Rashomon (1950)

I'm going to post a short, heretical review of this much lauded film. Much as I wanted to love this film, it had a major stumbling block for me in the story.

That the movie is technically well made is not up for debate. It was a well made movie from 1950. I've enjoyed other Kurasawa movies. I love Mifune Toshiro. Rashomon might have been a profound movie experience for me if the story had not been told through such a misogynistic lens.

The Rashomon effect is still used to describe eye witnesses giving different testimony to a single event. People do lie to each other, to the court, and to themselves because of their egos, fears, survival instincts, and inability to face the truth. The film showed this human frailty quite poignantly. The cinematography, music, and acting were exceptional for the time. Mifune's performance as the bandit tinged with madness was unexpected but quite well done although at times it did veer into Ernest T. Bass territory.

Where I diverge from the fans of this movie is in one particular aspect of the film. It repeatedly showed and told the viewer that women were not just physically, but morally weaker than men and were not to be trusted. This was even more despicable because the men were shown as being morally corrupt so the raped woman was even lower than they were. Twice we come away with the woman in the story enjoying her rape and trying to use it to her advantage. In different flashbacks she pit the two men against each other or asked the bandit to murder her husband. That she was willing to go with her rapist was beyond comprehension to me, unless she was planning on murdering him in his sleep. I understand that during the period of time the movie was set in, and even in 1950, a raped woman was looked on as damaged goods. (The Comfort Women after WWII were looked down upon and expected to commit suicide and often shunned by their families.) If the director had convinced me that she was doing what she had to do to survive I might have been able to stomach that part of the story better, but as it was shown it built a fire of anger in my chest, not at the woman but the storyteller for perpetuating some of the most dangerous myths about women and rape. Given, it was a common view of the time, but it didn't make it any less reprehensible to me.

Only in the woman's version does she not come across as a conniving "whore", perhaps only a murderous woman to save herself, but we are also told to not believe a woman's story immediately thereafter.

As much as I tried to overlook the misogynistic view of women and rape in this movie to enjoy the rest of the story, I couldn't escape it. Rashomon, despite all the glorious reviews I've read across the internet, failed to live up to them in my experience.

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