Over the Hills and Far Away

Film: Dersu Uzala
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players.

I make no secret of my love for the films of Akira Kurosawa. I’ve said before that my favorite Kurosawa film is the last one of his films that I’ve seen. Sadly, this is a trend that stops with my viewing of Dersu Uzala. This is not to say that this isn’t a great film or a film that shouldn’t be treasured. I just didn’t like it as much as I do the other Kurosawa films I’ve seen. I want to stress, though, that up to this point, Kurosawa has been a nearly perfect director in my estimation; Dersu Uzala not living up to that impossibly high standard is not at all a knock on it.

A group of Russians in the first years of the 20th century have been charged with making a topographic survey of a part of the Russian wilderness. They are led by Captain Vladimir Arseniev (Yuri Solomin). On their expedition they encounter a man named Dersu Uzala (Maksim Munzuk) who lives in the forest and survives as a hunter. Dersu’s family is gone and he has no home, but survives as comfortably as he needs to. The soldiers soon recognize that the mountain man is very skilled and knowledgeable and ask him to be their guide for the rest of their expedition. Dersu has a number of practices that suggest a great deal of respect for his world and for others; he asks for food to be left in temporary shelters for other people who wander through, for instance.

The High Cost of Rice

Film: Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

I’ve said this before, but it’s relevant today: my favorite Kurosawa film is the one I’ve watched the most recently. What that means is if you ask me for my favorite Kurosawa film, as of right now, it’s Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai). Really, there aren’t any bad choices when it comes to Kurosawa’s great films. There’s no shame in picking this one, at least temporarily.

The story is simple enough that it was adapted into the classic Western The Magnificent Seven. While there are certainly cultural aspects of the film that are uniquely Japanese, the story itself translates to the American West very easily. We have a village of farmers who are constantly being harassed by a collection of bandits. Recognizing that they stole the village’s rice earlier in the year, the bandits decide that they will come back for the barley when it has been harvested. One of the farmers overhears this and returns to the village with the bad news. The old man of the village is consulted. He recommends that they hire samurai to fight off the bandits. However, since they have only food to offer, he suggests they look for hungry samurai.

Out, Damned Spot!

Film: Kumonosu-Jo (Throne of Blood)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’ve reviewed a few Kurosawa films for this blog before, and I’ve liked all of them that I’ve seen. I was pretty gushing about Rashomon and Ikiru, for instance, and with reason. They’re great films. I have a tendency to bring up Kumonosu-Jo (Throne of Blood, although the name translates more accurately to “Spider Web Castle”) when Kurosawa comes up in conversation. There’s a reason for this. I think it’s his best film. I knew going into this that I really liked this film a lot, but I’d forgotten exactly why, and exactly how damn much I really like this film.

To wrap this film up in a nutshell, this is Kurosawa’s take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Pretty much anything that happens in Macbeth happens here, with the main difference being that it takes place in feudal Japan, which means there’s a ton of samurai running around. Macbeth is already really bloody, and when you add in a bunch of samurai it’s only going to get bloodier (and thus far more awesome). It’s possible that you are not familiar with Macbeth. If that’s the case, first, shame on you. Go read it. Second, I’ll give you a quick-and-dirty on the story as told by Kurosawa.

We open with a feudal lord being besieged by his enemies. The tides of battle do not favor him and his various fortresses are being assaulted. However, suddenly, hope dawns. Miki (Minoru Chiaki), the commander of the second fortress, is fighting back. Better, Washizu (legendary actor Toshiro Mifune), commander of the first fortress is routing the enemy. Victory comes in the hands of these two men, and for their valor, they are summoned to the notorious Spider Web Castle. It is called this because it is in the heart of Spider Web Forest, so named because of its twisting, complicated paths that are a significant part of the castle’s defenses.

Washizu and Miki get lost in the forest and come across an evil spirit spinning thread. He tells them that their fate is that Washizu will be named commander of the garrison—a huge honor—and that Miki will be promoted to commander of the first fortress. Additionally, he tells them that Washizu will someday command Spider Web Castle itself, and that Miki’s son is destined to rule after. They aren’t sure that they can believe these tidings, but when they do finally reach the castle, they receive the promotions that were foretold.

