Top 5 Unreliable Narrators and Kurosawa’s Rashomon (#1055)

it seems like there's an obvious shared number one. And yeah, it's because I don't like in retrospect if someone looked at the list and it is like, where is that title? So we are doing this inspired by Raschoman, And you know, I kind of felt, Adam when I sat down to make this list, that there were a handful of other obvious had to be their titles. So it'll be interesting to see what we share and maybe what listeners think

we might have missed. I also realized, when I put together that had to be their list, that almost all of them came out around the year two thousand. I could have easily compiled a very worthy top five unreliable narrators from that era. I don't know. Was there something about the turn of the millennium that we were just, you know, insecurity in the air instability anticipated that the movies turned to these unreliable narrators. I'll leave that essay

for someone else to write. But I didn't want to just do that. I wanted to spread the wealth historically, so I did look elsewhere for a couple of my picks. Hopefully between the two of this we have circa two thousand well covered. Now, as far as the terminology we're using here, what an unreliable mean to me? I think, basically, you know, it's self evident, but I did want to move beyond just the narrator of a movie. I do have some cases of that, but I also wanted to

allow the movie itself to be unreliable. And my top two are actually unreliable in their very form, again not just because of a certain character, but actually how they're made. So that will be something I'm looking forward to getting into. Also, just want to stay from the top because this involves a lot of spoilers a list like this, right, we're gonna okay, some of these unreliable narrators are plot twists,

so fair warning. There might be a chance that there's a movie you haven't quite seen we're going to talk about. And I don't think either of us are going to necessarily hold back if we feel like we need to talk about that. No spoiler element.

you make your case. I mean, it did have to have a narrator for me in order to pick it. Now that said, I got this email. We got this email from Josh Ashen Miller in la who said, speaking of other maybe obvious picks. I know it's in the pantheon, but I have to suggest Apocalypse Now, that opening scene breakdown makes us wonder about Captain Willard for the whole

length of the movie. So in doing my research, this did come up, not Apocalypse Now specifically, but Captain Willard, or the Captain Willard question, I suppose you could say, came up again and again, and it was one I had to wrestle with because I think you could ask it about this movie as well in an even more explicit way about another Pantheon pick, and that's Taxi Driver with Travis Bikel as your narrator, where their point of view, because of their state of mind, you could say it

calls into question everything that they are relaying to us. I think that that's very fair, and I understand why Josh might propose that he is an unreliable narrator. I understand why they come up on lists of unreliable narrators, or at least I definitely saw Travis Bickle come up on those types of lists. For me, beyond the fact that those two movies are in the pantheon and thus

ineligible for sure, either of our lists. It actually did help me crystallize how I wanted to approach this top five, and for me, I had to go beyond mere recognition of subjectivity. And in the case of the two films I just mentioned and many others skewered subjectivity, the audience has to be engaged in the act of questioning, and I'm going to go so far as to say aggressively

confronted with the absence of the narrator's objectivity. So basically, from an early point in the film, if not the opening scene, you're writing along that edge the entire time. Whereas a viewer you have some skepticism, and that skepticism ends up actually being a crucial part of the viewing process.

You're almost interacting with the film on that level. And because of that, I had a really good reason to leave off any movie that with the narrator has a major twist ending, because with twist ending movies that's completely absent. There's no twist with those films. The twist works because you buy into the reliability of the narrator from the jump.

That's the whole point, other than the fact that you're suspending disbelief because it's a movie you are believing everything you're being fed, and so you're shocked at the end when the rug is pulled out from under you with my picks. There's no rug. No, there's nothing, there's no foundation really from the very beginning. Of course, we've also already done our favorite movies with twist ending, so that

just felt like a different list to me. Now, I don't want to mention them here because one may or maybe more may come up between our lists, and I'll just save them for the end anyway, because it is very hard to separate twist ending movies and unreliable narrator movies, so we'll probably cover some by the time we get through this top five.

going back to nineteen twenty For this one. My number five is the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, This silent horror landmark. It's remembered, I mean the title. It's remembered as the story of doctor Caligari and his sideshow attraction, Sayzar, this somnambulist who answers questions from the crowd while in a

catatonic state. But the movie is actually a narrated flashback the entire thing by a different character, this despondent young man named Francis, and Francis his friend, was mysteriously murdered. We hear at the beginning after a visit to the town fair where doctor Caligary was performing, and in Francis's telling, he goes on to discover that Calgary, yes, has been instructing Czar to kill So this movie essentially becomes a very early serial killer thriller that essentially as Francis as

the hero slash investigator. But yeah, remember I said, in Francis's telling, which may not be so trustworthy, and this is a twist ending Adam, it has one of the first shock twist endings that did reveal the extent of Francis's unreliability. That's why it counted for me for this list. But honestly, I just wanted another excuse to nudge anyone who hasn't seen Caligauri to make the time for it.

It's my number three horror film of all time. The expressionism that it's you know, mostly known for, I would say, has rarely ever been matched, and not just in the jagged sets that people are probably already picturing, but also that color tinting that's employed on certain frames, and really even the scrawl design of the intertitles have their own, yeah, ferocity to them, but really that reveal that we get I feel like it works on more than a gotcha level. Well,

the unreliability at play is quite disturbing. It's the sort that just has you has you questioning your own mind in a lot of ways. So that's why for me, the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was good enough, good enough to qualify here at number five.

was nice to be reminded of it. I'm kind of mad at you, though, for reminding me or bringing up this notion of movies around the year two thousand, because fortunately I didn't pay attention to that. I didn't note the years with my movies, Josh, at all, except for my number five pick. And so as you said that, I kind of glanced at my other choice and I realized, Oh, all of my picks.

enjoy the ambiguity of the conclusion. I couldn't rely on what Heron, as the storyteller wanted the main character and thus me as the viewer, to understand what was reality versus what was fantasy. And not only would I just generally like to revisit it because it has been twenty six years, I just wonder if I would appreciate that

ambiguity much more now. What I did appreciate then, and what so many people did, was Bail's performance as Patrick Bateman and his narration adapted by Heron and Guenevere Turner from the Brett Easton Ellis novel.

