> Here is an excerpt from a film review of Rashomon by James
> Berardinelli that illustrates by analogy:
>
> ``...Many people watch Rashomon with the intent of piecing together a
> picture of what really occurred. However, the accounts are so
> divergent that such an approach seems doomed to futility. Rashomon
> isn't about determining a chronology of what happened in the
> woods. It's not about culpability or innocence. Instead, it focuses on
> something far more profound and thought-provoking: the inability of
> any one man to know the truth, no matter how clearly he thinks he sees
> things. Perspective distorts reality and makes the absolute truth
> unknowable.
>
> All of the narrators in Rashomon tell compelling and believable
> stories, but, for a variety of reasons, each of them must be deemed
> unreliable. It's impossible to determine to what degree their versions
> are fabrications, and how many discrepancies are the result of
> legitimate differences in points-of-view. It's said that four
> witnesses to an accident will all offer different accounts of the same
> event, but there are things in Rashomon (namely, that each of the
> three participants names himself or herself as the murderer) that
> cannot be explained away on this basis. And the impressions of the
> `impartial' observer further muddy the waters, because, despite his
> protestations that he doesn't lie, we trust his tale the least.
>
> In the end, we are left recognizing only one thing: that there is no
> such thing as an objective truth. It is a grail to be sought after,
> but which will never be found, only approximated. Kurosawa's most
> brilliant move in Rashomon is never to reveal what really happened. We
> are left to make our own deductions. Every time I watch the film, I
> come away with a slightly different opinion of what transpired in the
> woods. But not knowing remains a source of fascination, not one of
> frustration, and therein lies Kurosawa's greatest achievement...''
How could Kurosawa successfully manage to represent different versions of the same event if viewers couldn't perceive each version in his representation of it, i.e. how does he manage to "tell compelling and believable stories"? The assumed impossibility of perceiving the objective truth of the original event holds equally for representations of it.
Ted