The script of "Rashomon" was adapted by the movie playwright Hashimoto Shinobu based on the famous Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke's "In the Bamboo Forest", but took another Akutagawa work "Rashomon" as the title. The original work "In the Bamboo Forest" was written by Akutagawa from a small story in "The Story of the Past and Present", which was written in the first year of Yongbao (1081). The story is very simple: a samurai took his wife on a long journey. On the way, he was tricked into the woods by a robber and tied to a tree, and his wife was insulted by the robber. After the robber escaped, his wife loosened the samurai and scolded him severely: As a samurai, even his wife can't protect himself, and even himself is tied to a tree, what a waste!
Clearly, this is a poignant satire on the samurai class, the backbone of Japan's feudal dynasty. Based on this story, Akutagawa wrote "In the Shore of Bamboos", which is quite different in content. The original purpose of satirizing the samurai class has become a means of expressing skepticism. The samurai did not die, but was killed. It uses the confessions of five people in court and the form of gossiping in the rain with walking monks, wood sellers, and chores, showing that these people came to different conclusions about the killing of the samurai:
The robber Tajomaru said that he did not kill the samurai. It was the samurai who defeated him in a duel and was cut down. He was defeated and died. What did it have to do with him? At the same time, he boasted that the samurai was highly skilled in martial arts, in order to set off his superior martial arts.
The dead samurai Takehiro told the witch that he committed suicide with his wife's knife. When he was about to die, he was exhausted when the short knife stuck in his chest was pulled out.
Samurai's wife, Masa, said that when she threw herself into her husband's arms with a short knife in her hand, her husband was accidentally wounded and killed due to her insanity.
The wood seller said that Masa provoked her husband to a duel with Tajomaru and was hacked to death by Tajomaru, but their martial arts were both mediocre and not like what Tajomaru boasted. This hides the fact that he has removed the sword from the samurai's chest.
As for the capture of Tajomaru, his own statement is also inconsistent with what Haru Kuai said. Chu Kuai said that Tajomaru fell off his horse and was captured by him. However, Tajomaru said that he drank the spring water that had been soaked in poisonous snakes, and was arrested after being poisoned.
In a word, their words are all based on egoism, and what they say is favorable for themselves, and the unfavorable side is either not said, or is covered up with lies. The film seems to be telling people that people are selfish and unreliable.
For the film "Rashomon", some people believe that the ultimate attempt of the film is to tell people: people can't be trusted and hopeless; the truth can't be trusted. Not so.
Because: First, Akira Kurosawa has always emphasized the credibility of people and praised the humanitarian Victory and moral sublime. In this work, uncharacteristically is impossible; he has not made such a work since then. Second, Akira Kurosawa clearly stated to the film critic Chiyota Shimizu in 1952: "The so-called modern skepticism... I will not be comfortable with it." Third, and most importantly, The character who sells firewood is not at all in the original "In the Woods of Xiao Bamboo". In the scene at the end of the film, the wood seller sees that the walking monk also regards him as a chorus, and the dialogue with the walking monk after stripping the baby's clothes is even more telling. This part of the video is described as follows:
Stickman: I can't blame you... In today's world, everyone can't help but doubt him... I am ashamed... I can't figure out my own heart.
Walking Monk: Ah, you have done a good deed. ...Thanks to you, I still trust people.
Rashomon says:
First, it lashes out at people's selfish thoughts. Akutagawa's original work indeed preached the untrustworthiness of people, the untrustworthiness of objective truth, and so on. However, Akira Kurosawa used Akutagawa's original work to expose the self-interested thinking criticized by the original work, making people admit that there is indeed ugliness in the real society. But at the same time, it also tells people: people, after all, can be trusted; objective truth is trustworthy. If not, there would be no need to add the character of the stickman. Since the purpose of the adaptation is to maintain the same spirit as the original, why add a woodman? The five people in the film made their own confessions in court, which indeed showed people's selfishness, making it difficult for people to distinguish which is true and which is false. Of course, it is doubtful, but its ultimate purpose is to reveal people's selfishness. It is not to instigate that everyone should be suspicious. Exposing people's selfishness is not the same as saying people are untrustworthy.
