'Rashomon Effect' Explained

Roger Ebert in his review of the movie 'Rashomon' writes...

Shortly before filming was to begin on "Rashomon," Akira Kurosawa's three assistant directors came to see him. They were unhappy. They didn't understand the story. "If you read it diligently," he told them, "you should be able to understand it, because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible." They would not leave: "We believe we have read it carefully, and we still don't understand it at all."
Recalling this day in Something Like an Autobiography, Kurosawa explains the movie to them. The explanation is reprinted in the booklet that comes with the new Criterion DVD of "Rashomon." Two of the assistants are satisfied with his explanation, but the third leaves looking puzzled. What he doesn't understand is that while there is an explanation of the film's four eyewitness accounts of a murder, there is not a solution.

The movie gave psychology the word 'Rashamon Effect'. Wikipedia describes 'Rashomon Effect' as...

The Rashomon effect is the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.

I watched Rashomon a few years back and I have wondered about the movie from time to time while contemplating on the proverbial vicissitudes of life. I explored the definitions and explanations of the phenomenon but I did not understand how it is possible. Is it a lie? A Point of View? Is it an exaggeration of the truth? an embellishment? In that case how can it not be a lie? 'Subjectivity of perception on recollection'. That part kind of went over my head. I wanted to understand how that could happen.

Cut to the present. To be precise, yesterday. I walked into the office and to the left side of the reception I saw a brand new fish tank. A huge fish tank occupied the entire wall. I stood in front of it admiring the colourful fishes and all the multi-coloured props inside the aquarium. I never saw such a beautiful aquarium before. And that too an aquarium this proportion. Later in the day my friend called me up and in the middle of the conversation I told him 'man, I have taken to fish'. He obviously thought that being the foodie that I am; I have now taken a special liking towards eating fish. Flavour of the season or something to that effect. I explained. 'I never thought I would like fishes and fish tanks. When I walked into the office I saw this fish tank spreading across the whole wall and it was amazingly beautiful, blah blah'.

In the evening while stepping out, I again went to admire the fish tank and stood in front of it and then reflected on what I told my friend. When I looked at the aquarium now, the aquarium was still huge, but it didn’t actually occupy the entire wall. It was about 3/4ths of the wall with the fish tank in the inset and rectangular portions of the wall surrounding it. Now this was a Eureka Moment for me. I now understand 'Rashomon' and 'Rashamon Effect'.

Did I exaggerate to my friend when I described the fish tank to him? Yes. Was the truth embellished? Yes. Did I tell a lie? Yes. But the intention was not to either embellish, exaggerate or lie. Is it a Point of View? No, PoV is something else. When I described the fish tank wall to wall, I was being very honest to myself and what I had seen. What I told my friend was an interpretation, in my mind, of what I saw. 'Subjectivity of perception on recollection' was exactly what happened to me. I thought about this - not probably in the same words - nodded to myself and said "This, Arvind Swarup, is Rashomon Effect". I would like to believe that this explanation could have made the third assistant director understand what 'Rashomon' is about. I understood it finally after all these years through this example.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Narratives.