Director of the Month: Akira Kurosawa
Without a doubt one of the 20th century’s most influential pieces of storytelling, movie or otherwise, Akira Kuraosawa’s breakout international sensation, Rashomon, represents a clear inflection point in the history of cinema.
In this riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, four people give different accounts of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife. Presented by Kurosawa with striking imagery and an ingenious use of flashbacks, this eloquent masterwork revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema—and a commanding new star by the name of Toshiro Mifune—to the Western world.
As Stephen Prince wrote for Criterion, “Rashomon is that rare film that has transcended its own status as film, influencing not just the moving image but the culture at large. Its very name has entered the common parlance to symbolize general notions about the relativity of truth and the unreliability, the inevitable subjectivity, of memory.”