THE RASHOMON EFFECT: Kristen Stewart and Rupert Sanders

Janus restored trailer

Criterion Collection Original Trailer Different - not able to embed

http://www.criterion.com/films/307-rashomon

From Roger Ebert's 2002 Review of Rashomon

Maybe he's comforting her,maybe she's comforting him
maybe he's kissing her, maybe she's kissing him, maybe....

Shortly before filming was to begin on "Rashomon,"Akira Kurosawa's three assistant directors came to see him. They were unhappy. They didn't understand the story. "If you read it diligently," he told them, "you should be able to understand it, because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible." They would not leave: "We believe we have read it carefully, and we still don't understand it at all."

Recalling this day in Something Like an Autobiography, Kurosawa explains the movie to them. The explanation is reprinted in the booklet that comes with the new Criterion DVD of "Rashomon." Two of the assistants are satisfied with his explanation, but the third leaves looking puzzled. What he doesn't understand is that while there is an explanation of the film's four eyewitness accounts of a murder, there is not a solution.

Maybe he's telling her not to worry
maybe he's telling her.....maybe....

Kurosawa is correct that the screenplay is comprehensible as exactly what it is: Four testimonies that do not match. It is human nature to listen to witnesses and decide who is telling the truth, but the first words of the screenplay, spoken by the woodcutter, are "I just don't understand." His problem is that he has heard the same events described by all three participants in three different ways--and all three claim to be the killer.

.... Its very title has entered the English language, because, like "Catch-22," it expresses something for which there is no better substitute.

Since 1950 the story device of "Rashomon" has been borrowed repeatedly; Galbraith cites "Courage Under Fire," and certainly "The Usual Suspects" was also influenced, in the way it shows us flashbacks that do not agree with any objective reality. Because wesee the events in flashbacks, we assume they reflect truth. But all they reflect is a point of view, sometimes lied about. Smart films know this, less ambitious films do not. Many films that use a flashback only to fill in information are lazy.

Maybe she's crying, maybe.....maybe

The genius of "Rashomon" is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True, in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."

Maybe they are watching something, maybe.......maybe

The wonder of "Rashomon" is that while the shadowplay of truth and memory is going on, we are absorbed by what we trust is an unfolding story. The film's engine is our faith that we'll get to the bottom of things--even though the woodcutter tells us at the outset he doesn't understand, and if an eyewitness who has heard the testimony of the other three participants doesn't understand, why should we expect to?

Maybe she sees a squirrel, maybe she feels him, ..

The film opens in torrential rain, and five shots move from long shot to closeup to reveal two men sitting in the shelter of Kyoto's Rashomon Gate. The rain will be a useful device, unmistakably setting apart the present from the past. The two men are a priest and a woodcutter, and when a commoner runs in out of the rain and engages them in conversation, he learns that a samurai has been murdered and his wife raped and a local bandit is suspected. In the course of telling the commoner what they know, the woodcutter and the priest will introduce flashbacks in which the bandit, the wife and the woodcutter say what they saw, or think they saw--and then a medium turns up to channel the ghost of the dead samurai. Although the stories are in radical disagreement, it is unlike any of the original participants are lying for their own advantage, since each claims to be the murderer.

....The woodcutter's opening journey into the woods is famous as a silent sequence which suggests he is traveling into another realm of reality. Miyagawa shoots directly into the sun (then a taboo) and there are shots where the sharply-contrasted shadows of overhead leaves cast a web upon the characters, making them half-disappear into the ground beneath.

Maybe....maybe

....Film cameras are admirably literal, and faithfully record everything they are pointed at. Because they are usually pointed at real things, we usually think we can believe what we see. The message of "Rashomon" is that we should suspect even what we think we have seen. This insight is central to Kurosawa's philosophy.

From wiki - The Rashomon effect is the effect of the 

subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers 

of an event are able to produce substantially different but 

equally plausible accounts of it. A useful demonstration of this 

principle in scientific understanding can be found in an article 

by that name authored by Karl G. Heider.^[1]

It is named for Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, in which a 

crime witnessed by four individuals is described in four 

mutually contradictory ways. The film is based on two short 

stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, "Rashōmon" (for the 

setting) and "Yabu no naka", otherwise known as "In a Grove" 

(for the story line).

 What does Kristen Stewart think, feel happened?

What does Rupert Sanders think feel happened?

What does Liberty Ross think, feel happened?

What does Rob Pattinson think, feel happened?

What do the various papz think, feel happened?

What do YOU feel, think happened?

The Rashomon Effect eh

Errol Morris and The Mask of Fatality: 

An Interview by Julie Cline

This is just a quote that I’ve loved for years and years and years. 

“Seeking an oasis of fatality,”

 seeking certainty, seeking truth, seeking 

something that’s unimpeachable and certain 

in a sea of confusion, doubt, error, false beliefs. And it 

captures certainly the essence of this 

story......We know that there is an answer to the 

question.......There’s a real world in which 

things happen. So that is, if you like, that oasis of fatality, that bedrock, that certainty that 

something happened and that in principle we can know 

what it is. But guess what? That oasis 

of fatality is surrounded, engulfed by a wilderness of error, 

confusion, falsehood. ...

This explains what is wrong with justice for kristen's 

whole 

approach.