Film Review: Roshomon

Roshomon

Oscar Wilde said, “The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple" (http://quoteland.com/search.asp?query=truth). Never has the case been truer than in Akira Kurosawa’s screenplay Roshomon. In this film, Kurosawa addresses the subjectivity of truth and the many ways it can be interpreted. Kurosawa uses the memories of four individuals to describe one event in order to demonstrate the objectivity in an event past does not exist.
In the text Roshomon, the story is told of a rape and murder from the viewpoint of four different people. All four people witnessed the event first hand, yet all four people had a different recollection of what had occurred. Not because three were lying and one was not or even that any of them were lying, but because their individual life experiences, cultures and backgrounds lead them to each see the same event in an entirely different light.
The first to tell his tale is Tajomaru, the rapist and suspected murderer. In his story he was crafty in tricking the samurai, he was kind and loving in consoling the woman he’d raped, and he was valiant in murdering the husband on her behalf. To Tajomaru, this was the truth and an actual historical account of what had happened. In his discourse he did not focus on how he’d hurt and disgraced the woman or the Samurai, not because he did not realize it but more because of his particular episteme, or ones own perception. Tajomaru’s perceptions regarding what is and is not real simply did not include those things. He was a criminal, and it was outside of his criminal culture to lament the wrongs done to others. He did however, in his tale, feel sad for the woman, and offer to take her with him and care for her. Though this was outside of his criminal nature, it was well within his understanding of wrong, even for a criminal.
The wife’s tale varies a great deal from that of Tajomaru. She tells of being raped and of Tajomaru leaving her and her husband behind. Her focus is not at all at Tajomaru, but on her husband. She tells of embracing him for comfort and untying him. In her tale he does not move or speak, but looks on her with “cold hatred”. To her recollection, after begging her husband not to look at her that way, she faints. Upon awakening she finds him dead. Her story is no more fabricated than Tajomaru’s. Her experience was completely and utterly different than his. She was victimized by a strange man in the eyes of her husband. This, as well as the fact that she is a woman, changes the perspective by much. Her place in society as well as her personal episteme shaped her tale.
Thu murdered man also had the chance to tell his tale through a medium. His was inexhaustibly different than both his wife and perceived murderer. For the samurai, his wife was “never more beautiful” than after enduring such a disgrace. However, at the suggestion of Tajomaru, she betrayed him to go with Tajomaru. On top of that she insisted that her husband, the samurai, be killed. This is the interpretation of the event that he got, possibly because of his place in society, being a samurai. His episteme allowed him to only see his own disgrace and betrayal.
Finally that leaves us with the final storyteller, the woodcutter. This mans story has similarities and significant differences from that of the other three. He was just an observer with no particular ties to the situation; save his ties to manhood and society as a whole. From his standpoint all characters were flawed, and none quite so valiant, innocent or even betrayed as anyone of them might have suggested. However, even the wood cutters story is biased in some way by his culture and personal experiences.
Thus in closing, it would be right to say that in Akira Korosawa’s film Roshomon, it is shown that the truth is always subjective. Also that events are open to interpretation. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.” (http://quoteland.com/search.asp?query=truth)