And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there. That's the beginning of the film, Josh. How can you trust the musings and memories of an abstraction of a ghost at best? And also, just thinking about this movie, I have been thinking about it a lot because in terms of oppressions, I don't know sadly that this movie in some ways has ever not been.

I'm seeing them pop up on my feed only when I'm seeing other people annihilating them for how douchey they are. So they're out there, man, there's way too many Patrick Bateman's out there.

Also one that I should probably revisit because, like I said, it's been since it first came out, and I think I was probably yeah, mixed to mild on it as it sounds like you were, so do for a revisit. I'm so excited to throw this number for at you ad him because another sort of theory here that I'm

very curious to hear what you think of it. It's a curveball pick the top five idea prompted it for me, and then I was also prompted by the fact that there's this new documentary out Ghost Elephants Nature documentary, but directed by Werner Herzog. So here's my question. Is Werner Herzog one of cinema's foremost unreliable narrators. He is notorious for his narrations of his documentaries. Right, They're absolutely singular these,

aren't you know, a calm voice delivering facts. This is someone filtering factual things the real world through his own distinctly interpretive lens. This is this is one element of what everyone calls Herzog's ecstatic truth right. His narration is part of that. So this made me wonder, do we really know Timothy Treadwell of Grizzly Man, or do we

only know Herzog's particular version of him? Is there a certain unreliability in what we're being told as well in how it's being framed, especially by Herzog the on screen narrator.

for Kinski's own voice. Herzog does read a passage from Kinsky's autobiography at one point. And it's very amusing because in that passage, Kinsky is basically describing Herzog in the same egomaniacal terms that Herzog in the documentary, has been using to describe Kinsky. So you do get a real sense of, you know, the back and forth between these two men. I don't think this is a hatchet job add all. I mean you get a real sense of their relationship, of the love and respect the two of

them had. But there is something inherently unreliable about trying to capture the fullness of a man through such a particularly personal lens. So yes, this is a very different kind of unreliability that we're mostly going to be talking about here. But I think it fits. I was kind of more intrigued to probe the question the more I thought about it. But I'm thrown at you because you're a huge Herzoga fan and just loved to get your thoughts on us. Yeah.

So if you bring quote unquote actual reality into it, then it it kind of undercuts that. Though we can all we can also go into that realm of yes, but we also now know and discuss constantly how even

documentaries are their own version of subjective truths. Beyond that, though, I will just say my other reaction is I'm angry at you for having thought of it first and not me, because I think it's I think it's pretty I think it's pretty brilliant, and and I think it it makes sense if you if you're willing to go into the

realm of documentary for this top five. Herzog's obviously the place to go because of what you said, because he so succumbs to his notion of the extent truth, because he buys into that so wholeheartedly, he believes in it so devotedly, and he again and again displays it in his films, whether it's on grandiose levels and has grandiose displays of it or these very small displays of it that honestly, unless you're doing research on the film later or someone points it out to you, or Herzog himself

points it out, you wouldn't even know it was some kind of manufacturing of the truth or a modification of the truth. But he can't help it. He likes to lie. He likes to lie within his movies. He sees a purpose to his lies within his films. And I actually was just watching it's on YouTube. I highly recommend it. Just a few weeks ago.

guy and talk about ecstatic truth. This guy can just or the ecstasy right that he captures the guy can just soar farther than everybody, And the way Herzog depicts that soaring in slow motion, it is something amazing. You understand why that word ecstasy is in the title and you're watching it and at the end there's there's a poem that Herzog reads and it's like about Steiner, and you think, is that a real poem? Did Steiner write that?

Where did that come from? And You're like, Herzog just made that up, you know, like none of it it's you know, like that doesn't.

As soon as the movie got over, all I did was start googling because I was sure Herzog made that up and made Gunther Steiner read it in his film because there was no way that was true. That seemed like one of those things that Herzog said, Hey, I think this, I think this works for my movie. Would you say this and recount this like it was part of your childhood? As far as I can tell, it's real that Steiner really grew up with that pet, But

who really knows, you know. So all of that is to say, I wholeheartedly support your pick.

music scene that sprung up, you know, in the wake of the sex pistols and his music was changing. In England in the late nineteen seventies, Tony Wilson was this local TV news reporter who saw the sex pistols and said, I want to start a record label. I want to promote bands. I want to do something really important, and he ended up creating this label called Factory Records and starting or being the instigator behind a bunch of new

bands and this new sound coming into fruition. He's a TV personality, as I said, a real life Tony Wilson, a real life TV personality. He's obviously ambitious and he did as he's looking back Steve Coogan playing Tony Wilson. Tony Wilson did make a major mark on popular music in Britain in the eighties, primarily And you put all of that together, Josh, and of course the person portraying

him is in the way it's written. It's gonna be written in a way and performed in a way to push a certain narrative that's a little bit self aggrandizing. You know, it's going to favor what makes him look good over quote unquote what really happened. And that's easy to do when he Coogan as Tony Wilson is literally tell the story, not just with narration, but he's breaking

the fourth wall. He's talking directly to the audience in many instances, and throughout winter Bottom and Cougan are constantly reminding you too, And this is not a surprise for people who know winter Bottom's work, and often his work with Kugan. They're reminding you of the mechanics of the story. They're reminding you of the fact that it is a story.

So I think about a scene in this movie where Tony recounts meeting Sean and Paul Ryder of the group The Happy Mondays on a roof where they're trying to poison pigeons, and Cougan's explaining to us right that popular music's like a double helix, waves that intertwine and all this stuff, and he says, when one musical movement's descendant and other one's us send it. And so right now we're in kind of a crisscross, a kind of hiatus.

