we use words to create a reality of our own

films are truth 24 frames per second- Jon Luc Godard

Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa, 1950

“I do not care if it’s a lie, as long as it’s entertaining”: Commoner in the film

The film deals with the questions related to truth, reality
and selfishness. 
Subtext to the film is the fact that we see the world the way we are and not the way it is.

The killing and a rape which takes place in the film are narrated by four people. 
The fact that the killing took place has been retold in form of different stories by people.
 It is set in layers as people talk about a ‘flashback’ in the flashback of the film.

The woman’s truth is that the husband killed himself after going through the trauma of seeing her being raped.

Her husband’s ghost adds to her story by saying that he killed himself after she told Tojamoru that he must kill her husband or lose his life that she will go with the winner.

Tojamoru’s truth is different; he says he killed the man only after she begged that she will go with the winner. He killed her husband with honor but never tied him with the intention of killing him.

It was only after the woman suggested the same; he ended up killing the man. The woman runs away afterwards.


The woodcutter reveals in the end that he had seen the whole happening and the husband had refused to take the ownership of the wife after she was raped. 

The woman then instigates both of them into the fight. 
Her husband is killed in the fight, and she runs away.

In the woman and her husband’s story the death of the husband is a suicide, inspite of the fact that their representations have distinct details.

Whereas, the death of the husband, is a murder committed by Tojamoru in the stories told by the bandit himself and the woodcutter.

The viewer tends to wonder how exactly the death took place and whom should one believe or should one believe in any story at all, because beneath the stories rests a selfish motive.

 One then asks a larger question, whether being selfish under given circumstances is justified for one whereas, not so much in the right stance in another situation. 
For example, when the woodcutter says that he lied in the court because he did not want to get involved, in the end it is revealed that he has 6 children to feed. 
Hence, his hiding the sword or selling it is seen in a given context and one tends to accept it as a reason enough to be selfish and thus think about one’s own good?


 A counter argument has been given by the commoner who says “If you are not selfish, you cannot survive”. The commoner too is selfish, but he does not share the same context like the woodcutter’s. Is anyone here right or wrong?

Why would the wife and the husband’s story speak of a suicide and that of Tojamoru and the woodcutter that of a murder by the bandit?

I found it easier to believe in Tojamoru and the woodcutter’s story because the woodcutter was not a part of the crime and hence would not lie by the fear of the outcome outside the court, before the commoner and the priest. Tojamoru’s story reveals his selfishness because he does not mention that he begged the woman to marry him, and instead also says that he himself set the husband free, perhaps to suit his own ego and image. Contradictory to this, the woodcutter says that the wife had freed her husband to seek respite and that Tojamoru had begged that she would marry him. Either of them could be right or wrong or both right and both wrong!

William Shakespeare had said that nothing is right or wrong, it’s the thinking which makes it so.

Did the wife lie in saying that the husband committed the suicide in order to save herself from the blame of instigating two men into the fight, leading to the murder?

Did the ghost of the husband really talk through the medium or was it the wife, who added a few details to morph the truth a little bit and yet keep some of it the same to suit herself?
Re-viewing the film, it made me think that the stories are not all that open-ended because the commoner gives away a lot of answers indirectly to the audience.

In a way he does speak critically of the situation because he is an outsider completely and hence can look at it from a detached point of view, but the way he poses these questions sounded as if he was trying to justify the open-endedness of the stories and thus give away a lot of answers instead of making the viewer wonder.

Would the commoner respond in the same way had he been a part of the court sequence or the crime itself?

He says:

“But is there anyone who is really good? Maybe goodness is just a make-believe. Man just wants to believe in the bad stuff and believe in the mad up stuff. It’s easier that way.”

“No one lies after he says he is going to do so”.

 When the priest says that he would believe the dead man’s story because the dead men don’t lie,
 commoner says “suit yourself”, implying that we make our minds up based on what we believe.

Other lines in the film almost justify and define lying as a human tendency. 
They say, “It’s human to lie, most of the times we cannot even be honest with ourselves. 
But it’s because men are weak that they lie, even to themselves”.

The resolution connotes hope as the child is accepted by the woodcutter.

He warns about the woman’s story clearly saying that, “women use their tears to fool everyone, even themselves”.

So what is reality? The film questions the same and in a way projects one interpretation in itself.

In my opinion giving away a wee bit of the answer like the above mentioned lines would itself create a reality of a different kind in the audiences mind, and is being controlled more or less by the story-teller. I therefore interestingly realized and conclude that the film, in a very curious way is an anti-thesis to itself.

 “in the end you cannot understand the things men do”-Rashomon.

 Rashomon's crew lived together for the time period the film was shot.