...the version of [each] story that's being told is still being filtered through the woodcutter and the priest... It's their version of what they saw or heard.

It’s easy to forget, nonetheless, that the movie offers more rewards than a dazzling superstructure. It’s beautifully shot, vividly performed and is ultimately an arresting pop treatise on the impossibility of objective truth.

In many ways as groundbreaking and daring as Citizen Kane in its thematic content and technical achievements.

“Rashomon” isn’t a whodunit thriller. Instead, it’s an observation of the unreliability of human short-term memory, particularly of the multiple witnesses at a crime scene, who are also possible victims or perpetrators.