But the two guys they're going to be on the crest of it are these two guys, Paul and Sean Ryder.

is true. You know this really happened. But then it's not completely true because you know, no pigeons were harmed in the making of this film. He does let us know that it's a reconstruction. He tells us the reconstruction that no pigeons were harmed. He wants us to be sure that.

quote unquote true story. But when he draws attention to the fact that, well, this is true and that was true, then all of a sudden you're thinking, well, then, which ones aren't true? And why are some more true than others?

I wasn't living in Chicago yet when this movie came out, just before I moved here, but coming to Chicago to visit seeing this movie in a theater and it being one of the first movies I really remember that that challenged me, not in a super challenging way, but was doing something semi sophisticated in this way with its narra, with its narrative, you know, with that breaking the fourth wall, the unreliable narrator, and it being something that I felt like was was new to me at the time.

reasons I'll get to first. I want to clarify though, we also in that marathon did nineteen thirty one's Possessed with Joan Crawford. I think this one's a little better. So if you're going to choose the Possessed go with forty seven here. In this one, Crawford plays Louise Howell, who is the unreliable narrator. We basically first meet her in this incredible opening sequence where she's just wandering the streets of Los Angeles in a daze and mumbling the

name David. She ends up being hospitalized and begins piecing together her past in these flashbacks that involve an engineer she was in love with who rejected her, played by Van Heflin. If I were in love with anybody else, believe me. I tell you there is another woman.

think the movie'll overall. I mean, this is forty seven, so it's not perfect, but I think it deals with her mental illness fairly progressively for the time. And Crawford, you know, definitely is taking this woman in her predicament seriously. The director is Curtis Bernhardt. Not incredibly familiar with Curtis Bernhardt, but there are some nice employments of point of view shots in the movie, which I especially like for this

list because they emphasize the unreliable narrator element. The first one comes when she's Louise's being hospitalized, and so she's wheeled into the hospital on this gurney and we suddenly see her from her point of view, like the ceiling lamps passing overhead, and so even though we've initially become suspicious of her because we've watched her from Afar in this daze and we're either you know, nervous for her or maybe even scared by her. Here then we're put

into her body and her panic becomes ours. So it's kind of messing with you in that way of what should I believe? What should I not believe? And well now I'm now I'm actually experiencing this story, so that invests us even more. Yeah, I highly recommend Possessed. I think of it as the Hitchcock film that Joan Crawford never made. So it's a good one.

And Lewis can Sell Me is the actor who plays Young Cop in the movie, and she ended up giving Young Cop a name, I think after John Mulaney told that story. But she says it's a good role. It's quite a big part, so maybe John mulaney should have taken it more seriously so we can see that on the big screen, and maybe we'll discuss just how good the actor is performing Young Cop, though I think we'll be spending most of our time looking at Jesse Buckley

and Christian Bale and considering their performances. I am very excited to see that one. You can see both of those films at a Regal cinema near you, and you just might be able to see them for free. Regal Unlimited is the all you can watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Right now, Regal is offering film spotting listeners endless movies for less. All you have to do is sign up for Regal Unlimited using code film spot twenty six and you'll get

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six to receive your discu my number three. This is the only one of my picks that doesn't come from right around the turn of the century. It's from twenty fourteen. And here's where things get really fun, because David Fincher takes Allian Flynn's Gone Girl Conceit from the book and I think really employs it so perfectly. First, we assume that this is going to be the story as told completely from Nick Dunn's perspective. Ben Affleck, can he be trusted?

Josh Well? In the opening narration, we hear him talk about cracking his wife Amy's lovely skull open.

that she's missing, what happened to her? Is he in fact responsible for her disappearance? How much can we trust what he's telling the police, not just us, the people around him, what they think and what he's telling them. And then of course it gets really really interesting. We learn that Amy's still alive, and that becomes a fact that becomes something we're aware of when we get introduced to Amy and we get the famous cool girl speech.

her life really up to this point. And and as we you know, quickly learned too from the beginning of the film, so has his has been about deception.

or Amy. And in some cases in Flashbacks, Fincher understands that because we've seen it happen, because he's shown us something, it's then impossible, almost impossible for our brains to then disassociate it from reality, that that what we saw in flashback could in fact be just their version of the truth or a complete fabrication. It could be a complete deception.

And I think I think that movie is so disorienting in the best way a movie can be, because Fincher does turn it back on us that way, like there are things we know that that people within the movie world don't know. We're privy to information that they're not. And yet with every new revelation within the movie world or as characters on television or anyone who's questioning the reality or or raising doubt about who did what. As those questions get raised, you can't help as a viewer

start to start to question it yourself. You start to question the truth that you think you believe, the things that you've been clinging to, what you think you know from what you saw. And I think I think that that's that line again, that edge that you're you're walking that entire time with that movie, and I think that's that's one of the things that really elevates Gone Girl.

which is probably why I didn't lean that way. But here's the first phrase of my review. I forgot about this a viper's nest of unreliable narrators. So apparently I should have just, you know, went into my my search field and typed in unreliable narrators and see what popped. Come on, therefore, Josh to use that tepneque next time.

But yeah, absolutely a fitting pick there with Gone Girl. Okay, at number two, however, and here's where we really need to put the spoilers out there, even though it seems ridiculous. My number two pick is The Sixth Sense. But Adam, I've I've watched The Sixth Sense with you know, teenagers who somehow didn't know the reveal. So I'm just gonna say, if that's you and you happen to be listening, you need to experience the sixth Sons if it's at all

possible without knowing what goes down. But as we discussed when we did our nine from ninety nine review a number of years ago, it's not just the twist that makes m Night Chamlan's breakout ghost story so incredible. It has those performances, which across the board are brilliant Haley Joel, Osmond, Bruce Willis, maybe above all Tony Collette. It has good creeps,

good scares, They're all expertly crafted. But all that being said, it's the twist that I think does elevate the Six Sons, and for me is what really makes it eligible for this list. And this is the fact that here's the spoiler. Willis's child psychologist Malcolm Crow is in fact trying to help Osmond's traumatized boy from beyond the grave. Now we don't know he's a ghost until the end, of course, so there's maybe not that ambiguity you are looking for, Adham.

