Akira Kurosawa's Dreams | Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams | Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho | Dreaming in Shinto

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Akira Kurosawa's D...

	Akira Kurosawa's Dreams Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho Warner Home Video, 2003 average customer review:based on 138 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the most visionary, deeply personal works in the 60-year career of the master behind Rashomon, The Seven Samurai and Ran. Featuring eight episodes rich in imagery and insight (and casting MARTIN SCORSESE as a feisty Vincent Van Gogh), it explores the costs of war, the perils of nuclear power and especially humankind's need to harmonize with nature. You will be enchanted ... and enthralled.

dreams

I think Kurosawa's best, especially the Van Gough sequence, with the Cherry Blossoms a close second.

Dreaming in Shinto

As usual with most things I love, this film is not for everyone. It is very much an "art film" and you have to like that sort of thing, but there are a couple of extra elements here that will separate the wheat from the chaff in whether someone else will "like" this... Specifically, it's in Japanese (w/English subtitles), most of it is in "real time", and it helps to understand Japanese concepts of Nature (where living things such as trees have "spirits" inside them.)

Aparently director Akira Kurosawa kept a dream journal, and this film presents 8 such dreams that particularly affected him. Mission accomplished: this film effectively sucked me in and put me in the place of Kurosawa during each vignette. I presume that each segment's ending was when he woke up.

There is some powerful stuff here, everything from nightmares to simply surreal episodes straight from his subconscious. Kurosawa bares his soul to the viewer, and the effect is truly moving. One of them (where he's stuck in the mother of all blizzards and the situation is demonstrably hopeless) absolutely crushed me. I freely admit that other segments reduced me to tears. If a film can communicate its effects that accurately and vividly to the viewer, it must be doing something right.

Of the 8 dreams, 2 are "so so" though that's me as a Westerner, and at least I can see why they would have more import to the director. The rest of the film more than makes up for them with their power.

In all likelihood, you have never seen anything like this film, so that alone makes it worth checking out. It is certainly worth watching once, and I'd recommend watching it twice so you don't have the anxiety of knowing whether everything works out all right (or not!) hanging over your head.

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it is amazing

It's the most amazing Japanese film I've ever seen. And the quality of tape was really good - even I can say "perfect".

Gaia

I don't know if Kurosawa was familiar with the term "gaia" but that's what Dreams is about. The overall point of Dreams is: we're wrecking the planet in our selfish pursuit of convenience and comfort and our foolishness will be our own demise. The greatest filmmaker of the only country to have suffered through atomic bombings strings together eight loosely connected shorts all more-or-less about the beauty and power of nature and man's callousnes towards it.

Inevitably, some of the shorts are stronger than others and individual tastes differ. The first two and the fourth and fifth are my favorite. Sunshine Through the Rain, about a fox wedding, combines natural beauty and mystery perfectly. Don't fool with mother nature. Peach Orchard combines beautiful vibrant colors and a Noh drama presentation about the importance of preservation. The Tunnel is an extended meditation on the loss and shame of war. Crows is a surprisingly cool, trippy time travel tale about meeting Vincent Van Gogh and living in his works. Martin Scorcese, of all people, plays Van Gogh and is very good in the brief portrayal. I found the rest of the shorts to be less effective. None are awful but a few tend to tell instead of show. The last short, in particular, while pretty with all the watermills, is just a lecture. All the shorts feature striking imagery and all are shot completely or mostly outdoors.

Dreams is heavily invested in the spirit world. Of the eight shorts, six feature spirits or ghosts of some sort. Children are featured prominently and there is a certain childlike simplicity to the storytelling. The days of Seven Samurai, Rashomon level of profundity were behind him for the 80 year old director. This is a relaxed, simpler Kurosawa in his twilight.

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Psycotic Nightmares

It always amazes me that folks always wax poetic about Akira Kurosawa and never seem to get past the director to get to the story.

Now I have to admit that I'm really into Japanese cinema, but this is a very artsy movie. If you are looking for Yojimbo, bypass this. This is not that kind of movie. This is the kind of movie that someone with a liberal arts degree who enjoys visiting art museums might enjoy. It is a bunch of increasing dark vignettes with a happy one at the end.

The first involves a 10 year old boy who sees a marriage procession who then is kicked out by mother and given a tanto (knife) and told that he has to kill himself. Beautiful scenery as he heads into the field to beg for his life. We don't (thankfully) see the outcome. This was one of the happier vignettes.

We move on to a vignette that has a sick little boy talking to the personification of some peach trees that were callously cut down by his family. While truly sad, this was a happy bed of roses compared to most of the rest.

The one about Mt. Fuji was just about as dark as dark gets, except maybe the one about the human watching the demons in hell, Yea, this one involves 6 exploding Nuclear Power plants, Mt Fuji blowing up, and everyone in Japan jumping off a cliff or being overcome by colorful radioactive gas. All the while the guy who caused it all lovingly describing just how bad, bad will get. The Demons in Hell one seems to be a follow on with mutated flowers, devils whose rank is determined by the number of horns on their heads. Good idea on the horns. I have no idea how many chili dogs it took to have these nightmares.

Their was a fairly happy one with a Japanese painter entering a Van Gogh painting, and the last one hearkens back to the Willoby episode from Outer Limits. The Waterwheel village was truly the only really happy story in the bunch. But then, if you like happy stories you probably are not watching Japanese movies.

Let's get real. Most people will not like this not because of the filming which is excellent, or the tales which are dark but good, but because it might be considered a bit highbrow. If you like artsy - go for it.

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