FILM

CELEBRATION AND RASHOMON

#MeToo films before #MeToo the movement

By CiCi Bao

There's Strange Goings On Going On Here

Celebration and Rashomon, two films that were made 50 years apart and thousands of miles from each other, don’t seem to have much in common. But they do: they are both about violent sexual assaults, #MeToo films before there ever was a #MeToo movement. It’s fascinating to see how Thomas Vinterberg and Akira Kurosowa imagine sexual assault before it became a huge social and political issue. Their films are searing indictments of power, but also shifty in how they depict the crimes.

In 1990s, many psychiatrists argue that the only way for victims of abuse to heal is to speak up, no matter what their families want. This is the only way to overcome the rage and the sense of powerlessness that so many of them feel. But this approach comes at a high cost—dig up the pain and you feel it all over again. The film Celebration tells such a story: a big family comes together to celebrate the father’s 60th birthday. During the dinner, the oldest son gives a toast and says that the reason why his sister killed herself is that their father raped her. Needless to say, the mood of the party changes a bit.

This Man wants to tell the truth

The key to Vinterberg’s thinking is that the father’s crime is not just a crime, but also a form of continuing violence over the entire family. The eldest son has always been quiet and obedient, the opposite of his ruthless younger brother Michel. Michel is a crucial figure in Vinterberg’s thinking. After his older brother accuses the father of raping their sister, he beats his older brother. When he finally gets proof of the crime, he beats the father. What’s important here isn’t the truth, but Michel’s violence. It is as if he has felt the crime in his soul all these years and the only way he knows how to respond is violence.

The mother is also an interesting character. Living under extreme male violence, the mother seems incapable of playing any type of positive role in the family; instead, she is like a babysitter who is responsible for taking care of the children and packing the luggage, or like a sex worker who satisfies the needs of whomever is paying. She never demands care and fair treatment from her husband; when she sees her daughter being raped by her husband, she just turns around and leaves. In this way Celebration can be considered a fable. It shows the way that violence is not just one incident, but also a way of life.

Do you ever know the truth?

Compared to Celebration, Rashomon has a wider range and ventures outside the family. A samurai and his wife pass through a forest, a robber rapes the wife, and the samurai dies. It’s a simple story, but all the participants, including the ghost of the samurai, tell differing stories to a judge. Kurosawa’s point is that each of them is complicit in the crime and find ways to hide their guilt.

What’s fascinating is that both men treat the woman with great cruelty. In fact, the samurai forgives the robber, which is strange for a husband. He tells the judge that she didn’t resist the robber and the robber says that she enjoyed the abuse. But what the woman sees is cowardice on the party of both men. Kurosawa is aware of how difficult it is for women in Japanese society, both the feudal world depicted in the film and actual Japanese society at the time (the early 1950’s). The wife’s testimony is the high point of the film in that it shows, like Celebration, that it’s not just a crime, but also a way of life, an entire world of abuse.

Would you believe this man?

The point is that these two films about horrific crimes against women are really not about the crimes at all, but about the societies that allow this type of behavior to continue over and over again. It’s a depressing lesson shared by two brilliant filmmakers before anyone ever thought of a #MeToo.

©CiCi Bao and the CCA Arts Review