But I think the brilliance of the twist here is that Malcolm doesn't realize it himself until we do. And this is when he tries to talk to his wife played by Olivia Williams, who's also very good, and discovers that he can't because he's dead.

But for me, it's also moving as well because just because of the very nature of the unreliability of its narrator.

I know everyone's dying to hear it. Wood Carver Steiner, it was a pet raven. It was a pet Raven and who has a pet Raven? You see why you can't believe that's true.

I know it's a beloved film by a lot of our listeners, rightfully, so I have only seen it that once. It's not a direct parallel obviously to Rashomon. But not only does Alexander Payne's Election have four narrators, unreliable narrators, Jim, Tracy, Tammy and Paul, but they are recounting a single event in their collective pass that whole election mess. As Matthew Broderick's Jim puts it at the beginning. Like Gone Girl. This was a book construct that drew Alexander Payne and

Jim Taylor, the co writer to the project. The Tom Pratta book, which I haven't read but I know it, gave each chapter over to a different character. It's all first person, different chapters, different characters, so they get to tell their own version of events and beyond recounting details of what happened as they remember it. The voice over

here in Election, it's so good. It essentially functions to reveal what I think the commoner and we're going to get to Rashomon, but essentially what the commoner in Rachoman says most of the time, we can't even be honest with ourselves. Whatever these characters claim in voiceover, we as the viewer figure out pretty quickly that the opposite must

in fact be true. Like take when Jim is at dinner with his wife it has to be what is yet another silent dinner where they're just looking down at their plates across from each other, and the voiceover says, thank God for Diane. She was my best friend, my source of love and strength. Oh sure we had our share of bumpy times, but we'd always seen them through

after years of marriage, we were closer than ever. There's no way that's true based on what we're seeing, that clash, that ironic clash of the words to the visual, what we're actually seeing play out in terms of the action of their marriage. It's the expression of the fantasy version of his life. Or maybe Josh is not even the fantasy version of his life. It's just it's just the version of his life that he has to believe in

order to get through the day. And what's funny is he says she's his source of love and strength, and so even just beyond that clash that's clearly there, he says, you know, my source of love and strength. But when she actually says to him, is anything wrong, he says, no, no, just you know school, Well, if if she was actually this source that you could confide in who helped you through your problems, then why wouldn't you share what was

troubling you and maybe she'd help you. But of course he doesn't do that, So there's another layer of that irony. But it isn't just Jim, of course, it's all the other characters. I mean, there's a YouTube clip that's labeled Tracy Flick isn't upset?

present tense. We see and hear what everyone is up to now, because in theory, everyone has moved on everyone's moved on with their lives and they've improved their lives, right, they've gotten past the whole messiness of that. But we see that that's not really the case. And in particular with Jim, he says, you might wonder if I ever if I ever saw Tracy Flick again. And he's he's at a museum educator's conference in DC, right, and he randomly,

he randomly sees her. She's working for a congressman. She's getting into a limo, and the voiceover again Josh where he's like, he's talking about how his impulse was to run over there and pound on her window, and he wanted to confront her about lying and cheating. But instead I just stood there and I realized I wasn't angry anymore.

I just felt sorry for her. And he starts, he starts trying to convince us, the audience, the imaginary audience that he's talking to Slash himself right about his new life and all the exciting things he's doing, and how her life must really be pathetic, you know. And that's what's so funny is, of course he's not really angry, just like Tracy Flick wasn't really angry, and yet what do we see him do throw his drink at the limo, you know, because he's actually still crushed by all of

this and just overcome with hostility towards her. So that irony and the way the voiceovers are deployed in Election is I mean, you obviously you can't imagine Election without it. I mean, it's so essential to that film and the success of that movie.

deception as well as they do. Man nineteen ninety nine, I don't think, I know, we probably considered this in the mix for our nine from ninety nine series dam and we just felt like there were others we had to get to before it. What a great film that we would have been able to get to, What an incredible year. All right, we are at number one. Okay, well, almost every Christopher Nolan film could be considered for this list. I feel like, I mean, certainly the prestige, certainly, inception.

I'm going to guess tenant, but I had no idea what's going on, So I'm just going to say probably. I think when you consider the very notion of unreliability, you're inherently dealing with things. You're dealing with complication, you're

dealing with artifice, you're dealing with deception. Unreliability also creates, in a lot of ways, a multiverse, and Nolan makes movie multiverses, not non Marvel movie multiverses, but either literally in some cases, or just in the way your mind is required to function to keep up with his films. So I have a Nolan film at number one, and it is is Memento. Memento, where Guy Pierce plays Leonard Shelby,

a man who has short term memory loss. While trying to solve his wife's murder, He's basically relying on a polaroid and his own tattoos as clues. Here again, Adam, the unreliability baked into the movies very form. Think about that Polaroid, the brilliant opening shot where it fades out rather than in as a Polaroid should, and really the editing throughout this movie Nolan here working with Dodie Dorn.