Second, it promotes the concept of eternal humanism. In Akutagawa's original work, the walking monk appeared as the first witness. He replied with only two sentences: The first said: He met the slain samurai and his wife on the way yesterday. The second sentence says: The death of a samurai today shows that life is impermanent. The sigh of the walking monk in the original work is purely a negative sigh of a monk. However, in the last scene, he expressed a positive view of life. He retorted the errand man: "If anyone can't believe it, then the world will be hell." The chorus man said with certainty, "This world is hell." But he said, "No...I Trust people! I don't want to see the world as hell!"
The wood salesman hates the despicable act of stripping the clothes of abandoned babies, which shows the existence and eruption of the humanitarian spirit in him. Although he has six children, he still has to adopt this abandoned baby, saying that raising six and seven is just as hard. This statement made the walking monk conclude: "Thanks to you, I still believe in people!" Kurosawa clearly believed in the harsh reality of selfishness in the world, so he lashed out; at the same time, he solemnly declared that the opposite of selfishness Humanism is also eternal.
Thirdly, Akira Kurosawa's title is "Rashomon", which also has profound implications. The Rashomon area of Heianjing Dacheng in the Heian period was a poor and desolate place, often a den of thieves and beggars. The humble spiritual realm of people's selfishness and ignorance stems from the lack of cultural upbringing, and the cause of the lack of cultural upbringing, although not the only one, is to a large extent due to the poverty of material life. Most of the characters appearing in the film belonged to the lower classes at that time, which illustrates this problem.
Actor Toshiro Mifune, who plays the robber Tajomaru, and Tomoko Kyoma, who plays Masha, have excellent acting skills. Especially Michuan, galloping on the hillside, with swift jumping movements, and laughing like no one else, showed the nature of a bandit who prides himself on his martial arts skills and is cunning and cruel.
The treetops and sky panned at an elevation angle, the sun's light spots through the leaves, the dense shade of the trees, etc., these shots are used extremely cleverly. In particular, many plays in the mountains and forests, where the dazzling sunlight is shot through the treetops, have always been praised by experts as ingenious creations.
56 scenes were written in the script, but three scenes were deleted (actually merged with their predecessors) during the actual shooting. These 53 scenes share 417 shots. So many shots, the group received extremely meticulous and meticulous. Some are soothing, some are just fleeting, making the whole play lively and neat, the plot is tense, the length is compact, and the characters' movements are fast, which perfectly builds the whole play.
The play of "Rashomon" only focuses on four places: Rashomon, mountain forest, picket office, and river beach. But the main scene is in the mountains. Among the 417 shots, only the mountains and forests accounted for 293 years, accounting for nearly 3/4 of all shots. Especially the scene where the robber Tajomaru is running at high speed in the bushes is the most exciting part of the whole play. The most distinctive feature is that it makes the audience not feel the presence of the camera, but the audience's eyes track away. Akira Kurosawa once said: "The photographer's job is to make the audience not feel the presence of the camera. . . When I noticed pedestrians stopped and the camera was still moving, I immediately stopped shooting."
How was the follow-up shot of Tajomaru and the stickman running through the bushes? It has always been a mystery to me. In 1988, the 82-year-old photographer Kazuo Miyagawa visited China. He said that after racking their brains, everyone came up with a solution: set the camera up high and keep it stationary, so that the two groups of people each hold a branch at a balanced speed. The camera came, and the branches and leaves swept past the camera and flickered to both sides, creating the effect of a follow-up shot in a bush.
There are limited four scenes, a handful of seven or eight characters, and a single-line plot, but the film is full of sound, rich in content, and chewable. It can be called Kurosawa Akira's immortal work.
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