Dreams

Akira Kurosawa's dreams are a great cinematic interpretation of 8 dreams of the director. Each film is a visual journey through the mind of Kurosawa. Each film lacks personal narrative, but makes up for it in great cinematography. While Dreams is filled with great costumes, effects, lighting throughout. It also holds deeper meaning under the beautiful visuals.

Sunshine Through The Rain

  A beautiful film about nature, Japanese myth, and traditional value of  obedience. It tells the story of a young boy who disobeys his mother to go see the foxes wedding processions. The foxes wedding processions are sacred and do not want anyone seeing them, interrupting the processional is punishable by death. So when the boy gets caught he runs back home only to find that his mother basically disowns him until he gets forgiveness from the foxes. He runs through a flower filled meadow to ask for forgiveness and the film ends. 

 Sunshine is long, and drawn out with very little dialogue or music. The beauty is all in the visuals, during the processional the foxes costumes are colorful, and uniquely Japanese with the Noh masks and classic robes. The interplay of the smoke and lights only amplify the beauty of the scene more. The meadow scene is beautiful. As Kurosawa cuts to a wide shot of the meadow, we see the great rainbow juxtaposed with the flowers of the meadow signifying the start of this young boy's journey.

Peach Orchard

The Peach Orchard is a tale about the conservation of nature and traditional innocence. It involves another little boy who brings one too many treats to his sisters party on "Doll Day" swearing he saw another girl, he follows the girl onto a hill where the spirits of nature confront him for cutting down the orchard trees. He says that it was his family's fault and not his for he loved the Peach Orchard dearly. The spirits understand him and allow the boy to see The Peach Orchard one more time in all its former glory.

This particularly whimsical piece comes complete with a stunning musical number. The costumes of the nature spirits are bright, colorful, and just delightful. And Kurosawa's staging is that of a Broadway play. The music carries the film, as it switches from eastern music to western music one identifys with the beauty of nature and the innocence of the child. The main theme of this film is that the magic of innocence is something that we should not take for granted.

The Blizzard 

  A traditional film with the values of leadership and perseverance, The Blizzard tells the story of group of mountain climbers climbing Mt. Everest. A giant snow storm hits the group and they are ready to give up. The leader tries to convince them to push forward to the next camp because if they dont they will freeze to death. but the energy is sucked out of them and they decide to take a short break. As they take a break the snow slowly begins to consume them, out of nowhere a snow spirit appears and attempts to take the life of the leader by wrapping him in the warm embrace of death. The leader realizes what is happening and decides he must resist, he pushes the snow spirit away and tries to rally the group up. After he resists the temptations of the snow spirit the storm stops and the next camp appears directly in front of them. It was because the leader was able to persevere the group survived to live another day.

  The scene with the snow spirit is particularly beautiful with it's abstract vocal music and beautiful cloth flowing in the wind.This is another film where music carries the piece. Because the snow spirit represents death, Kurosawa cuts back and forth from the sounds of the snow storm to the beautiful music of death as the leader struggles to survive. And as the leader rallies the group classical music plays to represent the triumph of the group. The snow effects are particularly good and it makes you think as you were on the mountain with them. The Blizzard is a short piece of traditional leadership and perseverance in the face of huge odds. 

The Tunnel 

  The Tunnel is a film with the traditional value of responsibility. As a Japanese officer returns home he must make his way through a tunnel, which represents life/the journey. Before entering he meets a watchdog with red eyes and a nasty growl. Whether its a warning or just a hallucination, the soldier walks through the tunnel anyway.

As he reaches the end he meets one of his former friends who died in the war, the friend swears he's alive and it pains the officer to tell him he isn't. As the soldier leaves he returns with the whole regiment. The whole regiment are ghosts as their faces are painted white, during this scene the officer takes full responsibility for getting them all killed, instead of blaming the horrors of war which is very noble. This guilt is hard on the officer and he falls to his knees almost breaking into tears. As the regiment marches on back into the tunnel the watchdog comes out again and encourages the officer to return home back to his family. 

 The tunnel is probably the most powerful film in this compilation.There is no music and the strong silences only add to the intensity. Kurosawa's use of red lighting to represent hell or the underworld, and the way Kurosawa almost sucked all the color out of the film to represent the bleakness is amazing. The tunnel is a piece of film making where less is more applies. There are no special visual effects or grand music like in the last two. The Tunnel is Kurosawa's quiet, solemn parable of taking responsibility for your actions. 

Crows

Crows is a segment of an art student studying one of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings when he is suddenly he is transported into the scene of one of his paintings. He asks a woman where he can find Van Gogh, but he is warned that Van Gogh is in a lunatic asylum. The man finds Van Gogh(Martin Scorcese) and tries to ask him about painting, but Van Gogh has no time to that he must paint, he is inspired by everything around him and must waste no time. Soon Van Gogh leaves the man, and the man begins to see everything as a Van Gogh painting. As he walks back through a village, he walks through some of Van Gogh's paintings and at the end is he back at the museum. 

