This week two Japanuary staples return.
The Jidaigeki psychological crime film that dragged Japan into the international film stage, kicked (with The Bicycle Thief and Monsieur Vincent) the Academy Award doors open for international films, innovated narrative structure in a way that had been endlessly imitated but never rivaled, changed the way films are shot and edited, and its title has become the term for different points of view and interpretations of the same event across all fields of study. A monk and woodcutter take refuge from a storm under a decaying gate outside Kyoto. They have just been witnesses in a trial and are still trying to understand what happened in that sunny forest grove between the dead samurai, his bride, and an infamous bandit. Is there a definitive truth in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon?Episode 240- In A Snowy Grove