Rashomon

Thursday night in Becker Hall, I watched the film "Rashomon" which is said to be one of Akira Kurosawa best films. From all the films that has been shown of Kurosawas, "Rashomon" is probably the most unique or at least the most unique in its day. All this film is about is one scene, a murder that takes place in the woods. The murder keeps being retold by different eyewitnesses in their pursuit to explaining how this murder came to be and each eyewitness tells the story a little different from each other. Back in the day, I'm sure this technique of storytelling would have been pretty ingenious. If you think about it, it's pretty remarkable how he (Kurosawa) was able to make a full movie on only one scene and keep his audience entertained. But there is one thing that I'm not too impressed with, in the events leading to the murder, the bandit and the male victim were sword fighting to the death. That one thing I'm talking about is the two swordsman and their ability to fight. When they would fight, it was as if all their motor skills, like their ability to run, their accuracy in aiming, or just to stand in general, seem to have been taken away from them. Every move they made was way over exaggerated. Watching this fight was more comical then it was dramatic or suspenseful, which I doubt that was Kurosawa intentions. But in his defense, the film industry being so new and all, I'm sure that was top-of-the-line acting back in its day. To me, out of every Kurosawa film I watched so far, "Rashomon" would probably be my favorite.