There is that flick of a shot, just an instance where we see Leonard getting into the car of Sammy Jenkis and what that means and pretends for the levels

of unreliability at play. I was thinking about this as I was putting together my list too, and I was thinking about Leonard in comparison to Malcolm in the sixth sense, and I thought, man, there are some fascinating levels and comparisons at play here because they're both They're both unreliable to the audience at different phases you know of their films, Leonard obviously earlier than Malcolm, but they're both unreliable. Unlike Malcolm, though,

Leonard is knowingly unreliable to himself. That's what the tattoos are about. But this is a Christopher Nolan movie, so it gets even more complicated with the ending and we learn that Leonard is also at the same time unknowingly unreliable to himself. And I'm not even gonna get into

how or why we'll just leave that there. But I do think it was that level of sophistication when I started shaking things out here where I was like, Okay, this is not only on theme, this not only fits, but it's it's got to be number one.

unreliability is baked into the form from the beginning. I never believed Leonard or felt like I could believe him from the outset, and that's the essential criterion for me. That's why it qualifies. And you even get a great you get a great joke out of the narration and a great joke out of the unreliability of the narration, out of the form, maybe the only real comedic moment in the entire movie. And I remember seeing this movie in the theater and everybody laughing at it, and rewatching

this scene and it's still funny. Josh, It's still funny even though I know it's coming. When when the scene begins and Leonard's running.

imagine that you're in a narrative. You might even see yourself like you're in a noir, which he is, but you know he doesn't know that, but you might imagine yourself like that, right, So that's the instinct or maybe he's the bad guy getting chased by a good guy. In either case, he's the honorable one, right, except all of us would think, no, there's a there's a bad guy who's who's chasing me for for some reason, you know, or or whatever it is.

the film. And I'm going to tie it back to Rashamon, I said the Children of Rashaman, the movie that I think here again, the form is distinct, but I don't know that any movie more directly expresses what Rashamn expresses for eighty five minutes of its run time, let's put it that way. Maybe not eighty eight minutes of its run time, Josh, but five minutes of runtime. I don't know that any movie expresses it more cynically, more more

explicitly than Memento. I think it's the perfect modern distillation of raw Choman, taking the form in a new, completely original way, a completely fractured way. But it is expressing the fundamental idea of raw Choman. And I'm going to quote the commoner yet again. Tell me this line isn't something you think is in Memento, And in fact a version of it is in Memento. But the commoner in Rachoman says it. We all want to forget something, so we tell stories. It's easier that way. That's Memento.

and then we take it to ce. Then we go back to point A and then we take you know, and whereas Memento is just like glass, it takes and just breaks it into glass shards of glass.

Other ones I gave a passing thought too, but just couldn't hold up to these must haves. But Trainspotting, which we you know, recently discussed in a way we could question our main narrator there and his reliability Blade Runner, Big Fish, the Tim Burton film, and The Fall, which is a Tarsum Singh film that has an unreliable narrator in addition to its lush visuals. Those were the ones I considered.

the ending, and the construct that I didn't know was the construct. Yeah, Atonement would be in the mix for me. It would be really my number one unreliable narrator if I was counting twists in that way, and I could go back and try to retrofit it and say, am I questioning Briany throughout?

interesting question. I saw on at least one list this movie presented as an unreliable narrator movie, and that was Amadaeus and how much we should trust Sallyari's version of events. I think the argument was more though, again like like Apocalypse now, you know, where he's clearly a little bit deranged, unsettled, you know, can we fully believe him?

For the rewatch, I can thank Adam and Josh's discussion of the film as I met a commentary on the nature of spectator and violent spectacle. Armed with this analytical frame, I went to revisit it. It didn't work. I was still terrified, but I have been able to go camping again. Oh well, that's nice to hear Jake Carrie shared this. I'm fairly new to the podcast. A couple of years ago. I typed reddit best Film podcast into a search engine

and found your show recommended quite a few times. I saw that you were based out of Chicago, and I was immediately sold. I listened to a ton of your episodes during my driving shifts on a road trip to Asheville. During that drive, I heard you were doing a review of De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise for the Film Spotting Family. When I was back in the passenger seat, I signed up and never looked back. I don't always agree with your takes, but I always appreciate your analysis, expertise,

and passion. I recommend your podcast often and tell my friends it's the closest thing to listening to Cisco and Ebert do a podcast, though I think you guys like each other much more. Yeah, how about that Adaly probably Phantom who do Phantom of the Paradise was going to bring in Film Spotting Family members, I mean, yeah, programming.

Thank you for introducing me to do not Expect too much from the End of the World, and also, of course Massacre Theater. All right, here's Jake's favorite segment. Top five bad Dads All right list we did a while back. Jake says, having recently become a dad, myself. I hope to never behave like the main character in Force Maseur Josh's fourth pick, or it should be said any of the other dads.

gave an engaging and enlightening talkback. I still love it. That sounds wonderful, doesn't it, We do, think, Carrie. We thank Jake for being family members and for all of those years of listening. And if you think they have good taste, it sounds like they do. You can follow Carrie on Letterboxed at Cinema Mendax So Cinema m E N Dax, and you can follow Jake at JP nineteen sixty five. In addition to keeping us doing what we're doing,

membership does come with perks. You get to listen early in ad free, You get our weekly newsletter, You get exclusive opportunities like being part of the Film Spotting Family discord, and you get monthly bonus shows. We have Trivia Spotting coming on March nineteenth. You get to part twoticipate in events like that. You also get voting opportunities like being the group that gets to select the next Film Spotting Marathon. You get to determine show programming. If that all sounds

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favorite of the Best Picture nominees. Next week we will have our Oscars special and we will share results from the official Film Spotting Best Picture survey our ballot. We invited our listeners Josh to imagine themselves as members of the Academy and submit their ranked choice Best Picture ballots, so we'll see how they all stack up there somehow. We're also going to try to fit in here. It is the play and round of Film Spotting Madness, best

of the nineteen forties. It is March. That means that Film Spotting Madness is upon us.

question eighties Rob Reiner movies. You can only choose one, and this, as we said earlier, is just so not easy, Josh.

help set up your deliberations. Andy Bucatti and Kansas City. I've shown stand By Me to both my teenage children and it still lands amazingly well. I've never seen a movie better capture the weird way boys and young men relate to each other. I tend to be very stingy with high letterboxed rankings, and I give it four and a half stars, a rating that I only tend to give to one to three films annually. That means it

lands fourth in this poll. Spinal Tap invented a genre and is still hilarious, which is saying so much since humor built around gags and bits doesn't often carry over forty plus years later. And while it obviously led to the Christopher Guest films and other bangers such as What We Do in the Shadows and Nirvana the Band, The Show the Movie, it had an arguably even greater influence on the past two decades of television. Do we have the Office Parks and rec all the others without it?

