Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon has left an indelible mark on cinematic storytelling, influencing countless films and television shows over the past 75 years.
‘Rashomon’ at 75: The Enduring Influence of Akira Kurosawa’s Masterpiece
Many films are classic, but only a few have truly changed cinematic language forever. Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) demonstrated the editing power of Soviet montage theory, while Jean-Luc Godard pioneered the jump cut with 1960’s Breathless. The Matrix and Avatar evolved the SFX industry, while Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction created new opportunities for non-linear storytelling. In 1950, Akira Kurosawa, the master behind Seven Samurai, High and Low, Kagemusha, and Ran, released Rashomon, which forever changed the possibilities for how perspective is used in film and television.
The Story Behind ‘Rashomon’
Rashomon, which premiered on Aug. 25, 1950, in Tokyo but wasn’t released in the U.S. until the following year, is based on a set of tales by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, set in 11th century Japan and centering on a mysteriously related pair of heinous crimes. A samurai’s wife, Masago (Machiko Kyo), was raped in the forest, her samurai husband (Masayuki Mori) found dead, and bandit Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune) arrested. Four accounts of the situation are related to the authorities and audiences alike. We see the occurrence through the lens of a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura), Tajomaru, Masago, and her husband’s spirit (via a medium), each time seeing these accounts while leaving what actually happened ambiguous. Rashomon was awarded an Honorary Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
The Rashomon Effect
Its perspective-shifting approach, telling the story through contradictory accounts of unreliable narrators, became known as the Rashomon Effect. Following Rashomon’s example, this plot device was quickly interpolated into every genre, from hard-boiled crime to screwball comedy.
Influence on Modern Television and Film
Star Trek: The Next Generation skillfully played with this format in Season 3, Episode 4’s “A Matter of Perspective,” where Riker (Jonathan Frakes) is accused of a scientist’s murder in a well-executed riff on Rashomon that shows how useful the Holodeck would have been to Kurosawa’s characters. Trek also plays with the format in Voyager’s episode “Living Witness” and Enterprise’s “Judgment.” The X-Files channeled the Rashomon Effect in 1996’s “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” centering competing accounts of an alien abduction in one of the series’ best episodes.
Jim Jarmusch’s tribute to the samurai film, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), gives a momentary nod to Rashomon in its different characters’ tales explaining why Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is so fiercely loyal to mobster Louis (John Tormey). Zhang Yimou riffs on Rashomon in Hero (2002), with a dialogue between Jet Li’s nameless character and the Qin’s ruler (Chen Daoming) explaining the deaths of three infamous assassins. Gus Van Sant’s hard-to-watch Elephant (2003) pivots between a succession of characters leading up to and during a school shooting, building an overall picture of the tragedy but stopping short of its ending and aftermath.
The use of Rashomon-esque competing narratives has been utilized well in many award-winning sitcoms. Frasier’s “Perspectives on Christmas” uses alternating character stories to build successive misunderstandings for comedic value. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s episode “Will Goes a-Courtin” turns a pool party into a court case, with Will and Carlton presenting wildly different versions of a pool party from Uncle Phil’s story. Numerous episodes in How I Met Your Mother offer different characters’ perspectives, like “Oh Honey” or “The Ashtray.” Even animated fare, from the Animaniacs to The Venture Bros, have employed the device. One of the best examples is the King of the Hill episode “A Fire-Fighting We Will Go,” where Hank and his buds offer conflicting versions of how a fire started and burned down the local firehouse.
Modern Adaptations and Legacy
David Fincher’s brilliant 2014 thriller Gone Girl tells the tale of Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike), the latter of whom has gone missing. Investigators suspect foul play by Nick’s hand, but it uses shifting perspectives, unreliable narrators, and reveals to unfold a twisty narrative about an extremely toxic relationship. Unfolding in three parts and switching through different characters’ perspectives, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden builds its story of a peasant girl (Tae-ri Kim) hired to work for a Japanese heiress (Min-hee Kim). Reveals add a succession of layers to the twisty, romantic narrative in one of the best films of 2016.
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A more recent example is Ridley Scott’s 2021 film The Last Duel. Jodie Comer plays Marguerite, the wife of knight Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), who is raped by Jean’s former friend Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver) while left alone in the family’s estate. It unfolds in chapters built around different characters’ perspectives, as the assault is investigated, building to the titular duel.
Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian, the current box-office hit Weapons, tells the story of how one classroom of children mysteriously leave their respective homes at 2:17 a.m. one day and simultaneously, independently, run into the darkness. Each leg of the story is narrated by distinct characters, adding successive layers to the overall frightening and unusual story.
“I was thinking what a fun way to orbit a central mystery, but tell it in this segmented way and let everyone kind of get closer and closer to solving it,” Cregger told The Hollywood Reporter, about his use of the plot device. “I just like stories that are chopped.”
And that helps explain why, for 75 years, Rashomon’s narrative form has proven so adaptable and innovative that it endures as a staple of screen storytelling.
