Rashomon and Blowup: A Study of Truth
In a story, things are often not quite what they seem to be. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon and Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up are good examples of stories that are not what they first appear to be. Through the medium of film, these stories unfold in different and exiting ways that give us interesting arguments on the nature of truth and reality.
Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon tells the story of a murder. It flashes back to the event four times, each time as told by a different person. The present-time section of the plot occurs at a gate under which some characters take shelter from the rain. Three men can be found there - a woodcutter who repeatedly proclaims his misunderstanding, a priest who says that what has occurred is worse than anything else, and a third man who runs in from the rain for shelter and merely seems interested in a good story, as long as it's not a "sermon" from the priest. At the prompting of the third man, the woodcutter tells the story - providing the interesting story device of stories (the murder from 4 perspectives) within a story (the trial) within a story (the men at the gate). The tale he tells revolves around a bandit, Tajomaru, who has attacked a couple wandering through the woods, tying the husband up and forcing himself on the wife. The woodcutter found the husband dead in the forest, but what actually happened between these people is inconclusive. Tajomaru, the wife, the husband (through a medium), and the woodcutter all present different and irreconcilable versions of the events in question to the authorities.
The first version, as told by Tajomaru, portrays him in a brave light. It has him taking the woman and falling in love with her. He fights a duel with the husband, displaying dazzling swordsmanship, and kills him. Tajomaru's story seems plausible until the wife tells her story. In her version, she is violated and then rejected by her husband because of her violation. The film is not terribly clear on how the husband dies in this version. The husband is next to tell his version of the story, and it is again wildly divergent. His version has the woman begging Tajomaru to take her with him and to kill the husband. This causes Tajomaru to reject the woman and free the husband. The husband claims that he took his own life and that someone stole an expensive dagger from his b...
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...uld be a bush. The film ends with Thomas watching some white faced students mime at playing imaginary tennis. Interested, he watches and even begins to participate with them, throwing back the imaginary ball when it bounces out of the court. And in the last scene, we see that he has disappeared from where he was standing. This is Antonioni's final thought, that everything shown is unreal, that there is no truth to be established here. The harder we seek for truth, the less there is to discover.
Both films give us intriguing insights into the nature of truth. From Rashomon we see the argument that absolute truth cannot be discovered, that the notion of truth itself is a decaying thing. Kurosawa seems to argue that truth may in fact be a relative thing and that a whole truth, a pure truth can never be discovered. Antonioni's Blowup seems to argue that truth is like Thomas's blow up - to fix upon and blow up a piece of reality, serves only to bring it into greater abstraction, and perhaps further from the truth. In both of these stories, things are not what they first appear to be, and when they are examined to discover the truth, it escapes us, perhaps because of the very attempt.
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
Films are designed for numerous purposes, some entertain, frighten, enlighten, educate, inspire, and most make us think about the world we live in. This paper will be focused on the cinematic interpretation of the film "Stepping Razor Red X", the Peter Tosh Story. The makers of a film from the writer, director, cinematographer and the art director, design, and conceptualize what they want the viewer to see.
During the opening six minutes of Nicholas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now, the viewer experiences a dynamic mixture of film techniques that form the first part of the narrative. Using metaphor and imagery, Roeg constructs a vivid and unique portrayal of his parallel storyline. The opening six minutes help set up a distinct stylistic premise. In contrast to a novel or play, the sequence in Don’t Look Now is only accessible through cinema because it allows the viewer to interact with the medium and follow along with the different camera angles. The cinematography and music also guide the viewer along, and help project the characters’ emotions onto the audience because they change frequently. The film techniques and choppy editing style used in Don’t Look Now convey a sense of control of the director over the audience and put us entirely at his mercy, because we have to experience time and space as he wants us to as opposed to in an entirely serial manner.
Multiple perspective of any kind requires a unique way of telling a story. Especially from individuals and different viewpoints on the same event. This story gives the audience seven narrators that tell each their side of the matter in the same event and all seem to contradict themselves. This is an interesting plot device from which inconsistent testimonies of the same experience can be shown and looked at. Which narrator is true, which narrator is telling a lie; it is curious to read the differences and some of the same “facts” reported by these witnesses? How can their stories are based on truth and where are the lies. Again, there is a wider range to these individual stories share. Namely who did it,
A set of practices concerning the narrative structure compose the classical Hollywood Paradigm. These conventions create a plot centering around a character who undergoes a journey in an attempt to achieve some type of goal (). By giving the central character more time on screen, the film helps the audience to not only understand the character’s motivation but also empathize with his/her emotional state. Additionally, some antagonistic force creates conflict with the main character, preventing immediate success(). Finally, after confronting the antagonist, the main character achieves his or her goal along with growing emotionally(). This proven structure creates a linear and relatively easily followed series of events encompassing the leading character and a goal.
...us on deadly revenge. In each case, a retribution that is carried out in a cruel and callous fashion. The men fulfilling these actions are cold, calculating, and contemplative. They have painstakingly endeavored to seek retribution against what has plagued them: Fortunato and his insults to the Montresor and the old man’s piercing, chilling eye for the man from “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Driven to the point of madness by their own obsessions, they plot to murder their offenders. The tales are told each by the man who has indeed committed the crime. Each man’s insanity becomes more and more clear as they narrate confession; the Montresor with the unfailing ease with which he dictates his account and the man from “The Tell-Tale Heart” with his jagged and rough delivery. Their distinct mental instability calls into question to reliability of the report they give.