Five stars? That puts it third on this list. When Harry met Sally for My Money is the best roundcom ever made. Nora f Friends right in peak form, star chemistry never better, the perfect tone five stars. That's your number two on this list. If I asked every person I know what their favorite movie is, I am quite confident the most common answer will be The Princess Bride, and the age ranges and life experiences of those people

will be vast. Every single person who has the ability to sit through a feature length film has the potential to not only like but love this film, whether that person is six, twenty six, fifty six, or eighty six. I'm not sure I can name another film that I could fit, that I feel could fit that description. Has there ever been a perfect movie? Probably not, but maybe The Princess Bride is five stars number one on this list.

in that pantheon of just all time personal favorites. I can't imagine life without those two films. So I don't know how I would pick between him and I guess I have a week or so to think about it, and I'm going to take every bit of that time.

the good comparisons between those two. New episodes of the Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.

Now we have done that with six of those films, Cleo from five to seven, Harlan County, USA, The best years of our lives, The Battle of Algiers Stopped making sense. Close up, great lineup, And just a couple of weeks ago, we knocked off one more one of your nominations, john Ford's How Green Was My Valley? It is true that john Ford currently not represented in the Film Spotting Pantheon.

Now we get to a film from another director who is conspicuously missing from the pantheon, a Kurri Kurosawa and the movie Raschoman, one of producer Sam's picks. This was part of a marathon that preceded your time on the show, and Rashaman is a film that made my top ten films of all time when we did that Cit and Sound exercise back in twenty twelve. On the last Sight and Sound Best Films of All Time list in twenty twenty two, it came in at number forty one, and

on the director's pull it was number twenty. We have been talking about Kerrosawa a lot lately. Our February blind Spotting review for family members was nineteen forty eight s Drunken Angel. Last August we talked about nineteen forty nine Stray Dog. That was another blind Spotting review. Here we are at nineteen fifty talking about rasham On, a film as famous for perhaps more famous for its multiple unreliable narrators, its examination of subjective truth than for the film itself.

How long has it been, Josh since you've seen the movie? How did it play for you this time?

a lot of movies. You'll see Raschamon. That's the setting where I first sawt Then I saw it again. Oh this is this is amusing. What was the movie it was tied to? So when I was writing for The Naperville Sun, when I was the movie critic, I had a DVD library column, and I would basically take the excuse of a recent release to look at an older beloved movie, kind of like, you know, maybe a Sacred

Cow review something like that that connected to it. The movie that I connect to Rashaman was vantage Point, which I forgot even existed. This is who's the guy from Lost? What was his name? That that actor? I know I'm putting on spotting here and I can't even remember. I should have known.

it as fully as I should have. I think I was still adjusting to the type of performance that you got in mid century Japanese cinema and Mafune you know, we know gave you that in full, like this very

heightened style of performance. And also looking back at some of what I wrote a little bit, the talkiness of the not necessarily moralism, which we touched on in our earlier discussion of Drunken Angel, but more just talking about the themes of the film among those three characters who offer our framework at the ruined Gate, the Raschauman Gate, where the storm is the commoner, the priest, and the woodcutter, and how they would explicate the themes for us that

we've just seen. I think I have more space for understanding what's going on there now and the framework for that, and of course have come to understand the type of performance that we're getting this film. So all that to say is, yeah, this just keeps getting better. Rassaman keeps getting better, and it is so much more than those ideas and then those themes. It's just so beautiful. It's so visual, not shocking to hear when we're talking about Kurasawa.

But maybe you forget that because at least I tend to think about his other movies being the Spectacles, whereas here you get some composition and imagery that's as gorgeous as anything he's done.

a little bit more. And we've recently, in these Blind Spotting reviews, been really praising Shamura in addition to praising Muffune. And it is such an animated performance. Still, it's one that's interesting for me to watch and consider and try to try to against some of his other performances, and certainly try to consider and compare against the other performances in the film like Shimuras, right, which are at just at such a different level, right, in such a different volume.

that laugh. And what I noticed throughout Josh is other characters in the movie actually take on a similar kind of laugh, including the wife. It's not it's not just him, And I started to wonder, I mean, of course the commoner as well, does it in response to Shimer's wood cutter.

And I wonder if I'm wondering if that that laugh here takes on what Usa in Stray Dog, that yelp, that that cry that he lets out at the end of that film, that almost becomes as we talked about it, in a way this like this, this scream against or reflecting the human condition. It's almost this this animalistic yelp. Right, there's no other way to express the of the human condition and hear this cruelty of humanity, the cruelty of the universe that the men at the beginning of this

movie are saying. This story depicts and proves it's almost like that that laugh is is almost the only way these characters can can react in the face of a cruel universe.

of his. So yeah, it is it's a generally a mode of performance that you, as you know, a generally Hollywood viewer has to adjust to, and I think the more films that I've seen of his or in Japan from that era, generally it was helpful also in this context, specifically in Rascha Man Roussia Man I did think that the bandit is when he is most maniacal in his laughter. I believe it's when he's before the court, before the judge and he's tied, right, he's subdued and it, and

yet he's not cowed by any of this. But the only expression he really has in that scenario.