And now, as the saying goes, shit gets real. Washizu’s wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada), in a particularly passive-aggressive manner, tells her husband that if he is to command Spider Web Castle, the best way is to kill the great lord. After all, the great lord will certainly kill him if he discovers Washizu’s ambition to rule. And, she questions how much Miki can be trusted, since he has a share in this destiny as well. Washizu doesn’t want to listen, but fate intervenes. The great lord comes to the garrison to stay, as he is planning an offensive against the enemy who attacked at the start of the film. For this attack, he gives Washizu the honor of leading the charge, with Miki to command Spider Web Castle itself.

Sounds like an honor, but it’s immediately twisted by Asaji, who says that this is merely a ruse. Put Washizu at the head of the attack, and he is certain to be killed, allowing Miki to usurp the position. Slowly, a plot is hatched, and Washizu kills the great lord, laying the blame at the feet of another samurai leader. It doesn’t really fool anybody, but Miki seems to go along with this in return for having his son named as heir.

And then the wheels come off. Asaji slowly starts to go insane and Washizu begins to become overwhelmed with paranoia and fear. He begins seeing ghosts, and has Miki assassinated to prevent further betrayal. More and more, he confines himself to the castle where he rules, and more and more on the outside, his enemies start to confer with each other and plan to remove Washizu, causing the new great lord to seek the counsel of the forest spirit again. Any more than this would go into spoiler territory, and it’s not worth the risk. Really, if you don’t know what happens in Macbeth, you should find out for yourself, not by having me spit it out for you.

There is very much to love in this film. Mifune, of course, is terrific as always. He goes through a number of mood changes, and he plays them all believably. Particularly at the end, when his madness is growing, he is especially effective. It helps greatly that Mifune looks the part of a samurai lord; he’s believable on its face. He expresses equal parts fear, rage, and insanity in the second half of the film, frequently all at once, and most effectively in the banquet scene. Here, he encounters Miki’s ghost. This is a wonderfully filmed sequence, because it clearly shows us that only Washizu sees the ghost. It can thus be interpreted any number of ways—his guilt, perhaps, or maybe he truly is seeing the ghost because he ordered the assassination.

The best part of the film, aside from the impressive hail of arrows at the end, though, is Asaji. She is almost unique in film. With her heavy kimono and eyebrows painted high on her forehead, there is a real sense that she is very much an evil spirit, too. She is always calm and calculating (except at the end), offering her terrible advice with a sort of studied practice. She moves slowly and deliberately for much of the film, a fact that only adds to the dream-like nature of her performance. More than that, she’s so plainly wicked that it’s almost impossible not to respect her based on that alone.

If I had two wishes regarding this film, they’d be easy to make. First, while I love the crisp black-and-white of this film, I’d also love to see it in color. There’s a unique pageantry to the samurai costumes and pennants, and to have those in color would be great. Second, early in the film, Miki and Washizu are lost in the forest. This sequence, while only a couple of minutes long, gets tedious. The two ride up in a fog, stop their horses, then ride off in a different direction. Then again. Then again. Then again. I understand why this happens—since it comes after the encounter with the spirit, there is a sense of the pair needing to get back to the real world. It also emphasizes the complexity of the forest itself. But a minute could go from this without much lost.

But really, that’s it. Everything else here borders on perfection.

Why to watch Kumonosu Jo: Because it represents a high point not just in Japanese cinema, but in world cinema.
Why not to watch: The fog scene gets old very quickly.

Kurosawa...in Color!

Film: Ran
Format: DVD from NetFlix on big ol’ television.

Akira Kurosawa is one of those directors who has enough great films in his repertoire that it’s not difficult to find a great one to watch. I haven’t seen his entire catalog by any stretch of the imagination, so it’s easy to assume that he has some lesser films and possibly a few stinkers in there. Hey, Hitchcock and Kubrick didn’t bat 1.000, either, and not every Bergman film is worth careful contemplation.

Ran is Kurosawa’s last great samurai epic, and “great” is the operative word in that sentence. It’s commonly thought of as Kurosawa’s take on Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” and the two stories do have more than a little in common. There are some significant differences, of course—hordes of samurai for one—but the stories have enough in common that it feels like a natural thought to call one the Japanese version of the other. However, a great deal of Ran feels like it comes from Kurosawa’s life instead. The production of this film saw the great director aged, alone, unable to secure backing, with the opinion of many being that the world of film had passed him by. This film showed that it hadn’t.

