What Is The Moral Of The Movie Rashomon

Have you ever wondered why people lie or even exaggerate their lie, when they know that it is a lie? Well the answer is because we as humans lie for our personal gain to help our perceptions of ourselves and help us seem better than what we actually are. However, in reality, we are no better than what people think of us. But we are not capable of judging ourselves, so we cannot be honest with ourselves either. To perceive ourselves badly, we have some made up reason as to why. We try to find reasoning and justify everything so that we don’t have a bad image. Self-esteem, having confidence and satisfaction for yourself and your abilities, is what helps us feel good about ourselves, so we try to keep our self-esteem high so that we can feel
However, each story contradicts the others. As the film begins, there are three characters, a priest, a woodcutter, and a commoner, sitting under a shelter from a rainstorm discussing a crime that consisted of a rape and murder. They tell four different testimonies, that of the wood cutter, bandit, wife, and the samurai himself, each seen through a flashback. Although each story is different, they all are similar in the way that the teller has justified the story to each character’s personal role in the story. In each story, except one, the teller was the murderer. Each teller admits to the crime, but they blame someone else for their wrong doings. On the contrary, the one that didn’t admit to being a murderer still lied to the police and stole. This goes back to the self-esteem mentioned earlier, to keep it from getting low, they told a more interesting testimony that would not make them liable for the
We get a third story from the victim, the dead man. So now that we have two stories, which both seem to be the truth, what are we to do with a third, especially one from a murdered man told through a medium? We should believe a dead man because he doesn’t have a purpose to lie. Well from this story, he gives the feeling that he was a victim of a suicide rather than a homicide because he doesn’t think that he could’ve faced society where he would be shamed because he was unable to protect his family from the crime. He was focused on his personal fate after witnessing his wife with the bandit, and he felt that was the honorable thing to do. Therefore, one can see that self-esteem comes back and plays a role in this testimony as well.
Lastly, the woodcutter, comes to reality to mention that he was a witness of the crime. So now that we have a witness, the audience can probably get the full truth and know which story was true. However, his story is slightly different than the others. He blames the woman for the death of the man because she started the fight. From this story the woman is seen in a different light from both men and the audience. The men are trying to prove their manhood more than anything, to boost their self-esteem. The woodcutter refused to tell his story because he didn’t want his flaw to be