"Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings — the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave — even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you can’t understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academy Award winnersFilm directors from JapanFilm producers from JapanScreenwriters from JapanPeople from Tokyo
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Criterion Collection essay on Rashamon, excerpted from Something Like an Autobiography as translated by Audie E. Bock (1982)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 Kurosawa Akira, also 黒沢 明) (23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998) was a Japanese film director, producer, and screenwriter. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.
7 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Akira Kurosawa →
Related Quotes
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane!"
"I like silent pictures and I always have. They are often so much more beautiful than sound pictures are. Perhaps they…"
"A film should appeal to sophisticated, profound-thinking people while at the same time entertaining simplistic people…"
"Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the tr…"
"No matter where I go in the world, although I can't speak any foreign language, I don't feel out of place. I think of…"
"Ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny cre…"
"All these hundreds of years, from the days of the oldest poetry collections, there have been poems about cherry bloss…"
"Every worm to his taste; Some prefer to eat nettles."
"You are being very demanding indeed. Where, I wonder, will we find the woman to satisfy you? You really should have s…"
"Children retain a great deal, and when they grow up they start going over things and rejudging them from a grownup’s …"