In 1950 Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" had a
massive impact on filmmakers around the world.
It also created a ripple effect in psychology
and the legal system by dramatizing a neurological phenomenon
that has since been known as the Rashomon Effect.
"- Ras-ho-mon. What's this about?"
- Today, we are going to explain how it works,
where it occurs in our own daily lives,
and how storytellers can use it to tell more compelling stories?
"- I want the truth! - You can't handle the truth!"
- This is "What is The Rashomon Effect?"
But before we get started, be sure to subscribe
and click the bell for more filmmaking videos.
As we begin, we will be spoiling the following movies.
So what is The Rashomon Effect?
In their collection of essays, scholars Blair Davis, Robert Anderson, and Jan Wals
define it as 'Significantly different perspectives on and interpretations of
the same dramatic event by different eyewitnesses.'
For example, picture a car crash where both drivers and a bicyclist
all have conflicting accounts about who's to blame.
According to Anderson, there are 3 criteria required to produce the effect.
First, there have to be different interpretations of what happened.
Second, there must be no way to verify the truth.
The only evidence is witness testimony.
And third, there must be pressure to bring closure and resolution to the event
like when the case is tried in court.
Now that we know what the Rashomon Effect is, let's talk about where it came from.
It is named after the 1950 film "Rashomon".
Directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa,
the film is a blend of two short stories by author Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
The film centers around a violent encounter between a bandit,
a woman,
and her samurai husband.
In the end, the woman is assaulted and the samurai is murdered.
But how exactly those things happened?
Depends on who's telling the story.
In fact, we replay the events through the eyewitness testimony of 4 characters.
The bandit.
The woman.
The dead samurai speaking through a medium.
And the woodcutter
who claims to have seen the whole thing.
Since all of their stories are different
none of them can be completely trusted
making them all unreliable narrators.
Thus by the end, the viewer is left with an amalgamation
of different versions of the same event.
But the truth remains a mystery.
Now that we understand where it comes from,
let's talk about how The Rashomon Effect works.
Perhaps why Kurosawa's film made such a global impact
is because it reveals a universal aspect of human behavior.
Our own inability to distinguish between what we think we saw.
"- Oh, we got one."
- From what actually happened.
"- I want the tiger.
- I know, I know, honey. But Mum's not exactly going pro here, okay."
- These contradictory accounts are mostly determined by two factors.
Our own personal, natural biases
and the flawed way our brain recalls memories.
"- Ah, you don't know when to quit, do you?"
- Everything we experience personally and everything we are taught
has shaped our individual perspective,
giving us a unique lens through which we perceive the world.
This is called implicit bias because it forms and functions
without us even realizing it.
"- You think I might go savage?
You think I might try to eat you?
I knew it."
- So from the outset, no two people
could experience the same event in exactly the same way.
"- And I didn't leave you to be buried.
- I don't know. - Well, I do.
I was there and I saw it differently.
- Well, so then tell me, Pete, what happened differently?"
- On top of that, our memory is a naturally imperfect system.
"- I've seen you, man.
- I would thought I would remember you."
- Every time you remember an event from the past,
your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event.
Thus the next time you remember it, you might recall the altered copy
instead of the original.
As neuroscientist Donna Bridge put it,
'Your memory of an event can grow less precise
even to the point of being totally false with each retrieval.'
This is similar to the children's game of telephone.
This is a major area of study in psychology and neuroscience
as we try to understand the processes behind it.
Because of this flawed memory phenomenon,
the Rashomon Effect even plays a part in the judicial system
when it comes to the credibility of eyewitness testimony.
Judges have actually referenced Kurosawa's film
in their rulings when the truth is debatable.
The Rashomon Effect reminds us that truth is questionable.
That reality is more complex than our own interpretations of it.
"- Wait, wait, wait. That's not how I remember it going down."
- And Kurosawa's film perfectly encapsulated this problem.
But remaking Rashomon isn't the only way to explore these ideas.
Let's run through some examples and takeaways
for writers on how to achieve a similar effect.
Some filmmakers have taken direct inspiration from Rashomon.
Films like "The Outrage" and "The Last Duel" tell Rashomon-esque stories
with similar plots and structures.
"- Jacques le Gris entered our home without my permission and...
- What about le gris? - He forced me to this room.
He raped me.
- I've said publicly that this never happened!
