Rashomon

The film that opened the world’s eyes to the pleasures of Japanese cinema, Rashomon tells the story of a brutal encounter in the woods outside Kyoto from the perspectives of all the participants and witnesses. Rashomon both celebrates and annihilates point of view. This film about storytelling is also a kind of pure cinema: between Akira Kurosawa’s instinctual direction and Kazuo Miyagawa’s virtuoso camera, there is almost no need for words. The camera writes the account of a gesture, enacts the rush of a forest breeze: truth is expressed in twenty-four frames per second, a little different each time.