Kurosawa's magic film is a composite of 2 Japanese short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa: One, "Rashomon," the title tells of a confrontation of a young man at Rashomon, the large, fortified gate at one entrance to Kyoto where people would abandon children and corpses; the other, yabu no naka ni, "In a Grove," tells of the confrontation between the bandit, the samurai and his wife, told from the point of view of the woodcutter. In 1950, Kurosawa weaves this tale of human vanity and duplicity with the young Toshiro Mifune, as the bandit, Machiko Kyo as the lady and Masayuki Mori as the samurai. The tale unfolds through the flashbacks in the narration of the great Takashi Shimura as the woodcutter, supported by character actors Minoru Chiaki as the monk and Kichijiro Ueda as the bum. Basically, with a cast of six and the stark settings of a woods and a dilapidated castle gate in pouring rain, Kurosawa the magician gives us four views of human vanity, excessive pride and cultural conflict. The foibles of human needs are exposed but redeemed in the final scene where the basic act of kindness brings closure to the bizarre display of greed, lust and mendacity that has gone before. For a Kurosawa film, this one is short, to the point with an economy of emoting-- for which Mifune was never accused of under doing and the viewer is left somewhat exhausted by all the twists and turns, confused by the mix of contradictions and seeming paradox, but satisfied with a feeling of hope.