Ran centers on the Ichimonji clan, specifically on Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a ruling warlord. Through his life, he has risen to the exalted rank of Warlord through feats of arms, brutality, and treachery. Now, nearing the end of his life, he wishes to retire and allow his sons to rule. So he decrees that he will retain his title, but will pass the rule over the Ichimonji clan to his eldest son, Taro (Akira Terao). Taro will rule at the first castle. Second son Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu) will hold the second castle. Third son Saburo (Daisuke Ryu) will hold the third. Jiro and Saburo are entrusted with these castles with the idea that should Taro need them, they will follow his lead.

While it seems like a nice plan at first, it immediately goes to smash. Both Taro and Jiro are ambitious and would like to rule entirely. Saburo still has respect for his aged father, and warns him that his plan seems like a very bad one. Since Lord Hidetora gained his position through ulterior means, expecting his sons to act together seems like insanity. Hidetora immediately banishes his son from his lands, and follows that banishment up with another. Also forced to leave is Tango (Masayuki Yui), his servant, because he dares to tell the Lord that Saburo is right.

Things go well for Saburo, though, since he is adopted into the house of Fujimaki. Things don’t go so well for Hidetora. Immediately, the scheming begins. Taro’s wife Kaede (Mieko Harada) tells Taro that he should be the Great Lord, and Taro forces his father to sign a compact giving up all his power. Hidetora signs, but then leaves immediately to go to the second castle and Jiro. Here he finds that Jiro wishes to use him as a pawn against Taro. Hidetora has no option but to head to the third castle, which proves to be a trap. His men and concubines are killed or kill themselves, but Hidetora cannot commit seppuku because his sword is broken. Instead, he loses his mind completely, and his rescued from wandering the wilderness by Tango and Kyoami (Pita), his fool and comic relief. All of this is the first half of Hidetora’s downward spiral from the great heights of warlord-dom to almost total dissolution.

The story is a great one. We have the great man who is torn apart not only by the life he led, but also by the decisions he has made and continues to make while his children essentially fight for the right to pick his bones clean. The same thing happens now often enough when a powerful and wealthy patriarch dies and his children fight over what he leaves behind. For taking place in the warlord era of Japan, this is a very modern story.

It’s also blood-soaked, as any film involving hordes of samurai should be. The aftermaths of battle are terrible and gruesome. In typical Kurosawa style, the battles are set pieces of direction and camera work. The initial major battle at the third castle, for instance, takes place in almost a dreamlike state, with music instead of battle sounds, until the reality of the situation he is in crashes around Hidetora, and the sounds of battle erupt.

Ran also has the benefit of being in color. I like a good black-and-white film, but the color here brings something to the table that Kurosawa’s previous samurai epics did not have: the pageantry and spectacle of the samurai armies arrayed on the battlefield. While the warfare is terrible and costly, the scenes of men arrayed in armor with huge pennants swaying over them are stirring to say the least. It makes a small part of me want to see films like Shichinin no Samurai in color just for the incredible spectacle.

One thing Kurosawa does that Shakespeare didn’t is he gives his old warlord a backstory. Hidetora Ichimonji was not noted for his benevolence. In fact, throughout the film we are reminded of exactly how brutal his push to power was. He murdered and slaughtered his way up the ladder, forcing the children of those he killed into marriages with his own clan to further strengthen his position, and otherwise destroying those who he could not marry into his family. His reputation for brutality, bloodshed, and treachery comes back on him through the course of the film, serving as a lesson in bloody, terrible karma.

Ran is not a happy film by any stretch. Nothing good happens to anyone in this film, but it probably shouldn’t. I don’t know if it’s my favorite Kurosawa film--Rashomon seems to be still battling Kumonosu Jo for that title—but Ran is Kurosawa showing that he still had the ability to stir emotions and excite the senses when most of his contemporaries and those following him believed that the world of cinema had passed him by. This film is magnificent and I do not in any way question its location here.

Why to watch Ran: Kurosawa’s final samurai epic, and it’s blood-soaked enough for two films.
Why not to watch: It’s also a constant reminder of one’s own mortality.

