Where there are conflicting motivations, there are multiple narratives. The wife in Kurosawa’s Rashomon tells her story as though she is ashamed, projecting that shame into her husband’s eyes (‘Don’t look at me like that!) until she stabs him in a sort of self-defense, defending her belief in her own virtue and victimhood.
But the last perspective on the crime, told by the woodsman who we see find the body of the husband in the beginning of the film, shows us a wife who’s wild and wiley. This wife laughs an hysterical threat, a castrating cackle. Beware the mirth of woman, it may be neither truth nor lie.
Below is an edited excerpt from that final perspective on the crime from Kurosawa’s Rashomon, in celebration of the wife who laughs.
All howls, shreiks and chortles are welcome.