B:TAS reviews: P.O.V.

(8/16/09)

Akira Kurosawa's overrated Rashomon has been lauded, among other things, for its indelible influence on all visual narrative since it splashed onto Western screens and heralded the newfound popularity of Japanese cinema in Europe and the United States. If, as it has been argued, the film Rashomon is a distortion of its source, Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story In the Grove, then every filmic homage or televisual adaptation of the film is in its own way a perversion of Kurosawa's film. P.O.V. is certainly no exception.

Kurosawa's film presents three differing narrative accounts of the same event, each character steadfast in his belief that his version is correct. This certainty, come the ending, crumbles into doubt, and then into moral terror, as it is then put forward that each character's point of view automatically shapes his experience of the events to his own prefigured biases. In short, the characters cannot help but lie about what they have seen.

Let me explain. One of the basic principles of the Rashomon structure is that each character that tells his story believes fully what he says. Yes, Bullock believes Montoya and the rookie were late, and Montoya and the rookie believe the contrary. But the magic of narrative lies not in facts of the story but in the way it is told, and visualizations of subjectively influenced reminiscences are ideal for great drama. It is an exercise in discovering objective truth, regardless of whether such a thing is possible to discover.

But Bullock says one thing and the images say another. This seems to suggest that the images are the objective truth, he is aware of this objective truth, and that he is lying as he embellishes certain details. Sure, I love the bold visual atmosphere of the flashback, just as I love the interrogation room that lacks clearly defined walls and which seems to exist in limbo. If only the evocative setting reflected the power of the story. Bullock’s is, if anything, a comic action piece. There is nothing that furthers our understanding of what happened and we come no closer to the truth, or even a fragmented perception of it.

The rookie’s story does play on subjectivity. It is told in black-and-white, suggesting a perception of events that exists in extremes. He tells of Batman as a demonic figure, and the visuals are framed so that he comes across as monstrous and enigmatic. And yet does his subjective perception illuminate or complicate the truth? Nothing he says has any bearing on the debate at hand. It simply provides a neat action scene.

Montoya’s story is clearly intended as the most important. It lacks Bullock’s deceit and the rookie’s skewed perception. But it is these qualities that also make it pointless. It is an exercise in objectivity that defies the nature of Rashomon. And yet again, her story has nothing to say about who was late or who went in early. In fact, this issue is never resolved or even properly addressed. The three stories prove pointless except in Montoya’s final investigation.

The climax is an overlong series of fights. Usually I don’t believe that fights can be overlong in an episode of Batman: the Animated Series, but even with the glorious Spectrum animation, the third act always seems to tire me out. Montoya and Batman apprehend the criminals, and everyone gets his badge back. How absurd it is that Montoya commends her partners for solving the case together, when neither did much of anything to assist her.

This is not an episode in obscurity of the truth and the harm of our inability to determine it. It is a hodgepodge of neat gangster action strung on an unresolved story that boasted more than it offered.