When Kurosawa made this collection of dreams that he claimed to have experienced, he had made films with tremendous influence on cinema for 45 years. He had earned the privilege to indulge himself a bit. Interpreted in totality, they adopt an abstractly natural composition and add up. More to the point, even interpreted on each's own merits they're exceedingly more stimulating.
The first two dreams are seclusively Japanese but suggest Kurosawa's passionate concern for the environment. The images are invigorating: pastures of emerging flowers, and elegant processions and dances that, I must admit, seem too poised and rigid for a dream. The next two are in immediate distinction from the preceding flamboyance, creating the feeling of a story's turning point, just like a continuous feature film. They are dismal, austere contemplations of mortality and war. Mountaineers fight up a mountain during a blizzard, discouraged, eager to surrender. One at a time they submit to the snow. The leader persists, but he too yields. A mythological woman materializes enticing them to their demise. