In A Groove Essay, Research Paper

The short story “In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa was made into a movie called Rashomon. The movie and the short story share both similarities and differences.

The story starts out with the woodcutter’s statement and how he was walking in the woods. The movie however starts out like the short story Rashomon which opens with people sitting under a big gate. The movie then goes into telling the different statements from various characters. In the woodcutter’s statement in the story he stumbled upon a women’s hat, scarf, rope, comb, and the guy’s body. In the movie however he never finds a comb and also finds a mans hat and an amulet case which was never mentioned in the book. There was also some differences in the book and the movie based on the types of clothing worn by the characters. One example is the fact that in the story the policemen is described as wearing a kamoto but in the movie the policeman is dressed is dirty rags, just like everyone else.

Besides sharing differences between the movie and the short story there was also some similarities between the two. The movie and the story both portrayed the girl as riding on a horse with a scarf hiding her view and this is very clear in the movie because they focus the film shot right on her. The craziness of Tajomaru is portrayed in both the movie and the story also. The story is a little different though because it portrays him to be a thief who doesn’t care if he kills or not. In the movie however, the viewers can plainly see that Tajomaru is crazy because of his wacky spontaneous laughter that gets everyone’s attention. The book and the movie both go through everyone’s statement one by one which is a big similarity because nothing important in the statements change from the movie to the book. Another thing the story and the movie has in common is how the husbands statement is given through a medium. While I was reading the story however, I had no clue what a medium was. As I watched the movie I found out that the medium was the husbands sprit who talked through his wife’s body which wasn’t explained at all in the story.

Although there were some similarities and differences between the story and the movie that same point was still expressed. That point is the fact that people tell lies and sometimes it is hard to figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth, which I totally understand from past experiences. The movie I can honestly say was better than the book. I understood the story more because I got to see what was going on and I picked up on things that I missed while reading the short story.