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.”
Definitely one of those soundtracks that (like the film) haunts your bones for a while after it’s done playing.
The Soundtracks and Related Music page at the Tarkovsky site nostalghia.com is a good jumping off point, with catalog numbers and covers (but no no links): http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheGraphics/soundtracks/Soundtracks.html
@Jeb — I think it’s interesting that, in the commentary on the Criterion disc, Gilliam mentions that the footage of the cabin at the end (in Sam’s dream) is reminiscent of (or maybe even a nod to) the ending of Blade Runner. The ending he’s referring to is, of course, the studio-edited “happy ending” version of the film that the studios insisted on (and that Ridley Scott didn’t much care for). Anecdotally, the Blade Runner footage that the studio put in, and to which Gilliam was referring, happens to actually have been shot for Kubrick’s The Shining.
In a general sense, anyway, I find the nature of the edits to Gilliam’s and Scott’s films to be similar. They’re both very visual, imaginitive, lavish directors, but can (in my opinion) be kind of sloppy. They both suffer from awkward pacing at times, and Gilliam’s jokes are sometimes cheesy. Luckily, it’s the vision and sense of wonder that we watch Gilliam for, and not, say, his technical precision. (Indeed, though there’s something British about Gilliam, having worked with Monty Python for as long as he did, this quality of running in with loose guns seems to me rather American.)
People who’ve commented that Sam escapes (or, “escapes”) by going into his dream-world are right in line with what Gilliam says about the film. On the commentary track (from the Criterion Director’s Cut disc), Gilliam even says that he wanted to make a film wherein the main character “goes insane, but it’s a good thing”; where the escape into madness/dream is a “happy ending.” He qualifies this by saying that he’s not sure if that’s what happens in the film, but it’s what he was going for.
My two cents, anyway, on the moment at which he (and we, as viewers) enter the dream world: I think it happens just as Jack is about to poke him with the torture instrument. The screen sort of flashes, I think (or maybe I’m imagining it), right before we hear the gunshot that kills Jack. I suppose one could even argue that the dream was triggered by the intense pain (physical, from the instrument, and psychic/social, from the betrayal of his best friend, etc.).
It was one hell of a hallucination though, wasn’t it? Despite being grounded in a fantasy world, Sam’s end-dream was somehow much stranger, scarier and (if the word can be used) real than anything from Fear and Loathing. Anybody agree?
@Marq — And for Gilliam, the troubles just continued. Munchausen was ruinously overbudget, La Mancha was just plain ruined—in both cases because the money wasn’t available to match the vision. I find it instructive that, like burning his Guild card, Gilliam says on the Brazil DVD about Siskel and/or Ebert, “fuck ’em” (and then laughs). It’s this totally “man apart” attitude that plagues his production, but also, of course, precisely the attitude for which we watch his films in the first place.
I suppose that Gilliam is rather like Sam in that sense. You can hear something almost self-reflective in Gilliam’s tone when he describes, at the very end of the film, how Sam wins by going inside his head, where he’s free…
Rashomon about 3 years ago
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.
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Rashomon about 3 years ago
@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.”
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The Soundtrack for Solaris about 3 years ago
Definitely one of those soundtracks that (like the film) haunts your bones for a while after it’s done playing.
The Soundtracks and Related Music page at the Tarkovsky site nostalghia.com is a good jumping off point, with catalog numbers and covers (but no no links): http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheGraphics/soundtracks/Soundtracks.html
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Other movies in situations similar to Brazil about 3 years ago
@Jeb — I think it’s interesting that, in the commentary on the Criterion disc, Gilliam mentions that the footage of the cabin at the end (in Sam’s dream) is reminiscent of (or maybe even a nod to) the ending of Blade Runner. The ending he’s referring to is, of course, the studio-edited “happy ending” version of the film that the studios insisted on (and that Ridley Scott didn’t much care for). Anecdotally, the Blade Runner footage that the studio put in, and to which Gilliam was referring, happens to actually have been shot for Kubrick’s The Shining.
In a general sense, anyway, I find the nature of the edits to Gilliam’s and Scott’s films to be similar. They’re both very visual, imaginitive, lavish directors, but can (in my opinion) be kind of sloppy. They both suffer from awkward pacing at times, and Gilliam’s jokes are sometimes cheesy. Luckily, it’s the vision and sense of wonder that we watch Gilliam for, and not, say, his technical precision. (Indeed, though there’s something British about Gilliam, having worked with Monty Python for as long as he did, this quality of running in with loose guns seems to me rather American.)
That said, I love the Brazil Director’s Cut!
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Is it in his head or has Sam been Big Brothered..? about 3 years ago
People who’ve commented that Sam escapes (or, “escapes”) by going into his dream-world are right in line with what Gilliam says about the film. On the commentary track (from the Criterion Director’s Cut disc), Gilliam even says that he wanted to make a film wherein the main character “goes insane, but it’s a good thing”; where the escape into madness/dream is a “happy ending.” He qualifies this by saying that he’s not sure if that’s what happens in the film, but it’s what he was going for.
My two cents, anyway, on the moment at which he (and we, as viewers) enter the dream world: I think it happens just as Jack is about to poke him with the torture instrument. The screen sort of flashes, I think (or maybe I’m imagining it), right before we hear the gunshot that kills Jack. I suppose one could even argue that the dream was triggered by the intense pain (physical, from the instrument, and psychic/social, from the betrayal of his best friend, etc.).
It was one hell of a hallucination though, wasn’t it? Despite being grounded in a fantasy world, Sam’s end-dream was somehow much stranger, scarier and (if the word can be used) real than anything from Fear and Loathing. Anybody agree?
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Other movies in situations similar to Brazil about 3 years ago
@Marq — And for Gilliam, the troubles just continued. Munchausen was ruinously overbudget, La Mancha was just plain ruined—in both cases because the money wasn’t available to match the vision. I find it instructive that, like burning his Guild card, Gilliam says on the Brazil DVD about Siskel and/or Ebert, “fuck ’em” (and then laughs). It’s this totally “man apart” attitude that plagues his production, but also, of course, precisely the attitude for which we watch his films in the first place.
I suppose that Gilliam is rather like Sam in that sense. You can hear something almost self-reflective in Gilliam’s tone when he describes, at the very end of the film, how Sam wins by going inside his head, where he’s free…
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When I say "A Perfect Film", What One Film Pops Into Your Head First? about 3 years ago
High School Musical 3!
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