it wasn't that so much. I think, going back to that beauty that's always striking, there is one shot here that could be out of a fairy tale where the wife has been left alone by a brook with her horse, and we've been somewhere else, I forget who we're following, perhaps the husband for a bit, and it just cuts back to this, you know, wide screen, full shot, that sunlight coming through the forest trees above on her as

she's in stillness, kneeling by this brook. I mean, it's just like something unreal, like something from an imaginary fantasy novel. So it was moments like that. But also I think the cleverness what you're surprised by is it's not just that you're getting different stories, but it's the cleverness in it. And the one element that stood out to me in

this way were the two fight scenes we get. We get incredible fight scenes between the husband and the bandit right, The first one so thrilling, just intricately choreographed, athletically performed the camera movement here so exciting and sophisticated. I loved also how they used the levels of ground, like the topography where one character would be up above the other and the camera would be below to generate suspense and excitement. Then we get the second one later in the film,

completely awkward, so clumsy. They both seem scared. It's like the scene you talked about in Drunken Angel right where they're slipping among the paint on the floor. And of course that second fight that's the Woodcutter's version of the story where they look like fools whose version was the first one? That the The Adventures of Robin Hood version

like slashbuckling, it's the bandit right. So it's just the cleverness of, you know, emphasizing the degree of the unreliability in that sort of staging that catches you afresh and you're kind of like, oh, yeah, this really was brilliant.

between the stories, but one major thing I forgot. I did forget that the Dead Man had their story told and he was told through a Shinto medium.

is at least skewering fragile masculinity. And even before I get there, I'm also going to say, on our topic of unreliable narrators, how about the fact that we do have four different versions of events, but don't we also have to acknowledge that ultimately there is one meta story being told, and it's the story that's being told at

the Rachoman gate. And so even the version of the bandit's story, the wife story and the husband story that's being told, is still being filtered through the woodcutter, the priest, right, or what that character is like like, it's still their version of what they saw or what they heard. It's not really completely there is either, So there's potential flaws and subjectivity even in there and versions of those stories.

But what is interesting, and of course this is the I'm not breaking any ground here with this, but I want to use this as a springboard here. The thing about Raschamn, right, it's not that they recall events that they were involved in differently. It's that they recall events they were involved in differently because, as you spoke to already, their versions protect their sense of self and restore or elevate.

But for the most part, restore their honor. And what I found ironic, Josh, is that if you remove for a second the abhorrent crime of rape at the center of this story, not because I want to, but because the characters within the story do, they set it aside completely, almost completely, in favor of apparently the far more egregious crime of killing the husband. Protecting their sense of self and restoring their honor actually means taking responsible for the killing.

That just strikes me as interesting because if you think about it, Taja Maru says, the bandit says he kills the samurai. He claims that he kills him in that honorable battle that you spoke about after cutting him loose man de man battle. It was a throwdown and it was amazing, But I won. I killed him because I'm I'm a bigger badass than he is.

So all three cases, you know, they claim responsibility, but it's all about serving their honor, even though that's the crime. So it's just interesting to me. But if you ask the question, does Krasawa give us at any point, does he actually give us an objective truth? Like is there an overarching true version that we don't ever get? Do we still by the end of the movie know what

really happened? Or do we just know the three versions and the Woodcutter's version, or is the Woodcutter's version supposed to supposed to be true? Well, we know it's false, and at least one regard right because he gets called out for that he took the dagger. He lied about that he wasn't killed by the sword, He was killed by a dagger, and he took the dagger. And this, Josh, was my favorite shot watching it this time, I definitely did not remember this and my favorite shot in this movie.

How great is the match action cut we get from I think it might be if I missed it. Someone could call me out on it, but it might be the only true shot we get where Kurosawa very blatantly makes it clear that it's the woodcutter's point of view. It's the shot he's he's in the he's behind trees and is he's behind trees, and he is watching this all play out, right, And so before he goes to kill the husband, supposedly right, the band it's standing in the middle, and we know it's his point of view

because of the way it's framed. But then there's a match action cut where it's now a different angle and we're back into the movie world point of view, and and in that new point of view, we see that the woodcutter can't actually see the husband. The husband doesn't know exactly what happened. The woodcutter doesn't see the husband die. He doesn't he can't see it from where he's From where he's at, that's that's shuddered to him. So then

we don't don't actually see the act either. In that moment, we don't see the bandit kill the husband because the woodcutter doesn't see it. So you know, here he's at least partially unreliable because he lied right, And he also doesn't actually know exactly what happened to the husband because he didn't see it completely unfold. But that cut and that point of viewshot I think are really remarkable. Here's

another question I'll throw out. What about the fact that the woodcutter, in terms of just unreliability and honor, what about the fact that the woodcutter is just a voyeur who does nothing. He watches all of this madness play out, all of this pain play out, and doesn't do anything.

I think the crucial question of the movie. He says, out of these three, whose story is believable?

all play out. And in all the previous accounts, the three previous accounts that we heard, not only do those all have those elements of redemption for the storyteller, right, which is huge and undercuts their story. There are choices throughout all three of them, that just seem out of touch with human nature, whereas in the Woodcutter story, I

think everything checks out at least for me. Okay, So, like the bandit after the act proclaiming that he'll marry her, her breaking free, and her instinct being to release her husband and wanting the husband to then defend her honor and kill the bandit, that seems logical to me.

and kind of retracting his promise to marry her. And then her response to all of that is to taunt them, right and and like demanding, demanding that they fight for her and actually like trying to claim some some honor. And then here's the key, Josh, you said it that fight, that that like clumsy fight that they have with each other. Okay, both men in this case act deplorably, but one acts like a bandit like a notorious bandit would one acts like a man would in a completely male dominated society.

