Akira Kurosawa - Rashomon

Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese drama directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film depicts the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses, including the bandit/rapist, the wife, the dead man (speaking through a medium), and lastly a woodcutter, the one witness that seems the most objective and least biased. Kurosawa when asked by his assistants to explain his script explained “Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings—the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are.”