The movie's theme is the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of obtaining the truth about an event from conflicting points of view (literature). Or rather, the movie's theme is how easy it is for one dirty little scoundrel to teach an upstanding snobbish Samurai a lesson through and through. Perhaps though, the movie isn't about that at all, and the Samurai is actually a symbol of today's hardship in getting a decent cup of tea of exactly 87 degrees at 5pm sharp. It could also be about something completely different.