An individual 's perspective can dominate their perception of events. This becomes evident when a story has been recollected by numerous spectators. Gathering the same story from multiple perspectives can be very challenging or very simple. It can cause a true story to fall victim of distortion or it can simply cause the true story to become more clear. This dilemma had been portrayed by numerous individuals including, William Faulkner in his novel, “As I Lay Dying” or the film “Rashomon”, directed by Akira Kurosawa. “As I Lay Dying” and “Rashomon” both contain multiple perspectives, telling their accounts of the same story, however in “Rashomon” the truth only becomes more concealed as the movie goes on, while in “As I Lay Dying”, the truth
This form of storytelling remains today , worthy of praise , since many useless dialogues are worth something to make us believe . Welles convinces us without saying anything . Why Citizen Kane is considered one of the movies that live in the pantheon of cinema. For all that Citizen Kane is a consistent work in all its terms , and therefore will remain the most influential work in the film world . So what I did was to actualiz...
Zimmerman takes Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”, in a an oratory form of a defense plea. Zimmerman goes through the complexity of the writing and explains rather than this being a story it is a defense plea trying to convince the reader that the narrator is actually a mentally deranged man. He goes through the different steps in a defense statement and correlates each part to the story.
Each film has a distinct purpose associated with it. Whether this purpose is as simple as teaching children a valuable lesson or as complex as criticizing a society’s barriers, there are explicit goals which must be discerningly conveyed. There are specific elements to filmmaking which are designed to contribute to the goals set forth when making a film. Such elements include what would be considered “aesthetics of astonishment,” or striking images, editing conflict and other techniques associated with montage filmmaking. Each of these techniques imprint a thought or logic on a film – a kind of “watermark” – that pushes the film itself towards the accomplishment of the original goals. Regardless of the need for the completion of these “higher goals”, a director’s ability to keep a viewer’s undivided attention is crucial to the success of a film. Each viewer must remain fascinated from start to finish by the plot and characters, or he will lose interest in the film. So, when a film relies on a strong narrative base to keep its audience captivated, there is little room for variation from the elements which depict the story best. Striking montage images or techniques, if not carefully placed, can have a tendency to take the viewer’s eye from the progression of the narrative and turn their thought to something else.
Inception remains one of the most complex and deeply engaging narratives of this century. By defying traditional filmmaking, Nolan crafts a stunning cinema masterpiece that plays with the human subconscious. Equally, he provides audiences with the question of whether their reality is true, or perhaps the world they know is a dream. Paralleling the film’s ambiguous ending, the line between reality and the dream world is blurred due to the exceptional strategies Nolan and his team utilize. Mise-en-scéne elements of setting, brilliant cinematography, and profound editing techniques institute the film’s prevailing narrative form and motifs. Many film directors manipulate the concept of fantasy versus reality, but instead of providing a mundane exposition, fantasy becomes the new reality in Inception.
The films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa have had wide ranging influence over contemporary films, with his ronin films Seven Samurai and Yojimbo influencing countless westerns and mob movies. Arguably, however, Rashomon has been the most instrumental of all Kurosawa’s films because it asks a question that lies near the heart of all cinema: what is reality? Today, any consumer of television or cinema has seen various permutations of the plot of Rashomon numerous times, probably without realizing. In the film, a rape and consequent murder are told five different times, by a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who seems to have witnessed the event, a bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who committed the rape, the wife of a samurai (Machiko Kyo) who was raped, and the ghost of the samurai (Masayuki Mori), who is channeled by a medium after his murder. In each telling, the viewer is presented with five realities that, through the use of various frame stories, are totally incompatible with one another. Throughout, Rashomon is a study in simplicity. The beautiful yet frugal cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa and the minimalist plot, skillfully directed by Kurosawa, force the viewer to contend with two dissonant notions: that everything they have seen is real, but that none of it can be true.
...verything around us is made by our actions. Positive or negative they cause an effect that will ultimately lead to a different story base on how we interpret life. Narrative elements are used as a bridge by the directors in their film to create any master plot that is currently known. Any modification at any narrative element used by the director at important moments inside the story can help you portray a different master plot. This used of narrative elements can be best described as an ever changing process that takes place inside an individual’s head. Depending on the individual that may be exposed to those narrative elements can create different meanings. This new interpretation can be different for everyone. We have to be aware that one change in the surface scenery can lead to many ideal outcomes in our minds and that is the main power the audience has.
Most of the characters in the story have ambiguous tales, but the statement of the woman who has come to the Shimizu temple, also known as the wife of the murdered man, is one of the most controversial. Based on the information from the testimonies of the dead husband and Tajomaru, its deduced she was violated in some way by Tajomaru. She goes through traumatic events that make her account untrustworthy. For example, she gives a radically, contradicting detail about her husband on page 5, “Beneath the cold contempt in his eye, there was hatred. Shame, grief, and anger...I don’t know how to express my heart at that time”. Contrary, her mother, describes her son-in-law “of gentle disposition, so I am sure he did nothing to provoke the anger of
It is a story that provides the ultimate explanation of how two different people who are witnesses to a crime give completely different psychological recollections of the same event. The author reminds us that truth depends on the telling. Someone must step forward and tell that truth.