The “Rashomon Effect” works for opposite purposes in Rashomon, where it is used to further confuse the audience and question the reliability of all people, and in Hero, in which it is used to clarify and make clear what the truth is. In Rashomon, all the characters tell conflicting stories, and the audience is left with a lack of understanding as to what happened. With every version, the audience becomes further from the truth as to what happened and are even more confused. Even at the end, when the woodcutter, who is the theoretical testis, tells his story, part of it is false, which discredits the entire story. In Hero, the effect is used for the opposite purpose. The three stories get closer to the truth, with the white being the full truth. The red is the story that Nameless uses to earn Qin Shi Huangdi’s praise and get within ten paces of him. The blue is the story that Qin speculates, which reveals more of the truth, while the white story if the full truth about Broken Sword and Snow. The colors are used to separate the stories from each other and make clear which story is which: the red represents deception (red is the color of evil like hell and blood), blue is speculation (blue represents intelligence and imagination, as well as feeling of being lost in the blue, which is what causes Qin to doubt Nameless), while white is purity and clarity, which shown the truth. However, in Rashomon, the whole move is in black and white, so the stories are not distinguished from one another. The shades of grey can also represent the grey area between fact and fiction, which is what the movie tries to illustrate: there is not full truth, as everyone will slightly move into the gray area between white (truth) and black (lies) to make themselves look better. However, there are many different shades of grey at all times, while in Hero, there is only one color at a time to clarify what each story represents.
The effect is used not only in movies, but throughout life as a whole. In Rashomon, each character had a clear motive for lying: Tajomaru wants to uphold his reputation as being a ruthless bandit, while the woodcutter wants to hide the fact that he stole the knife. In Hero, Nameless’s motive for lying is to get closer to the emperor, while the emperor’s motive is to protect himself from being assassinated. Although everyone in both movies has a different motive, everyone retells the stories in a different way. This principle extends beyond just these movies into real life as well. Every time humans tell a story, we always change it slightly. Whether we want to skip around an embarrassing moment or exaggerate a part to make it more entertaining, no story will be exactly the same as the actuality of what happened. In addition to changing our stories, we also must listen to others’ stories and determine what the truth really is. Hero illustrates this principle well, as the emperor listens to Nameless's story skeptically and forms his own idea about the truth (but is not ultimately correct — showing that even when people think critically, they still might be wrong). Because of this, the gray area between truth and lies becomes even larger, as everyone is "playing" not one part but two: the witness and the jury. The point of these movies is to illustrate this reality and bring to our attention that there is no 100% truth and 100% falsity, but rather a large space in between, with stories shifting around as they are told and heard by different people and no set position.