Rashomon as Twin Peaks Cinema #20 - Disordered Stories (podcast)

When focusing on "disordered stories" - the theme of the Twin Peaks Cinema season/miniseries that closes this month after episodes on Back to the Future Part II and The Vanishing - it's hard to avoid the granddaddy of them all, Akira Kurosawa's gleaming prism Rashomon (1950). The investigation of a woodland rape/murder from the perspective of the three participants (even the one who diad) is capped by a surprise fourth point of view which throws all of the others into relief. Who is telling the truth? The bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who presents a boastful, fairly one-dimensional portrait of conflict? The dead husband (Masayuki Mori), conveyed through a medium in contact with the other side, who focuses almost entirely on his wife's "betrayal"? The wife (Machiko Kyō) whose version of events both condemns and exculpates herself by the standards of the day? Or the woodsmen (Takashi Shimura) who drags all of the self-mythologizing figures down to earth? Is even he implicated in the surrounding crimes? The first part of this podcast reads an older essay on the film to establish its narrative and themes before I offer newer reflections emphasizing the way this story, and particularly its telling, relate to Twin Peaks. There are certainly similarities within the world of the two works: setting, character, and particularly the way that this fragmented reality is rooted in the trauma of a woman victimized by powerful men (and determined to assert her presence despite their power). But the most striking connections may be how the storytelling elements *within* Rashomon are mirrored by meta elements *around* Twin Peaks. Just as the characters themselves in the Japanese film adjust, loop back on, and transform the story they're telling, so the creators of the American TV show would shift, reverse, and expand their perspectives over the course of years.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 20

Rashomon

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

Is Rashomon a parable of relativism? Not exactly (sorry if that sounds like a relativist statement!). After all, the events (or rather, the different versions of the same event) portrayed don’t differ merely in perspective or this or that detail, but in the entire thrust of the action. Even the most anti-objectivist, open-minded, postmodern, pluralist thinkers would not claim that multiple accounts of a physical encounter, which completely contradicted one another, could all be “true.” When I first saw Rashomon, it quickly became my favorite Kurosawa – because of the lush visual (and sonic) texture and the cleverness of the storytelling. But I was baffled by the claim it offered some kind of concrete critique of “reality” and the “truth.” The point seemed a bit trite – after all, a man was killed, somebody killed him, and the different versions were all incompatible with one another. It’s possible nobody is right, but it’s a cinch everyone isn’t. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said in a heated political debate, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, sir, but not to your own facts!”

A Violent Release 1949 - 1952 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 9

The ninth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films.
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 9: A Violent Release"

A Violent Release

From the Russian A-bomb explosion to the Korean War, peacetime was not very peaceful. Around the world the focused energies of the antifascist fight had been scattered among myriad causes and directions. Clips this week come from a couple defeated Axis powers (their messages seem the most pacifist), a Cold War-minded America, and a Frenchman shooting in India with British actors and American money. Some days the chapters have a theme, sometimes they don't. Today they most certainly do.