Kurosawa
does not give a clue to what really happened - as opposed
to the four conflicting stories. The non-linearity of the
storytelling adds to the popular appeal of However, the
stories that appeal to generation after generation are the
stories that are never resolvable - just as life is never
resolvable; the complexity of life remains. Life is non-linear,
says filmmaker David Grubin.
If life were linear, we would always live
in the present moment, but we don’t. At any moment,
we live in the past, partly in the present, and much in
the future. Life is non-linear. And the best films convey
that non-linearity of life in flashbacks and premonitions.
Grubin tells his own experience of trying to capture on
film what it was like to be Sigmund Freud. And Grubin’s
solution was to tell the childhood of Freud toward the end
of the film when Freud is rehashing for himself the difficulties
he had in creating psychoanalysis. And in that moment of
complexity in his life, Freud reflects on the similar difficulties
he had in his childhood in getting people to accept him.
In Grubin’s estimation, Kurosawa
similarly looked for non-linear storytelling techniques
when he approached the problem of telling as in Rashomon
the very complex story of conflicting interests. Four different
people are involved in a murder. They have different self-interests,
and they have different stories of what happened. It is
all one film, but it is four different stories with similar
people and similar props in each of the four stories. Kurosawa
does not give a clue to what really happened - as opposed
to the four conflicting stories. The non-linearity of the
storytelling adds to the popular appeal of this film.
In oral tradition, where stories were passed
on by being told and re-told again and again, the material
of any given story during this process naturally underwent
several changes and adaptations. When and where oral tradition
was pushed back in favor of print media, the literary idea
of the author as originator of a story’s authoritative
version changed peoples perception of stories themselves.
In the following centuries, stories tended to be seen as
the work of individuals rather than a collective. Only recently,
when a significant number of influential authors began questioning
their own role, the value of stories as such - independent
of authorship - was again recognized. Literary critics such
as Roland Barthes even proclaimed the Death of the Author.
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