has a double narrator. On the first floor is the sad and burly middle-aged man in the ruined temple of Rashomon. His narration also includes the narration of the deceased represented by the woman, Tajomaru, and witches in court. In the narration of these protagonists, the theme of the film can be highlighted. The truth that each person describes is different, but the expression on the face of each person when he tells it is so sincere that no one can doubt it.
The first is Tajomaru. He is a lovely character, very pure and without scheming. From what the middle-aged man recounted later, when he begged a woman to follow him to be his "hundred family", he said, "I am a person who has evil thoughts and follows them." This kind of simple life philosophy, there is no division of good and evil in his soul, from his own understanding, it is probably all evil. But it is this pure evil that makes him not need to pay attention to the choice between good and evil, because there is no good element in the soul for him to choose. Such a person, such a way of life, seems to be more easily forgiven than those who know what good is but still do evil, and it is conceivable that after he has been thoroughly educated by good, he will be more easily changed than others . Everyone is a piece of paper. A person with good and evil in his personality is like a paper with all kinds of colors. A person who is completely white without any color on the paper, that is, a person who is pure and kind, does not exist, because As long as we survive in society, in order to obtain the necessary benefits, we must be contaminated by evil. In fact, people who are purely evil should not exist, because living in the same society also inevitably brings me into contact with various ethics and morals of the society, which is commonly referred to as goodness. Even Tajomaru, in the middle-aged man's narration, knew that when a woman asked him to kill her husband, the husband would punish such a wife, and this was the mark of society. If there is a pure evil person, it is like a pure black paper, which can also be painted, or it is also feasible to paint it all white.
When Tajomaru told the story, he kept emphasizing that he actually did not want to kill her husband. First, the woman begged him, "Either you die, or my husband dies, someone of you must die. It's worse than death to be embarrassed in front of two men. I'll go with the one who survives." So he sent off. up the man's bondage. Secondly, what he emphasized again is, "Even if I want to kill that man, I never want to kill him with despicable means. That man does have a way to kill. We have fought for 23 rounds, and that's all. I still admire him in my heart, whoever can fight with me for twenty rounds is the only man in the world." It is also worth mentioning that when he raped a woman, the woman did not struggle too much, and later He even reached out and hugged him. That is to say, he did not completely force women to do this, which alleviated his fault of rape, and also showed his personal charm. Undoubtedly, at this time, the self he described in his mouth has undoubtedly become an ideal and revered robber, romantic yet arrogant and upright. Judging from the original intention of the film and the concept of expression, this is probably just his imagination. The truth was naturally hidden by him, and his narration was desperately trying to alleviate his sins. Although he admitted that he killed the husband, it was also his act to achieve his own reputation for confession. As he said, sooner or later, the head will be suspended above the high-ranking officials.
The second is a woman, who describes herself as the most standard template woman in ancient times. She is weak, unable to resist rape, but she is steadfast in her heart. Tajomaru seemed to be a lunatic, and after venting, he ran away with a big laugh regardless of the problem of leaving their husband and wife behind. After being raped, she wanted to get close to her husband and get something from him, but all he gave her was a look of contempt. "Up to now, when I think of those eyes, I still feel that the blood all over my body is about to freeze. In his eyes, there is neither anger nor sadness, but a cold light of contempt for me." She couldn't do anything, it seemed After being played with by Tajomaru, she became a bystander. The husband despised him and would not even kill her. She fainted, and when she woke up, her husband was stabbed with a dagger in his chest. She is the most submissive kind of education a Japanese woman has ever been taught, never having an ego following behind a man. This is the image she created for herself. There is no error, nothing can be done. She is the most tragic and most easily pityed ultimate victim at the mercy of others. Everything is the man's fault. Tajomaru is an out-and-out villain who ran away after playing with her, and his husband had no sympathy for her, just contempt. She couldn't do anything, didn't know who killed her husband, didn't know how she got to the water in a coma, and even failed to commit suicide. She was completely clear of her faults and sins.
