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| Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Takashi
Shimura, Minoru Chiaki |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Commoner:
Well, men are only men. That's why they lie. They can't tell the truth,
even to themselves.
Priest: That may be true. Because men are weak, they lie to deceive
themselves.
Commoner: Not another sermon! I don't mind a lie if it's interesting.
Four
accounts of a rape/murder in feudal Japan present widely divergent stories
about what happened.
 This
textbook case of unreliable film narration is a true cinema classic,
well-known among film students and historians for a variety of reasons.
Not only was it the film that brought post-WWII Japanese cinema to the
attention of a world audience, it also jump-started Akira Kurosawa's
career as a filmmaker. Winning the Best Foreign Picture Oscar and drawing
crowds to the burgeoning arthouse film theaters, Rashomon remains
entertaining and hugely accessible to this very day thanks to its universal
themes, glorious cinematography, brilliant editing and inventive use
of the four characters' divergent tales that are never reconciled with
each other. The ending, with the director's unique refusal to settle
for a single explanation, proves nothing other than the fact that people
always end up twisting events in their memory to make themselves look
better, perhaps even without realizing to what extent they redefine
reality to suit their own image of themselves. Definitive truth, as
this film would argue, is impossible to reveal from the basis of individual
memory, and though this cynical but absolutely convincing main premise
ends with a message of symbolic optimism, the profound sense that this
film reveals one of humankind's central weaknesses - and does so brilliantly
- is the prevailing sentiment. |
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The
Criterion Collection release for Region 1 is the only truly worthwhile
DVD release of this film. There's a BFI-released Region 2 version available
in the UK but it carries a more flawed transfer and no extras worth
noting.
The
fullscreen image is framed at its original Academy aspect ratio of approx.
1.33:1. Painstakingly restored to its original cinematic glory, this
transfer boasts solid black levels, excellent contrast and only a limited
amount of grain. Visible damage to the source print is down to an absolute
minimum, resulting in a surprisingly impressive visual presentation.
The mono sound mix is presented in single-channel Dolby Digital from
the center speaker. The restored soundtrrack has been cleaned up very
nicely, eliminating most hiss and providing an excellent soundtrack
presentation only limited by its fairly meager dynamic range.
Film
director Robert Altman provides a special six-minute video introduction
to the film, explaining eloquently how this film helped shape the way
film and its possibilities were regarded by himself and his generation
of filmmakers. A terrific audio commentary from film historian
and Kurosawa expert Donald Richie succeeds in offering up pretty much
all the general background information one might conceivably want to
know about this film, while providing screen-specific tidbits of excellent
insight along the way. It succeeds in doing what the best audio commentary
tracks should do: pointing out the items that make this film most worthwhile
while adding accessibility to those previously unfamiliar with this
kind of work. There's also a 12-minute excerpt from a TV documentary
about the work done on this film by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa.
The trailer is also on board the disc.
The booklet for Rashomon deserves special mention as well, as
it contains an expert text introduction, a lengthy excerpt from Kurosawa's
autobiography related to this film's production, and the full texts
of the two short stories that served as the basis for the film's
screenplay. All this is beautifully designed and handsomely laid-out
in an exquisite booklet.The
main menu screen presents an animated image of the Rashomon gate featured
in the film, accompanied by a music cue from the film. Quick animated
transitions lead into the following static menu screens.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: April
2, 2002
Click
here for IMDB info on Rashomon.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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