10 April 2012
Kurosawa’s freshly remastered 1950 classic was one of the first of the great man’s works to be distributed in Europe, and it’s hard to forget its tale of rape and murder as seen from the viewpoint of four self-serving and unreliable witnesses.
Kurosawa’s bleak vision of human nature, which nevertheless ends on a positive note, is told in a series of powerfully engineered flashbacks shot under a canopy of dappled light and looks almost like a fearsome documentary.
Do we ever learn the truth? That is doubtful. But we are easily made aware that the Japanese cinema of the period, of which Kurosawa was only one of several masters, may never be bettered.
Rashomon
Cert: 12A
