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The MacGuffins select, after much deliberation (so many great movies still unpicked!), with their pick in the 17th round, for entry in the Wildcard #3 slot:

Rashomon

It's human to lie. Most of the time we can't even be honest with ourselves.



I was first introduced to Kurosawa's films while living in Kelowna, BC. I went to school there for one year, and during that time there was a local video store that had all the classics and tons of foreign films went out of business. The university library bought a huge number of VHS tapes and DVDs from the store, and made them available to students. So in my downtime in between classes, I retreated into the library a couple times per week and watched all the Hitchcock/Welles/Bergman/Fellini/etc. I possibly could.

Rashomon was the first Kurosawa movie I watched, and I immediately went on a binge fest of his movies because I enjoyed it so much. It helped open my eyes to the fact that some of the quirky cinematic storytelling techniques employed by contemporary directors like Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino were in fact not new and revolutionary, but had been pioneered by master directors like Kurosawa years earlier. It also helped me to elevate "foreign" (ie/ subtitled movies) to "equal" status in my mind; previously, I had occasionally avoided them because I didn't want to "read" a movie. But Rashomon was so good, and the "subititle/foreign factor" so insignificant to the experience, that I became much more exploratory within the realm of world cinema.

Rashomon is simple tale of a horrendous crime discvoered by a village commoner, and the complex unravelling of several different first-hand accounts of that crime, told in flashbacks by all the parties involved. Here is where the movie's brilliance takes shape- each of the accounts in decidedly different in its retelling of the events of the crime committed, yet each party claims to be the murderer, and it is therefore unlikely any of them are lying.

To borrow from Roger Ebert, who illustrates that point beautifully:

The genius of Rashomon is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True, in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."

The wonder of Rashomon is that while the shadowplay of truth and memory is going on, we are absorbed by what we trust is an unfolding story. The film's engine is our faith that we'll get to the bottom of things--even though the woodcutter tells us at the outset he doesn't understand, and if an eyewitness who has heard the testimony of the other three participants doesn't understand, why should we expect to?

What a devastating blow to a moviegoer- to come to the understanding that the viewer cannot fully trust what the camera presents to him! This is Rashomon's gift to the world of cimema, the revelation that the camera reflects only a single point of view, and that that certain depiction of specific events may be manipulated, lied about, embellished, and/or distorted. In fact, like the phrase "Catch-22," the word "Rashomon" has come to represent in modern times the very situation depicted in the film, because it is such a unique phenomenon.

I mentioned earlier that I was not distracted by the subtitles one bit while watching this film, despite not having much experience with foreign films at that point. I must credit a great deal of that to the acting and visual style of the film, as it conveys a universal feel in its almost "silent-film" approach. The acting style is over-emphasized and heightened by the dramatic gestures and posture of the actors, the rain thunders to the ground, non-verbal cues by the actors are presented with great detail and attention, the shadows are accentuated, the point of view shots are made overtly obvious. It all fits seamlessly with the content of the film, and ironically, stands in direct contrast to the cloudiness surrounding the accuracy of the events told in the flashbacks. Of note is the performance by Kurosawa favorite Toshiro Mifune, who is simply mesmerizing.

Rashomon made Kurosawa an instant star, introduced millions to foreign and specifically Japanese cinema, laid the foundation for films like The Usual Suspects and Memento with its stylish gifts to the world of film, and has stood the test of time as one of the greatest films ever made. Although there isn't a finite conclusion regarding just exactly what happened in the forest, there is some resolution thematically and philosophically, specifically regarding the subjective nature of "truth" and "reality," and the very shortcomings of the human condition on the whole. Powerful stuff from a flawless film. The MacGuffins had plenty of more recent options in this spot, but couldn't pass up this work of art and time-tested masterpiece!