Before watchingSpike LeeandDenzel Washington’s remake ofAkira Kurosawa’sHigh and Lowthis week, fans need to revisit Lee’s iconic feature debut, which was also inspired by the legendary Japanese auteur.She’s Gotta Have Itmay be remembered as the film that launched Spike Lee’s career and helped redefine American independent cinema, but the movie’s DNA is cinematically tied toRashomon.
When Spike Lee burst onto the scene in 1986 withShe’s Gotta Have It, it felt like a new, energetic, and conversational voice in American cinema had arrived fully formed. But that voice didn’t come from nowhere. Speaking toVulture, Lee cited Kurosawa’sRashomon—the masterpiece that popularized the idea of the same event retold by contrasting narrators—as a direct creative muse for his debut. Lee didn’t copy Kurosawa’s subject matter. Instead, he translated the structure into 1980s Brooklyn, where questions of truth weren’t about samurai honor, but about love, sex, identity, and autonomy.
‘She’s Gotta Have It’ Was Inspired by the Blueprint of Subjective Truth in Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon’
Shot on a shoestring budget,She’s Gotta Have Itwas a sharp contrast to Hollywood’s depictions of Black life at the time. However, to understand its influence,Rashomon’s groundbreaking storytelling style is the key. Kurosawa’s film unfolds as several characters—a woodcutter, a bandit, a samurai’s wife, and the dead samurai himself— recount conflicting versions of the same violent crime. Each testimony is guided by self-interest, memory gaps, and moral blind spots, making “truth” elusive.
Yet,Rashomonis less a whodunit than a meditation on the impossibility of pure objectivity.The viewer is forced into the role of judge, piecing together truths without ever gaining certainty. It’s a storytelling structure that invites introspection about how bias shapes reality, and this very structure sparked Lee’s imagination. “The whole story ofRashomon, where a rape and murder is committed, and you get witnesses", Spike Lee states to Vulture, “…everybody gives their own version of what happened, and the audience is left to make up their mind.”
She’s Gotta Have IttransformsRashomon’s conceit into relationship politics. The story follows Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns), a confident, sexually liberated Black woman with three lovers: Greer (John Canada Terrell), Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks), and Mars (Lee). Each man steps forward to give his version of Nola’s story and presents her through his own lens of desire and expectation. Just like inRashomon,the audience quickly realizes these perspectives are not entirely real.They clash, contradict, and reveal as much about the storyteller as they do about Nola. But while Kurosawa’s characters seek to defend their honor, Lee’s narrators are defending their masculinity of ownership over a woman who refuses to be owned.
Kurosawa’s Legacy Continues to Be a Muse for Spike Lee’s Newest Film, ‘Highest 2 Lowest’
It’s worth noting thatShe’s Gotta Have Itwas a triumph of resourcefulness.Made for around $175,000 on Super 16 film and shot in just 12 days, it was the product of an emerging independent scene in the 1980s. Beyond the budget and box-office numbers,She’s Gotta Have Itmattered because of what it chose to show and whom it centered. In a Hollywood era that too often flattened Black life into caricature, Lee returned a picture of urban Black people who were complex, stylish, and conversational.
Nola Darling was revolutionarynot only for her sexual autonomy, but for being a Black woman whose interiority drove the story. The film became a work that helped change how stories about Black Americans could be told on screen. By making Nola Darling a protagonist who refuses to conform to her lovers’ definitions of her, Lee turned Kurosawa’s ambiguous witness statements into a commentary on male entitlement and the policing of women’s choices.
After winning the Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes,She’s Gotta Have Itgrossed over $7 million domestically. More importantly, it showed that a movie about Black characters could be formally experimental and commercially valuable—a message that helped widen the path for future independent filmmakers of color.She’s Gotta Have Ithas endured as a landmark of independent cinema, earning a place in the National Film Registry in 2019. However, it hasn’t escaped critique. Lee himself has expressed regret toThe Hollywood Reporterabout the inclusion of a rape scene, acknowledging that it was a misjudgment. When hereimaginedShe’s Gotta Have Itas a Netflix seriesdecades later, he approached the subject matter with updated sensibilities, revising aspects of the story to reflect modern conversations about consent and representation.
That said, Akira Kurosawa has been a consistent inspiration for Lee throughout his career. His admiration for Kurosawa comes full circle with his upcoming Apple TV+ filmHighest 2 Lowest. Just as he once reworkedRashomon’s multi-perspective storytelling, Lee is now adapting one of Kurosawa’s best films surrounding a kidnapping. The remake represents just another sign that Kurosawa’s influence on Lee isn’t just a footnote from his debut, but an ongoing conversation shaping his filmography decades later.
She’s Gotta Have Itis available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