It can also be seen that there seems to be a little bit of female consciousness in her narrative. Although she portrays herself as the most ideal traditional woman, she unconsciously puts the blame entirely on men. Men are the source of evil, and she has always been innocent. She didn't mention love, and the deceased's account didn't mention the love between the two, which was very normal at the time, and the movie didn't put too much emphasis on it. In this loveless marriage, perhaps the hatred of men has long been planted in her subconscious. However, this awareness is very weak, and it cannot overthrow the traditional education ingrained in her mind to leave a standard female image.
The third is the dead, speaking through the mouth of a witch, but the effect of the narrative is not compromised. The woman he described was evil, and the whole thing started with this "slut". "I thought at the time, but with this sentence, the sin of the robber can be forgiven." This sentence was when the husband asked Tajomaru to kill her husband, and Tajomaru was very surprised and angry, and turned to ask What the husband should do with the woman later said. Based on this alone, it can be concluded that this husband is one of the most common androcentric men in ancient times, a product of the patriarchal society for thousands of years. He thought he was kind to women and didn't ask Tajomaru to kill her, but women were "sluts". He didn't give the slightest consideration to what would happen to a woman after being raped, and seemed to think that a man could justly execute a woman like a slave. He and the woman formed a typical ancient marriage, which seems to be the case in Asia. He blamed all the faults on the woman while he committed suicide, without emphasising the role Tajomaru played in the matter. At the beginning of the narration, he kept emphasizing "my beautiful wife", and there was always a concept of a bad face in his mind. His disdain for women was innate. This seems to go hand in hand with women's hatred of men.
The three statements in court have ended, and the case has become more complicated. At this time, the most direct narrator, the middle-aged man, told the audience in the ruined temple what he had seen. Here, the woman broke out. The woman was no longer weak or evil, and finally began to accuse as an individual with a self. His remarks are intriguing, first of all his attention to women, "If you were my man, why didn't you kill this man?" The middle-aged man actually saw the woman's fear and helplessness. She was afraid, afraid that no man would be willing to Want a "slut" like her. In his eyes, women are worthy of pity, and compared to men, she is innocent. The two men are equally despicable, and as a man, the reason why he narrates from such a perspective is because of his unwillingness in life. The extreme poverty made him envious and even jealous of Tajomaru and the woman's husband, who were both men but had completely different fates, but such a fate was beyond his reach, so his mentality turned to morbid contempt. He was picking on the flaws of these two men, who he thought were cowardly, selfish, and rude in addition to having a comfortable life, and he taught them a lesson through the mouth of a woman. The reason why he pays attention to women is to put himself in a higher position than those two men.
After everyone's narration is completed, the theme that the director wants to express is revealed in a relatively obvious angle. The listener in the film is a key role. The subject was mentioned again and again by him. "What about people? There are many things that are unwilling to confess to themselves." From this point of view, it seems that the narrators in the story did not deliberately lie. out what he believes to be the truth. Human cowardice is highlighted here. For things that damage us, we instinctively block them, without the choice of the brain at all. And this shielding must be in our interest, no doubt about it. This benefit is both realistic and self-satisfying. For example, Tajomaru's romantic hero, a woman's standard woman, a husband's image of a man who can control his wife's life and death, and an ideal man that a middle-aged man speaks from a woman's mouth. These are the longings that they have hidden in their hearts, and through this narration, they have been satisfied.
The listener seems to be a person who has a very thorough understanding of the world. It can also be said to be an open-minded person of pure evil. He believes that people cannot be trusted, and even takes away the clothes of abandoned infants. The monks present fell into considerable pain, "However, such a terrible thing as just now is the first time in history." In the ruined temple of Rashomon at that time, the three people represented the three kinds of simple people. Classification. Good, evil, middle. The listener left, always with evil. The monk is a weak and kind person, but he can't do anything about the grief of the world. The middle-aged man in the middle was swaying, and it was this problem that he didn't know where to go. He took the short knife "worth a few cents" from the deceased, but he did not deny it when he was exposed by the listener, which shows that he was still hesitant. In the end, he chose to take the abandoned baby home to raise it, which seems to be his choice for good conversion. This can also be said to be the director's hope for the little bit of warmth left in the world.
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