The subjectivity of the ‘truths’ that people experience or want to believe in is the subject that famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa explored in Rashomon—the movie that introduced Kurosawa to audiences outside Japan. It’s a movie that’s very amenable to being turned into a stage production: the plot plays out in a very spare setting; it’s peopled by a handful of characters; and the various interpretations of what happened during the movie’s central event is narrated in flashbacks that don’t require much ingenuity on the part of a stage director to pull off. The original story, which takes place in rural feudal Japan, works well when it’s transplanted onto a Nepali setting and that’s perhaps why director Sunil Pokharel decided to stage it here.
The ‘plot’ of the play is very simple. A recently married couple are making their way through a forest, when they get waylaid by a bandit. A scuffle breaks out between the bandit and the groom, the bride is raped by the bandit and the groom is killed. The rest of the play is devoted to the characters’ recounting what happened in the forest. But this is where it gets really confusing, because every character has a completely different version of what happened—their takes are coloured by their self-interest.
Kurosawa’s film, shot in stark black-and-white, achieves its eerie ambience by the masterful use of light and shadow, creative scene-splicing techniques and by interspersing slow-panned shots with instances of frenzied motion. Pokharel is able to create a similarly chilling work by employing a great cast of characters enacting moods of extreme fear and near-madness.
The ghost in the original story, who takes over the bride’s body during the trial where the truth is being sorted out, inhabits a jhankri’s body in Pokharel’s rendition. The groom, who is a samurai in the film, is turned into a Rana aristocrat’s son. But other than these and other minor tweaks, everything from the acting to the music score is informed by Kurosawa’s aesthetics. And just as the movie haunts you long after the credits roll, Pokharel’s play sinks into you and bothers you with the central question of the relativity of ‘truth’ long after the curtains come down.
Remaining
The ‘plot’ of the play is very simple. A recently married couple are making their way through a forest, when they get waylaid by a bandit. A scuffle breaks out between the bandit and the groom, the bride is raped by the bandit and the groom is killed. The rest of the play is devoted to the characters’ recounting what happened in the forest. But this is where it gets really confusing, because every character has a completely different version of what happened—their takes are coloured by their self-interest.
Kurosawa’s film, shot in stark black-and-white, achieves its eerie ambience by the masterful use of light and shadow, creative scene-splicing techniques and by interspersing slow-panned shots with instances of frenzied motion. Pokharel is able to create a similarly chilling work by employing a great cast of characters enacting moods of extreme fear and near-madness.
The ghost in the original story, who takes over the bride’s body during the trial where the truth is being sorted out, inhabits a jhankri’s body in Pokharel’s rendition. The groom, who is a samurai in the film, is turned into a Rana aristocrat’s son. But other than these and other minor tweaks, everything from the acting to the music score is informed by Kurosawa’s aesthetics. And just as the movie haunts you long after the credits roll, Pokharel’s play sinks into you and bothers you with the central question of the relativity of ‘truth’ long after the curtains come down.
Remaining
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