Ending of Rashomon

Beginning of Rashomon

Looking again at the beginning and ending of Rashomon, how the latter replies to the former, adds another option to the possible interpretations the film offers, or best say another dimension, since various interpretations can be held at once, in various combinations, some selections offering no contradiction, others creating tensions.

The first post-credit shot at the beginning is the temple, a set so large and expensive to make. We know now that there were various trucks around it offering water, which workmen hosed onto the set to create the illusion of rain.  So a great deal of expense and effort went into creating a poetic image, this ruined temple, the rain flooding and muddying the ground, on which we see the detritus of destruction.

The second shot moves in closer, the rain moving in the wind, falling from the roof like a waterfall, the roof caved-in, a column fallen and upside down on the lower right hand of the frame.

The third shot moves closer, changes angle, and highlights the destruction, the fallen column taking up half the frame, the lower diagonal, and adds a theatrical element: in the background we see figures we can’t yet make out. Who are they?

This gets revealed in the fourth shot, a closer look, which reveals — is it too much to say with a theatrical flourish? At least narratively? — two figures, who we will later learn are the priest (Minoru Chiaki, on the left) and the woodcutter (the great Takashi Shimura).

In the fifth shot we move in closer to the figures at a side-angle, the monk placed higher than the woodcutter in the frame, as the woodcutter says, ‘I don’t understand. I just don’t understand,’ the first — and considering the film’s themes, portentous — bit of dialogue we hear in Rashomon. 

In the sixth shot, we get a close up to the monk, followed by a shot which rhymes with our first clear view of the two, and the an image of the flooded ground, creating an anticipatory space for a third figure to walk in, we will see that figure struggle to reach the shelter of the temple, the eight shot is held for quite a while, and in the following two we also see the new figure (Kichijiro Ueda, playing ‘the commoner) struggle through the length of each shot to reach the shelter (shots, seven, eight and nine). Once he reaches it (shot nine), the original phrase (I don’t understand) is repeated again whilst he’s introduced to us as separate and distant to the other two in shot ten (see figures below)

The three go on to talk about a terrible crime but what crime could be so terrible in a world where many bodies are hanging outside the temple and no one comes to claim them, a world characterised by war, earthquakes, wind, fire, famine the plague…year after year nothing but disasters?

The rest of the film will attempt to tell us of that crime, offering different versions, introducing to the world the concept of the Rashomon effect, where we see conflicting accounts of an event, tinged with each of the teller’s subjectivity, where each witness colours the truth to make themselves come off better in their recounting, sometimes lying even to themselves.

At the end we learn that even the woodcutter, who we had taken as an objective witness to that point, has stolen a valuable dagger, that he too is not innocent, and that we are no closer to the truth of what happens. And yet at the end, whilst the commoner steals the things that have been left with and for the baby, the woodcutter offers to take hiim in and raise him, restoring the priest’s faith in man. In the last extended  backwards tracking shot,, we see the rain stops, the sun comes out, the woodcutter, holding the baby firmly in hand first looking seriously at the baby then at looking up with a smile. But interestingly the woodcutter walks past the camera, leaving as the last image he priest in his temple, with all that represents of faith, morality, justice and an accounting to a higher power (See images below)

Perhaps we have come no closer to understanding what happened but human responses and interactions have restored faith and hope. Even in a world where people are bad, events worse, and trust is tested, the actions of a few good people are sufficient to spark a sense of a better future.

That Kurosawa evokes all of this with his combination of poetry and theatricality adds to the depth and beauty of the work.

José Arroyo