- And yet, under extraordinary pressure
and at great risk to her name and reputation,
lady Marguerite has said that it did.
- I spoke the truth.
- Let it be in God's hands."
- But you don't need to remake Rashomon to achieve the Rashomon effect.
There are also ways to employ its individual elements
to raise similar questions around truth.
One such technique is the unreliable narrator.
Mysteries and thrillers are often where an unreliable narrator works best.
Where the audience isn't sure if what the narrator is saying is true.
"- I kill Paul Allen."
- False.
"- But that's simply not possible."
- Or something in between.
"- Now, Amy needs your help."
- In "Gone Girl", Amy shares her fears about her husband.
"- Can I really think Nick would hurt me?
I'm being paranoid.
Crazy.
It's just...
I'd sleep better with a gun."
- Only later is it revealed this is simply evidence
she fabricated to frame him for her murder.
"- I am so much happier now that I'm dead.
Technically missing.
Soon to be presumed dead.
Gone.
And my lazy, lying, cheating, oblivious husband will go to prison for my murder."
- But these twists don't always have to be so malicious.
In "Life of Pi",
the narrator paints a rather fantastical tale of survival.
"- It's hard to believe, isn't it?
- It is a lot to take in."
- But Pie's fabricated story wasn't meant to deceive.
It was done as a way to deal with trauma.
"- I'm sorry!
I've told you two stories about what happened out on the ocean.
Neither explains what caused the sinking of the ship.
And no one can prove which stories true and which is not.
In both stories, the ship thinks,
my family dies and I suffer.
- True.
- So which story do you prefer?"
- "The Last Jedi" uses this technique as Luke and Kyle Ren
give contradictory accounts of what happened between them.
"- What happened?
- I went to confront him.
And he turned on me.
- He had sensed my power.
As he senses yours.
And he feared it."
- This leaves Rey to decipher the truth for herself
as she hangs in the balance between the light and the dark sides of the force.
"- Join me."
- Another storytelling device we can take away from Rashomon
is alternative plot structure.
How and when you reveal the truth to the audience can take many forms.
Rashomon replaces the events 4 times
with each retelling further blurring the truth.
But there are other structures that have the same effect.
The most common method is a non-linear structure
that distributes the plot out of order rather than from start to finish.
"Vantage Point" uses a similar approach,
replaying the main event from different perspectives.
But in this case, the truth is objective and each perspective fills in gaps,
answers questions,
and subverts our understanding of what really happened.
"- My God.
- You can't give the order.
You've been shot."
- In "Reservoir Dogs",
a group of gangsters searches for a rat amongst themselves
after heist goes wrong.
The structure jumps back and forth in time,
but keeps the identity of the rat a secret until we're two thirds in.
"- Listen to me, Marvin Nash, I'm a cop.
- Look, man, an undercover cop's gotta be Marlon Brando, right?
Τo do this job, you gotta be a great actor."
- If this plot had been told chronologically
that entire mystery would've been missing.
Countless films used the fallibility of memory in their plots.
"- Your, your, your wife hit me on Friday night.
- What are you talking about?
- Yes, yes, yes, you did. Yes, you did.
And then she... and then she..."
And Christopher Nolan's "Memento", combines the unreliable narrator...
"- Since my injury, I can't make new memories.
Everything fades."
-...a unique plot structure.
And this concept of faulty memories.
"- It was your wife who had diabetes."
- The result is a Rashomon-style thriller
that tackles this issue of subjective truth.
"- My wife wasn't diabetic.
- You sure?"
- It's more dramatic to use altered mental states
or retrograde amnesia to illustrate this memory problem.
"- I'm your husband."
- But we all share this experience of subjective truth.
"- Just like Budapest all over again.
- You and I remember Budapest very differently."
- In storytelling, the Rashomon effect can serve multiple purposes.
It can complicate the truth.
"- You think anybody is gonna take your word over mine?"
- Or make it impossible to know the truth at all.
"- The motives of the monk remain unknown."
- And because it is such a universal phenomenon,
the Rashomon effect will remain an endless inspiration for storytellers.
When you're thinking up your next script,
start writing with StudioBinder screenwriting software,
and consider the benefits of a Rashomon approach.
That's our analysis of the Rashomon Effect.
Of course, others might have a different story.
"- You like Rashomon?
- That's not how I remember it."