Rashomon [kurosawa - criterion] [jap-eng-esp]

The frame story is set in Heian-era Kyoto, as a a woodcutter, a priest, and a random stranger converse about a recent assault and murder case while seeking shelter from the rain. By all accounts, the notorious bandit Tajomaru followed a traveling samurai and his wife into the woods. The samurai was later found dead. There was a trial about the supposed murder, but everyone involved told a very different version of what happened. In Tajomaru's version of events, he tricked the samurai into going for a treasure hunt. He then overpowered the samurai and seduced the samurai's wife. The woman convinced them to fight over who gets to keep her. Tajomaru killed the samurai in a duel, but then discovered that that the woman had fled while they were fighting. He left with no intention to search for her. In the widow's account of events, Tajomaru raped her and left her to care for her bound husband. She discovered that her husband was treating her with contempt and loathing, and she retaliated by threatening him with her dagger. She passed out, and awakened to find that her husband was stabbed to death. She did not remember killing him, but she wandered through the forest in shock. The samurai's own testimony is heard through a medium. She heard his wife urging Tajomaru to first kill him and then marry her. She fled when Tajomaru turned against her, and Tajomaru chased after her. Tajomaru released the samurai, but the released man committed suicide with a discarded dagger. The ghost remembers someone removing the dagger from his chest, but does not remember who that person was. The woodcutter then claims that all three of them were lying, as he witnessed the events from a safe distance. In his version of events, the wife manipulated the two men to reluctantly fight a duel, because she was angry that they had both mistreated her. The samurai is disarmed and begs for his life, and Tajomaru kills him in cold blood. The wife flees the scene, and the injured Tajomaru steals the samurai's sword and limps away. The stranger soon realizes that the woodcutter was also lying about something. The supposed reliable witness was the one who stole the dagger from the crime scene. The priest briefly looses his faith in humanity after realizing that everyone was lying for self-serving reasons.