suddenly the sun went away
by Douglas Messerli
Akira
Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto (screenplay, based on short stories by Ryūnosuke
Akutagawa), Akira Kurosawa (director) Rashomon
/ 1950, USA 1951
I
first saw Akira Kurosawa’s great film Rashomon
many years ago, but realized,
that except for its structure, I had remembered very little of it; I welcomed
the opportunity yesterday to revisit the film. Most filmgoers will recall that
this movie presents reality through the views of four different figures: a
bandit (Toshiro Mifune), the woman he rapes (Machiko Kyō), her husband, whom
the bandit kills (Masayuki Mori), and a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who first
discovers the body of the dead husband. This minimalist plot is truly all one
needs to know, the recounting of the differ versions each serving the
individual who tells the tale (the dead man tells his tale through a medium).
Clearly the testimonies given by all
four of these figures in the white-washed court is filled with lies, the woodcutter
declaring that he came upon the dead body long after the event; the bandit
bragging that after tricking and tying up the samurai husband, raping the woman
before his eyes and dueling with the man after; the wife suggesting that she
has stabbed her husband with her own dagger for his refusal to even acknowledge
her after the rape; and the samurai claiming that after rejecting his wife, she
seemed determined to go with the bandit, he killing himself in shame. These
last two versions, particularly, paint a truly misogynistic picture of the
husband, who plays out patriarchal and macho attitudes regarding the wife,
suggesting, at least in Kurosawa’s version, a disdain of this proto-feminist
perspective.
The final truth, however—and I do believe
we can perceive the woodcutter’s second version of the story is the truth—lies
somewhere between the testimonies of
both husband and wife. As if confessing to the priest, and admitting that he
had previously lied, the humble woodsman now admits that he had seen it all,
the rape and battle, that after raping her, the bandit begged to woman to go
with him, and in answer cut the ropes
that bound her husband. When he refused to fight for her, she egged on
both men, demanding they act like real men by fighting for her. In the fight,
we see the terror and clumsiness of both men, and the bandit wins the battle
only through luck, with the samurai begging for his life before his was killed,
the woman running away.
Had the cloud that Kurosawa sought to
darken the sky at the end of his tale appeared, we might clearly recognize that
the sun god was no longer looking down upon them, and with it, the imperialist
aspirations of Japan—filled with actions of greed, murder, and mendacity.
However, even with the somewhat “sunny” ending, we realize, in the woodcutter’s
gentle gesture of taking the baby into his arms, that he is acting against all
that has preceded it.
Los Angeles, February
2, 2014
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