Ebert's review is very interested in Kurosawa's use of the camera and what it reflects. It says,"Because we see the events in flashbacks, we assume they reflect truth. But all they reflect is a point of view, sometimes lied about." In this way, Rashomon soft-sells its audience; it never directly says to trust one character's story over another's. Kurosawa claimed, "... in his autobiography, 'Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves.'" The normal human response is to immediately conclude that the bandit committed the murder because, after all, he is a bandit.
But the film's goal is to have us trust the criminal just as much as much as the innocent woodcutter. Camera use reflects this; "Because they are usually pointed at real things, we usually think we can believe what we see. The message of "Rashomon" is that we should suspect even what we think we have seen." Kurosawa plays the 8th juror by purposefully leading us through a twisted story line to show that the bandit's testimony deserves just as much weight as the woman's, or the medium's, or the woodcutter's. All humans err, and all humans have the ability to start over.
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