Rashomon is a film that flourishes due to its polarizing subject matter, as it weaves between several eyewitness accounts of murder and possible rape.
The story itself is what still captivates audiences today 60 plus years after its release.
But the reason that the film is effective is because of the way
Akira Kurosawa frames the characters, allowing the camera to be manipulated and to tell its own story.
Because there are several stories being told that manipulate and deceive, the camera morphs into each character's story.
It's perhaps the first film wherein which the impartiality of the camera is questioned.
Many films have tried to replicate it since but very few, if any at all, have been successful.
These films forget one fundamental thing: if the camera does mould into the character's account of the story,
then the premise remains just that: an idea in its infancy, explored in a shallow manner.
Kurosawa's framing allowed the camera to be swayed by
characters' words and often the way he would place his actors in front of the camera would tell its own story.
At this point, you're probably wondering: what did Kurosawa do in regards to his framing that makes this film so special?
But I want to preface this by mentioning a moment before the film was shot because without this anecdote the mastery of the framing will
make little sense
Kurosawa took Actor Toshiro Mifune who plays Tajomaru and actress Machiko Kyo to a jungle film...
Kurosawa recalls:
"There was a shot of a lion roaming around I noticed it and told Mifune that that was just what I wanted."
The director also goes on to say "when the lion came on screen, Machiko was so upset that she hid her face...
"I saw and recognized the gesture."
Kurosawa would proceed to frame Mifune as though he were a predator-type animal, stalking his prey before pouncing.
Yet there are also moments of sheer curiosity that strikes Mifune's face when Kurosawa lingers on to elevate this idea of Mifune being Monkey-like.
In fact, the actor's movement when he fights the samurai supports this. He hunches his back, and moves back and forth.
Almost mocking his opponent in combat.
So why does Kurosawa do this? In a film that works around the idea of a subjective truth & manipulation
most of this framing is done to show how inhumane and animal-like we as humans can be
Kurosawa's script, adapted from a book by Ryonosuke Akutagawa delves into this ideology.
But it's the framing that fully supports this. Because the style of framing appears in scenes of no dialogue
It's Kurosawa's way of communicating to the audience that this is how humans act
We are animalistic at our very core, lacking honesty and integrity to relay the truth.
But the framing extends further than simply fixating on the animal like a movement of Kurosawa's actors. What Kurosawa
Does regularly in Rashomon is deploy wide shots to disconnect the audience from the character currently telling his or her account of the story.
They tend to begin far from the camera...
... gradually moving closer toward it rather than the camera moving toward them. What this does is play off the idea of
manipulation - the characters are desperate for their truth to be accepted Kurosawa's camera merely acts as bait,
reeling in deceit and lies and dangling it in front of the audience for our consumption.
Take this scene for example: notice how Machiko's character starts her
testimony by weeping on the floor, only for her to be extremely close to the camera minutes later with a different expression on her face.
Quite simply the way Kurosawa frames the scene enables the characters to spin their web of lies.
Additionally Kurosawa allows characters to walk away from the camera - or toward it - as a means of allowing them to fabricate their lies before the
camera addresses them. Think of someone deactivating a CCTV camera
Committing their crime and then switching it back on again.
Kurosawa's stationary camera frames them from a distance...
almost as though it should not be there. In the scene where the priest finds a dead body at sea
we witness him interact with it, for a while, until the camera finally
focuses on what he sees. And the same applies to the scene where the woodcutter relays his testimony to the judge...
By not revealing the horror to the audience initially, the camera forces us to buy into their reaction and take it as genuine rather than false.
But the repetitiveness of this style of framing merely lends itself to the idea that Kurosawa wants to allow the characters to continuously lie.
The rule of third is often disobeyed by Kurosawa as a means of pitting stories against one another. This scene reinforces that.
 
In the middle of the shot nothing, just the white wall in the background...
Kurosawa did this to highlight the lack of
Neutrality in this film you are at times forced to pick a side because the camera never points you in the right direction.
 
 
The one moment Kurosawa does deploy the rule of third,
it's to offer a moment of realization to a character. The scene following the aforementioned,
the woodcutter stands at the center of the frame as the priest and commoner are placed on either side of him.
Despite the dialogue in the background, the camera perfectly
frames the woodcutter as realizes that the lies he is told may lead to the wrong verdict.
While this subtle realization lingers in front of us, the two men in the background contradict the epiphany of the woodcutter.
They continue spouting their lies.
In contrast though Kurosawa may also have framed this as a way of depicting
the Devil and the Angel on the woodcutter's shoulder. The priest on the right represents the angel as he believes that humanity is doomed after this
incident.
Meanwhile the commoner sits on the left shoulder as he spends the majority of their interactions glorifying violence.
But then is Kurosawa's camera merely manipulating us into pitying the woodcutter and vilifying the commoner...?This is the beauty of Rashomon.
It's unsolvable and enigmatic, which is largely down to Kurosawa's direction.
Kurosawa's framing is integral to the power and punch that the story packs. If you shot the film in a traditional way where the camera
is neutral, then the manipulation of the story would not work. Rashomon is truly unsolvable...
but still a technical masterpiece that you cannot help but marvel at.
 