Kurosawa, Sans Samurai

Film: Ikiru (To Live)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.

Say the name “Akira Kurosawa” to a film geek, and the one word response will be “samurai.” This is only natural, considering that Kurosawa’s most lauded and best-known and loved films all center around the fearsome Japanese warriors of old. His name brings up particular films instantly: Rashomon (story of a murdered samurai), Throne of Blood (samurai MacBeth), Ran (samurai King Lear), Yojimbo (samurai acting alone), and The Seven Samurai (self-explanatory).

Ikiru (To Live) is out of character, at least on the surface. It’s the opposite of a samurai film. Our protagonist, Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) is a low-level bureaucrat, a paper pusher whose greatest accomplishment in life is not missing a day of work in more than 30 years. He’s dead on the inside, enjoying no part of his life. He merely exists.

This is okay, even if it takes a little getting used to. It’s natural to expect samurai and battle sequences when Kurosawa is at the helm. Great directors, though, can work in multiple genres. Billy Wilder sure as hell did. So does Spielberg. Even Hitchcock and Kubrick tried comedy.

We also find out immediately that Watanabe is dying on the inside as well. He has a cancerous growth in his stomach that will kill him.

Watanabe misses his first day of work in nearly 30 years to go to the doctor and discover the root of his stomach troubles. While in the waiting room, another prospective patient tells him the doctor’s method. If he’s told he has a mild ulcer and should watch what he eats, it’s a death sentence. This other patient then goes through a laundry list of stomach cancer symptoms, and it is evident by the changing expression on Watanabe’s face that he has experienced these symptoms, and now realizes that his stomach problems are serious.

This causes an awakening in this man who has been emotionally dead for years. He removes a tidy sum of cash from his bank account, wishing to spend it, but realizing that he has no idea of how to enjoy himself. His cancer prevents him from being able to keep alcohol (or much food) down. He relates these problems to a drunken novelist in a bar, who decides to take the dying Watanabe out for a night on the town. They go, and the old man finally lives a little. He discovers women who will dance with him, pachinko parlors, and other joys of life.

It also becomes evident that his awareness of his illness has caused him to realize that his job is worthless and terrible. He says to a co-worker at one point that he has no memory of any specific thing he has ever done at work, only that he was always busy and always bored. This co-worker, a vibrant young woman, becomes an obsession for the old man, but not in a romantic way. What he desires of her is her life. He realizes, even as she leaves the civil service for a job making toys, that she is desperately alive, and he clings to her as a way to shore himself up, a bulwark against his own mortality. After some time, he finally confesses his illness to her—something he is unable to confess to his own son, who thinks instead that his father is spending his inheritance on a cheap floozy.

As a concurrent plot, a group of women in the area are trying to get a cesspool in one of the poorer sections of town removed and built into a park. However, the bureaucracy (which started here with Watanabe) runs them around over and over, essentially throwing them back to square one at every turn. Once Watanabe returns to his office in Public Affairs, he realizes that getting this park created could be the one thing he does in his life that has meaning—the one act of creativity and generosity that will define his life and give his existence meaning.

This is a fascinating film, albeit slow paced, almost dreamy. It takes nearly 90 minutes for Watanabe to realize that creating the park will be his legacy, and just as he does, the film jumps ahead five months to his wake. The last hour is mostly here, as his superiors take credit for the work Watanabe put in for the park and his co-workers and peers try to understand what happened in his last five months to drive him so desperately to make the little park a reality.

Many of the scenes, particularly those with his son and in the doctor’s office, are fascinating because of how they are filmed. In many a movie, these would be played for comedic effect—Watanabe is in fact told that he has a mild ulcer that will cure itself, and his reaction is as if he was told the truth. In a comedy, he’d really have a mild ulcer, and his reaction (based on what he was told by the other patient) would be darkly humorous. Here, it is deadly serious, because we as the audience have already been told that the cancer is real. Similarly, the misunderstanding with his son is tragic, but could just as easily be comic if spun ten degrees in one direction or another. That Kurosawa manages to hold these scenes as tragic speaks to his mastery of the camera and the language of cinema.

It comes as a shock when Watanabe dies with nearly an hour left in the movie, but the final scenes include frequent flashbacks as his co-workers and peers remember his last few months and the lengths he went to getting the park created. So, while the man is dead, in these last moments of the film, he lives on, which may well be the lesson of the film. However, it may not be, and thus we have a spoiler.