I think the woman acts justifiably irrationally, like someone who has just suffered a sexual assault might write. And then I go back, you said it, I go back to Drunken Angel. Why make a movie set in twelfth century Japan if you aren't intending to comment on conditions today in nineteen fifty Japan, right, and twelfth century Japan is

when feudalism emerged. And during our conversation about Drunken Angel, I referenced the Criterion essay that talked about trying to wrestle with the war and the aftermath of the war and the militarists and this feudalistic warrior tradition of male domination and sacrificing for samurai honor. This is what Krasawa's

wrestling with. You know this, this idea, And you have the characters in Drunken Angel, those men who he depicts, these tough, gangster characters who act like children fighting each other. It's comical how they actually fight each other. We laugh at them as viewers, and we laugh at these two men the exact same way. It's the complete opposite of

any kind of virile display of masculinity. And I just think I think Carasawa intends for us to laugh at them, and I think Cursaw was asking us to align with

the outrage of the wife in that final version. And I also think, Josh, for me, I'm predisposed to this a little bit, or I'm aligning with this version of events or how I see it, because one of the most striking images, lasting images, that I'll take away from this viewing of Raschoman is in her version of the story that look he gives her and her covering of her eyes. You know, just that that image of her

shielding herself. Whether it happened exactly like that or not, in every one of these stories, she still is in a position. One universal truth is that woman having to is being not only objectified but violated and then having to somehow still defend her honor right. And that that image of her covering her eyes as if she's trying to shield herself from the judgment of the men, that that, to me is like the lasting image of this film.

the band is under her? And I was thinking, you know, well, how does that transfer to these movies that curs I was also making set in the present contemporary times, And yeah, I think you're onto something there. Is it's the machismo, it's the you know, that is being exposed in both times and places. And certainly victim blaming did not go away,

you know it. It maybe didn't doesn't take place or in mid century didn't take place in the same blatant way it might have in this more time way further in the past, but it's still a reality, and it's built in that same macho, you know, chauvinistic society. So I think that's one thing that's being critiqued here for sure. I also think to your point, about what is the

objective truth the movie wants us to assume. Another piece of evidence why we should believe for the most part, the Woodcutter is that, as in Drunken Angel Curse, I Will wants a maybe not a hero, not a perfect heroic figure, but someone who does the honorable moral thing. And where does the movie end with the Woodcutter claiming the baby who has been abandoned? Right, So that's another signal. I feel like that this is a man who's not perfect.

He obviously, like everyone, is not telling the complete story, but his story may be the closest to the truth that we're going to get, and it's the most honorable, truly honorable, not in the sense of honor that as you describe the characters are searching in this time and place. Complicating this though, Adam is, I'm so glad you brought up the medium played by Narko Hamah, which how about the performance in that sequence? I mean, this is like

performance art that Hamma is giving us. It reminded me very much of Catherine Hunter's Witch in Joel Cohen's The Tragedy of Macbeth. And of course we know Crosala would adapt Macbeth as Throne of Blood in nineteen fifty seven. But just this creating some a body that seems to truly be from another world and then filtering, in this case,

another body through it, which is the dead husband. I think it's also just intensely complicated in how it gives us another level of unreliability, because are we to take the dead husband at his word because he's dead? No? We you know, we already talked about that. He's just as unreliable as the others. But just as you said, think about the meta level of unreliability of we're hearing all of these eyewitness reports secondhand. Can we trust the medium?

Is she translating the dead husband accurately?

against him fiercely at first, but then succumbs. Yeah, and she embraces him, putting her hand behind his head and kisses him deeply, right against the wall. You know all that stuff. We get that part, But why, Josh, then why does Krasawa show us from her point of view the sun as she's looking up at the sun, she's while he's embracing her. Why would we see her point of view? That's not something that the Bandit could see or theoretically could even fantasize about or imagine right in

this in this construct. So it's an odd thing. And it's also odd because in that scenario he is he is effectively assaulting her again, and what's happening there in that moment is not unlike something we've seen in other depictions of that on screen and in other scenarios we've heard about in real life where it's almost like she's disassociating. It's almost like what we see is her is her just giving herself over and staring up at the sun while he's doing that. And it's just interesting that we

get that. But it's it's within his version of the telling of the story.

entire film? He's that figure that has his arms tied behind his back or and or he's kneeling the entire time, right, And how do all the storytellers except the woodcutter, how are they positioned when they tell their stories? They're always in that same position, right, And the bandit has his arms tied similar But they all are kneeling in that same kind of position before the There's there's a symmetry there that, again I don't totally know what to do with, but but they're mirroring each other.

just by positioning characters within the frame. These witness scenes, you know, will often have the speaker in the in the foreground looking right at us or just slightly off camera, and there's almost always a witness or two in the background, but position just off center a little bit. All in these you know, kneeling positions you describe, or sitting positions. But the yeah, just the blocking throughout this movie is exquisite and on point in every frame.

ends at a point when we finally get some moral clarity. Right, That's that's the kind of level we're dealing with in Raschoman. It's it's the scale that Kurosaw was working. And from the beginning, the way they're selling this story before we as viewers have even the commoner who's our surrogate, before we've even gotten into the story, they're setting this up like it's what we saw will make you lose all your faith in humanity if those are the words. It's

worse than famine or plague. And you're going and build up. Could it possibly live up to the hype?

into some kind of different realm. And it's all just because of the It's largely just because of the sound.

and complicated and duplicitous. But there's an inexorable forward thrust to the score and those drums that drags us along as well through each air that I really liked.

we fit that in. So you have some time and you can find more information about the Film Spotting Pantheon at filmspotting dot net slash pantheon Josh, that is our show.

For show t shirts at other merch go to film spotting dot net slash shop.

Kirosawa marathon back before you joined the show. In limited release, there is a four K restoration of Satura Raised nineteen seventy film Days and Nights in the Forest that's playing at the Cisco Film Center, and Josh, at this point we both wish we were in Chicago to see.