Akira Kurosawa's Film 'Rashomon'

1066 Words3 Pages

Mariano Rivera
Ryan Tullis
ENC 2
March 17, 2015
The Rashomon Effect When it comes to defending their reputation some people will go to extremes and will even tweak the truth to make them seem a certain way. Like in many court cases today there are different points of views and with each point of view the judge will likely get different versions of the same story or event, this is referred to as “The Rashomon effect” where contradicting alibies are given making it hard to decide who is really telling the truth. In Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon it is shown how a murderer, a victim, and a witness can all have interpretations of the same event that contradict each other so that they can be seen how they want to be seen.
The bandit feeds his …show more content…

She claims that after she was raped and left by the bandit begged her husband for forgiveness and he just looked at her with a blank face. She untied him and begged him to kill her. He stud there looking straight at her with a disgusted face, loathing. His expression broke her heart, she continued begging for him to kill her, and then she passed out with dagger in hand. When she woke up she found her husband dead with the dagger in his chest. After this happened she tried kill herself by attempting to drown herself, but she failed in all her suicidal efforts. In the wife’s side of the story she shows that she was the ultimate victim; seduced in front of his husband, raped and emotionally destroyed to the point that she begged to be killed and then she fainted excluding herself from any responsibility of his husbands death. The wife wants to be seen as the damsel in distress that did nothing wrong but is constantly suffering. There is also a witness that brings hope in solving this event, the unnamed woodcutter. The man claims he found items in the forest like clothing etc. that lead him to the victims body (the samurai) three days after while looking for wood in the forest. Fleeing to the authorities immediately. Here the witness is trying to be excluded from it all. He just found a body and just reported …show more content…

He confesses that he did in fact witness the rape and murder. He says that the bandit raped the samurai's wife, and then begged to marry her. She said it was not her decision; she freed her husband, and then continued crying. The samurai said that she was not worth it, she was corrupt, and a back stabber. He would mourn the loss of his horse more than his wife. They broken couple began fighting as she only wept harder. The husband demanded that she stopped crying. Witch caused the men to start bickering. Out of anger they decided that they would fight over her. After a disappointing duel, the bandit won, mostly by luck. According to the woodcutter the bandit killed the samurai as he was trying to escape into the bushes. Hen the woman realized what had just happened she screamed and ran away, the bandit left the scene limping. After losing some credibility the woodcutter reveals all excluding himself from every event again.
Later in the court the discussion that was going on is interrupted by the sound of a crying baby. They find an abandoned baby, and a commoner takes protection for the baby in the basket. The woodcutter tells on the commoner for stealing from the baby, but the commoner questions the wood about the wife’s dagger, the woodcutter did not reply and figures out that the woodcutter is a thief, he stole the

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