*** TO SPOIL ***

The three last scenes are arguably the most important. We see Watanabe’s last moments, sitting on a swing in his park in a snowstorm, singing to himself and calmly gliding back and forth on the swing. It’s a beautiful moment. He is completely content with himself. He’s gotten no praise for the park, no official recognition, and no official thanks. In fact, the deputy mayor has claimed the park as his own, almost didn’t invite Watanabe to the park opening, and did not mention the man in his speech. But Watanabe is happy. The park—his park—has been built.

His co-workers vow to act like Watanabe-san, but the next day in the office, they cave in, and go back to their typical grind. One man tries to rebel, but is quickly cowed by the others, and the men simply push papers along their desks, continuing to do nothing while remaining busy.

Finally, the last shot of the film is children playing, months hence, in the park that Watanabe created. There’s no feel-good of the park being named after him, no specific remembrance of the man, but there is something tangible that he left behind. And maybe that’s all that really matters, even if the name of Kanji Watanabe is no longer remembered.

*** TO BE DONE SPOILING ***

Ultimately, it seems, no one knew the man the film was about, but we as the film audience do. Is Kanji Watanabe pitiful? Tragic? Sad? Perhaps yes to all three, but ultimately, he is also grand, heroic, and a man to emulate.

This is a remarkable film, and it makes me wish I’d looked at more of Kurosawa’s collection before I was this old. Every film of his I see makes me like him more and respect him more. Marvelous, sad, poignant, and powerful. Ikiru deserves to be on this list, and should be on a list one-tenth this long as well.

Why to watch Ikiru: Life-affirming, poignant, and beautifully sad.
Why not to watch: Your protagonist starts with stomach cancer. Depressed yet?

How I Spent St. Patrick's Day

Film: Rashomon
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.




















So here it is, St. Patrick’s Day, and I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate a day near and dear to the Irish Catholic better than to watch a black-and-white Japanese film directed by the great Kurosawa. I’ve seen a few Kurosawa films in my day, but this one has always eluded me until now. This wasn’t by design, but by chance. I like Kurosawa in general. Kumonosu Jo and Shichinin no Samurai are rightly regarded as classics. The same is true of Ikiru and Ran, which I haven’t seen yet. Rashomon is as well, and just as rightfully. The only way to discuss this film is to spoil it, so consider the rest of this commentary as being under a spoiler warning.

The story is a relatively simple one. A terrible murder has been committed, and no one seems to understand exactly what has happened. In fact, we are told the story of the murder four different times from four different points of view. We hear from a bandit (Toshiro Mifune), the murdered man (Masayuki Mori), the samurai’s wife (Machiko Ky), and a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura). More than this, though, because the entire film is actually told as a flashback. Three men, the woodcutter, a priest (Minoru Chiaki) and a commoner are sitting in a ruined temple (called “Rashomon”) out of a rainstorm when the woodcutter starts his tale.

The bandit, Tajomaru, tells his story first. He confesses to the murder of the samurai and to raping the man’s wife. He watched the pair go by him, the samurai walking and the woman on a horse. A small gust of wind revealed her face beneath her veil, filling the bandit with intense desire, subtly implied by his sword moving from point down to point up after she has ridden past. He tricks the samurai by telling him of a hidden cache of weapons nearby. Once the two are isolated, he overpowers the samurai, ties him up, and returns to the wife. He takes her back to her husband, still tied to a pine tree, and there he has his way with the woman in full view of her husband. She, shamed by this, asks Tajomaru to release her husband. The two fight, and Tajomaru bests the samurai, killing him.

Tajomaru is a fascinating character and a creation of Mifune’s genius. His frantic laugh and constant slapping at insects paints him as both on the border between sanity and insanity as well as something dirty and foul. The others ignore the insects—or are perhaps ignored by them—while Tajomaru constantly slaps at them and scratches. It’s also worth noting that in his version of the story, the wife essentially consents to the rape after a few moments. The samurai also tends to retreat from attack and swings wildly, making him something considerably less than the typical image of a fierce warrior. It is no mistake that the battle between the two resembles the battle between Tajomaru and the samurai’s wife.

