Rashomon

Fabio A. Santos Hernandez
Assignment 2
Rashomon
Rashomon is a Japanese movie that was made in 1950. The story focuses on the performances of a notorious bandit, a beautiful woman, a rich samurai, and a rationally pessimistic woodcutter. Even though, initially, the movie seems to be totally silly to me, after the first ten or fifteen minutes, it started to make sense. Let’s say that the woodcutter gives me a feeling of innocence; his lack of understanding the current situation is almost unbelievable. I mean, why is he traumatizing himself with something that doesn’t even concern him! Every time, I heard him saying, “it’s a lie, I don’t understand” I was about to go rabid. But then I realized that he was acting like that because he actually saw the scene happening. The samurai in his persona conveyed me a sense of loyalty, peace, and seriousness. He looks like those ancient Japanese warriors whose sword can pierce even the sky. He is definitely a man of honor, although I remained quite disappointed when he was fighting against the bandit. The one that impressed me, in an evil way, was the woman. Her pure darkness was nearly tangible. Besides, she was the cause why the samurai and the bandit went into a struggle to death.
In contrast to what the others might say about the bandit, I truly believe that he is the most sincere among all of them. He doesn’t care about telling a lie to others; moreover, he is proud of what he is (a bandit), and he clearly shows that he does his extracurricular activities with pride – this is what I call genuine evil – a child who a is looking for his toys. In the end it seemed like he was bonding with the samurai.
These characters are related to one trait, that is human egoism. When facing death, human beings don’t think twice to be selfish to each other. The woodcutter was selfish to the reality around him and didn’t want to accept things as they were. The woman didn’t even care about her husband. For her personal enjoyment, she put the two men against each other, and she did enjoy it. The bandit destroyed a family just for one of his caprices to have a wife. At last, the samurai decided to follow his set of principles, which is not bad, but by doing so he destroyed not only his life but also his wife whose fears were triggered by his principle within the Japanese culture.
To conclude, all of these features lead me to think that this movie represents the aspects of death, that are loneliness, old age, sacrifice, nihilism, despair, destruction, intoxication, madness, greed, and rage. All of these human traits together are a cycle that brings life (the baby at the end of the movie), just like a long gloomy day, sooner or later, has to become sunny.