In 1950, Director Akira Kurosawa released one of the most famous and most-respected films of modern Japanese Cinema. In 2018, Steven Speilberg’s Amblin Entertainment is announcing that they are going to adapt the film into a “dramatic mystery thriller series.” Honestly, that’s the whole thing. There’s no more news than that. It comes from a Tweet released by Amblin earlier today.
The interesting question that rises out of this announcement is: What are they going to adapt, the Story or the Storytelling? The thing that made Rashomon famous wasn’t so much the story, but they way they told it – through the eyes of four different people, each with their own perspective on the truth.
Here’s the synopsis for the original film:
Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, “Rashomon” is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife.