Rashomon

A closer look at the story

A man is found dead in the forest, and his wife is revealed to have been attacked. As the testimony is heard, the accounts of that day refuse to agree: the bandit Tajômaru, the woman, the dead man himself and a woodcutter who says he saw it all each describe something different. Sheltering from the rain beneath a ruined city gate, a few strangers turn the conflicting stories over, and the question of how fragile truth and honesty can be grows ever sharper. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, who adapted Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's stories with Shinobu Hashimoto, the 88-minute 1950 film stars Toshirō Mifune and Machiko Kyō in a classic study of testimony and perception.