Rashomon

Rashomon (1950)

In 12th century Japan, a samurai and his wife are attacked by the notorious bandit Tajomaru, and the samurai ends up dead. Tajomaru is captured shortly afterward and is put on trial, but his story and the wife's are so completely different that a psychic is brought in to allow the murdered man to give his own testimony. He tells yet another completely different story. Finally, a woodcutter who found the body reveals that he saw the whole thing, and his version is again completely different from the others. Who is telling the truth?

This film is often sited as one of the top films ever from Japan.

Toshirô Mifune ... Tajômaru Machiko Kyô ... Masako Kanazawa Masayuki Mori ... Takehiro Kanazawa Takashi Shimura ... Woodcutter Minoru Chiaki ... Priest Kichijiro Ueda ... Commoner Fumiko Honma ... Medium Daisuke Katô ... Policeman

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Nominated for Oscar.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/

Codecs: OpenDivX 4 / MP3

This fabulous work was years and years ahead of its time when it was made in 1950, being a work of art that engages the eyes and the ears, but most essentially, the brain. The film is both aesthetically beautiful, using amazing camera techniques, extensive periods of silence and a very limited cast to deliver the action, and the story is typically Japanese...ostensibly amazingly simple, but complex to the point of sending you cross-eyed!

The basic tale is this: a woman and her husband, a Samurai, are travelling through a forest when they meet a bandit. The bandit has sex with the woman and the Samurai ends up dead. That's it. This tale is related to us through the woodcutter and a monk who saw the protagonists give their evidence to the police (the dead Samurai through a medium), but unfortunately the three tales conflict with one another. Each confessor says that they killed the Samurai, and then we hear from the woodcutter who in fact witnessed the event, who gives us a