Let's get one thing straight. The way Kurosawa created the worlds of Van Gogh is amazing, and is one of the reasons he is considered such a legendary director. Kurosawa's sets and effects are still way of ahead of his time and it makes Crows a visual feast for the eyes. A particular point that stands out is the giant painted sun in the background that illuminates everything and represents Van Gogh's creative energy, his need to paint.

Crow's is unlike any other of the films in Dreams. It doesn't have to do with Japanese values or the environment, but it has to do with the creative spirit of an artist. Which is why, in this reviewers humble opinion it is most reflect of Kurosawa himself. The way Van Gogh devotes himself to his paintings is the same way Kurosawa devotes himself to his films. There is that drive in both of these men to keep creating great art. The main message behind Crows is that great art comes from people who devote themselves entirely to their craft. Their works are a reflection of their artistic inertia or how far they are willing to go. And for Van Gogh and Kurosawa, the sky was the limit.

Mt. Fuji In Red

 

Mt. Fuji In Red starts off with a sense of total chaos, people are running everywhere carrying their belongings or as much as they can take. It appears as Mt. Fuji is about to erupt but the truth is that the nuclear power plant behind the mountain is having a castostrophic meltdown. The powerplant meltdown paints the sky a sickly red and causes radiation to be strewn across the landscape. One man meets up with man II and a woman and her children. The women thought that nuclear power was supposed to be safe and man I says he was responsible for the meltdown and kills himself, then Man II tries to protect the woman and her children as clouds of radiation envelop them. 

Mt. Fuji In Red is modern theme of the environment and just how harmful nuclear energy is. The human race has so much power to destroy the only home we have, Planet Earth. With all this new technology, Kurosawa warns us that we must be careful in what we use or this technology can come back to hurt us. Just look at Japan right now with it's nuclear reactor situation and tell me it isn't eerily similar. 

The Weeping Demon

  The Weeping Demon is another cautionary tale, warning us against the horrors of nuclear energy. The film starts off with a man wondering the black, desecrated wasteland when he meets a man in tattered clothes. The man in tattered clothes was turned in to a demon when he survived the nuclear war. The fallout caused the land to turn to black rocks and the plants to mutate along with humans and animals too. There is no food so the demons worked out a hierarchy - the demons with more horns eat the demons with less and serve their punishment of immortality. The more horns a demon has, the more pain it feels and the more it has to deserve it. The demon's horn starts to hurt and approaches the man to become a demon also. 

  This bleak tale of nuclear fallout is a dramatized warning of what could happen in the near future. Kurosawa displays the wasteland with such bleak colors and props. The giant flowers grow taller than the demons, the sky is a bright blood red, and there is nothing but charred rocks for miles. The scene where the traveler is shown the demons crying in pain is dragged out for dramatic effect, almost to the point where it is excruciating. The Weeping Demon, just like Mt. Fuji in red are Kurosawa's modern takes of nuclear energy and the power it has. Since the demons made the Earth this way they are made to suffer in it for eternity.

 

Village of the Watermills 

  A cheerful, peaceful little film about enjoying the beauty of nature. It is my personal favorite out of all the pieces and a great way to end the film. A young traveler wonders into a village along a river with tons of watermills. Enticed by this village, he wonders around until he meets an old man who tells him about the village. This village has no name, no electricity, and is very close to nature. The old man explains the customs of the village and how people today treat the environment with no respect, which will be their demise. As the two keep on talking they hear music approaching and the old man explains its a funeral, the town celebrates hard work and living to old age which nearly everyone does in the village. The old man then goes off to join the ceremony making a remark how he will be celebrated soon. The traveler observes the ceremony which such enthusiasm and then takes a flower and puts in on a stone to preserve the villages custom and walks off to new adventures.

  The message in Village of the Watermills, is a modern one. This film explains how people don't treat the environment with the respect it deserves. One must appreciate nature to fully appreciate life. The message here is the conservation of nature and traditional customs. The village is teeming with life. Flowers, birds, and trees grow abundantly while a calm river flows lazily along. Kurosawa captures this village so beautifully that the colors of the flowers and the people are so vibrant, they pop out at you. The funeral procession which is a custom in the village is somewhat similar to that in sunshine in the fact that it is more like a staged play than a film. This procession is happy which shows that these people love life and are not afraid to die for they have experienced the best of what nature has to offer. The land gives them everything and have no need for anything extra. A beautiful ending piece, Village of the Watermills is clear in its message of preserving the environment and traditional customs for that is all we truly have. 

  Visually, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is a masterpiece. The sets, composition and use of color are all breathtaking. The pace of some of the stories is a bit slow, but this is still a great and very underrated film. It is Kurosawa's most personal film because he reveals more of himself in this piece than in any other. Dreams is great if you are studying great cinematography. The stories lack substance but the messages are there, hidden in every single film you just have to look hard. From the sets, composition, color, costumes, use of music Dreams is one of Kurosawa's greatest films and will be studied by cinematographers, directors, and visual artists for years to come.