We get the wife’s story next. She starts with her return to her husband tied to the tree. After the rape, Tajomaru runs away, leaving her with her husband. Her shame from the rape was so great that she believed that her husband was filled with a loathing of her so great that it could not be stopped. She releases him from his bonds, offers him the knife and asks him to kill her, but he refuses. She faints, and when she wakes up, finds that evidently, he has killed himself on her dagger. Despite her attempts since that time, she has failed to kill herself.

Next we get the story of the murdered samurai, who tells his story in court through a medium. In his version, Tajomaru stayed with the wife and tried to console her. The bandit argued that now that her honor was stained, she could no longer stay with her husband and she should leave with and marry him. To the samurai’s shame, the wife agrees to go with the bandit. However, she refuses to leave with Tajomaru until he kills the samurai, who is still tied to the tree. Even the bandit is shocked by this, and leaves the life of the woman up to the samurai, who claims that this mercy on the part of the bandit was enough for him to forgive the man. While he waits for an answer, the woman leaves, and the bandit gives chase, leaving the samurai. Eventually, Tajomaru returns, releases the samurai, and tells the man that his wife has run off. He finds the wife’s dagger and uses it to commit seppuku.

After each of these three versions of the story, we go back to the ruined temple and the three men. Each time, the woodcutter claims that the stories are all lies, and that he knows what really happened. After the samurai’s tale, he states definitively that there was no dagger and that the samurai was killed by the sword. The woodcutter claimed earlier that he only found the body, but now, it appears that he saw the entire crime. Instead of getting involved, he kept the story to himself.

As it happens, he didn’t find the body, but found the entire tableaux—the woman crying, the samurai tied to the tree, and Tajomaru. According to the woodcutter, Tajomaru was begging for forgiveness from the woman and begging her to leave with him. She is inconsolable, though despite his promises of great wealth. He offers to give her anything, even to the point of working for a living if she wants him to, and if she does not consent, he’ll have to kill her. She won’t answer him, though, except to say that she has no say in anything. Instead, she frees her husband and goes back to crying. Tajomaru is ready to fight, but the samurai says that now she is no longer worth fighting for.

Instead, he suggests that she kill herself because of her shame. The samurai tells his wife and the bandit that she can go with him, calling her a shameless whore. Instead, the bandit starts to walk away, deciding that he no longer wants her either. The samurai berates her some more, and the bandit attempts to defend her. She stands to defend herself. She dresses her husband down, claiming that if he were a real man, he’d kill the bandit and then demand she kill herself. She turns on Tajomaru, saying that she wanted out of her marriage in the first place, but he proved to be just as passionless as her husband. And so, the two fight, but do so incredibly incompetently because both men are truly cowards. Interesting that again, there is a call back to Tajomaru’s version of the fight, this time with both of the men in the role of the woman. The bandit finally kills the samurai, who begs for his life, and the wife runs off.

And so, the question must be asked: is reality what we see or is it what we believe? Or, possibly, is it what we remember? Rashomon asks all of these questions and provides no answers. Whose tale is the most accurate? We aren’t ever told, and we never will be told, since we only have the four different perspectives, each one completely different from the others. We can never know what really happened because we weren’t there. In fact, Kurosawa seems to be saying that we can’t know what happened even if we were there.

Rashomon is exceptional because of the questions it asks. While the woodcutter tries to make sense of things and the priest attempts to rationalize his faith in humanity against the four stories he’s heard, the commoner seems to have the only appropriate response—laughter because this is simply the way the world works and we each of us make our own reality. At the end, an abandoned baby cries in the temple, and the commoner steals the baby’s kimono. It is the woodcutter who defends the child and calls the thief’s morality in question. So, perhaps despite the extensive lies and unreliability, goodness still does exist, but only individually. And even the woodcutter is a liar, since the thief confronts him at the end. It was the woodcutter who stole the woman’s dagger, but his acceptance of the abandoned child at the end redeems him. Or does it?

Ultimately, no one is reliable. And thus are the genius of Kurosawa and the brilliance of Rashomon.

Why to watch Rashomon: Regardless of how fantastic the story, few films have approached how the world truly works as thoroughly and beautifully.
Why not to watch: You’ll never know what really happened.