Rashomon!

Rashomon is such a neat movie! That laughing bandit is spectacular, is it the same guy as the doofus samurai in 7 Samurai? He's explosively maniacal way, brandishing weapons, sprinting through forests the way other people have sneezing fits, burp after dinner. He's an absolute hyena.

It's super neat how it embroiders the 4 stories on the same skeletal facts. I think I like the woodsman's story best, his sneaky self interest in debasing the other two men, panting and crawling and farting their way to murder. Also, the self interest of the dead man is the most grinningly cynical. He's dead for god's sake! and yet, the elaborate charade of suicide.

I mean, this movie is pretty obvious. I mentioned it to my mom and she said "oh, with the perspectives?" and I nodded and she said something about many years ago and reverence. And so it goes. But it's so important to dwell on this! I want to remember this (i've said this about so many movies, writing this I thought of Belle de Jour, and i do want to remember that, to see in x rays of kink), to go to parties and be self aware. Because the thing to take away from Rashomon is to shrink oneself, to minimize one's ego, one's blinding stake in the every competition that is every social interaction. And happily, since I don't come across nightmarish rape scenes very often, I can try to see my petty world clearly, see clear-eyed, see so that I might live better and more sympathetically to other people's delusions.

The last scene was a bit much, to march off into the sun, to pass off the baby, to so suddenly have restored the faith of the high priest of disillusionment was all very fast for a movie that dwelt so painstakingly on the blinding selfishness of all human beings. But it's always nice to go to sleep on that note.