Fresh from my first-ever viewing of Rashomon (and only my second Kurosawa, after Dreams), I would agree that the ending is difficult to integrate with the rest of the film. I actually thought, “oh, how 1950s” at one point, in the sense (that I have, at least) of this certain moral air of the time, like e.g. in Disney films.
That said, it still moved me. I actually teared up during the exchange between the woodcutter and the priest—from when the woodcutter attempts to take the baby and the priest rebukes him, through to when the priest says “you have restored my faith in man” (paraphrasing here).
I think this is because this scene crystallizes a response to the rest of the film. Specifically, it offers a response to the problematic of the unreliable narrator, both in the social (legal) sense, and the personal (moral or spiritual) one: whereas the stories told throughout the film must be evaluated second-hand, through one person’s ego (as the court does), the exchange of the baby has been witnessed by two people and (to me at least) can be evaluated as more real. It has to be: instead of a kind of inner drama (to which the whole murder before is reduced, for the four characters involved), the social transaction surrounding the handling of the baby (the future, of course) is one that trasncends the merely internal. The moment of exchange between the two of men—that moment of encounter in which they have both (again, this is the key word for me) witnessed the event together—perhaps this means that, although we do everything we can to tuck into the shadows the things that we don’t want to know about ourselves (or be known to others), it’s possible to transcend this by solidifying what we do and who we are through an engagement with the world. We can lie to ourselves and to others about what has happened in the past, and even about future events, but it’s more difficult to lie about what one is doing (present tense).
Maybe that’s all that the social contract is—the belief, rejected by the bandit, that in spite of all the horrible things that people do, there is still a responsibility to uphold certain codes of conduct, ideals, etc. Indeed, the graying of “good and evil” produced by the lies of the characters (the problem that puts the priest into a crisis of spirit) is in a way reevaluated in this final scene. Even if we can not know what good and evil are, even if we can not (because we refuse) to know ourselves, the thing we do have, and which it is inhuman (i.e., like the bandit stealing the kimono and pendant) to do and to not do.
But there’s that ambiguity, too. That is, I forget where I read it now (I read a bunch of material before I watched the film, incl. Wikipedia and the essays at the Criterion page), but somewhere I saw it mentioned that Kurosawa was waiting for some good cloud cover (“the possibility of rain”) to film the final scene. It never happened (or was unable to be captured on film), which leaves the ending more sunny (uh, “sunny”) than originally intended. Anyway, in light of this, I read the final shot of the woodcutter walking away with the baby as optimistic, but skeptical. Redeeming, perhaps (again, based on how you read the exchange), but if so, then not in any ultimate way. In other words, even Kurosawa may have had doubts about the way he tied everything together at the end.
Beyond this, there’s the unreliable narrator problem again, which I think is suggested by the sense of bewilderment that the two men share at the end. Namely, the fact that they can’t know what will happen (who they’ll even be) in the future; all they have is the moment of encounter in which, if only for a brief moment, they became more than they were otherwise. One marches forward not knowing if one will stumble.
So: I’d agree that it might be played kind of sentimentally, but as I intimated earlier, I read the sentimentality as more to do with the times in which it was made than anything else. The subtlety and ambiguity that operates behind the final scene make it a fitting end, for me.
@Biberkopf, I hope I addressed your theory somewhat. I’d agree that your reading that “man [is] still alone at the end, content to the extent he is deluded and can forget, but really unable to square it with his experience of life,” with the caveat that he is unable to square it with his experience of life “all the time.” That is, it’s (again) the moment of encounter between the two men, and the social contract they enter into, that is an authentic, and I think successful, gesture to “square” this knowledge with one’s life. “I can’t see myself, but maybe you can.”
Did everyone catch the recent Notebook essay on Rashomon, analyzing the opening sequence? Not that it’s directly relevant to the topic at hand, just a good essay. Though it occurs to me that there’s at least a unifying symmetry between the opening and ending sequences.
I’ve just watched The Ballad of Narayama, another story featuring abandoned babies, re-inforcing the impression I mentioned in a previous post that abandoned children seem to be a recurrent folkloric motif in Japanese literature.
Anyway, I agree with Justin in the broad sense that if the ending is affirmative, it is a very qualified affirmation.
There is an entire religion that has had a large hand in the control of the western hemisphere for, say, 2000+ years, that is based on “the appearance of a magic baby.”
Further, one of the pillar myths of yet another, older religion is about an abandoned magic baby. Remember Moses in the basket?
Well that puts Rashomon in a whole new light. The baby is JESUS.
Just to get off the main topic briefly- I saw the new restored print of Rashomon on the big screen yesterday. The use of shooting from shadows into light came across nicely on the big screen. The “following” camera-work through the forest leaves made for an interesting play of shadow and light. I thoroughly enjoyed the film visually.
As for the ending, I agree that it is more culturally dependant. I think it had more of an impact in 1950 Japan than it does in the modern day west.
24FPS, are you in B’more? I watched Rashomon at the Senator last night. It was my first time to see it.
I see the baby sequence as the beginning of another story that we don’t know what is real. Was the child abandoned to die or to be found and saved? Does the woodcutter really have 6 children? Is he taking the child as a type of penance for watching a murder and doing nothing? Does he have honorable intentions or devious ones? What happens next is the beginning of a whole different tale.
Tracey Gill- Yes, I was at the Senator yesterday afternoon. Isn’t it a shame the Senator may change hands this week and possibly shut down?
Does that mean “Psycho” sucks, too? Every film has a flaw.
You’re right Lester, every movie has a flaw.
Rashomon had a great premise, a new way of telling a story that has not been surpassed since and the breakthrough of Toshiro Mifune. What is a true pity is that Rashomon, with so much ahead of it’s time, was not perfect.
At the beginning, we see the woodchopper completely shocked that the story doesn’t have meaning. We also see the priest in disbelief of the event that he’s just witnessed. But is there anything really shocking about a case where the four testimonies don’t fit? We are told from the beginning of a story so unbelievable and so unique that it would only be customary to feel just a little like the woodchopper & the priest at the end. The emotional payoff to us was never delivered. Is this bad? Not necessarily. But it only damaged the believability of the story.
So did the ending. The priest in tears and joy that there is good in man is just cliched. The sadness in the woodchopper when he explains why he wants to adopt the baby is unnecessary.
The excessive crying from Machiko Kyo (hope I’ve spelt her name right) was irritable. It became a distraction from the tension and the point was delivered too harshly. We get she’s pitiful to watch but her crying was too much. Maybe that was Kurosawa’s point but it can certainly test one’s patience.
It was really the premise of the shock from these two characters and the crying that harmed the believability of the movie. But as Pauline Kael said, once Takashi Shimura began his confession of what happened, the movie had a power of it’s own.
Justin Biberkopf
no takers on this theory?