Celebrating Great Films


Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Rashomon

Rashomon#67 at time of writing.

By all accounts, this represented a revolution in filmmaking at the time of its release. In fact, it is often credited as the reason the Academy created the "Best Foreign Film" category.

It certainly has a lot of unusual elements to its structure - a non-linear story with unreliable narrators, and a thoroughly ambiguous conclusion. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I think you definitely have to be in the right mood to watch it.

It's slow and artful, which I think are typical features of Kurosawa films. The overblown, grubby Japanese characters make for amusing viewing. And the concept of re-telling the same story from different perspectives keeps the suspense poised.

It didn't blow me away, but I would definitely give it a second chance.

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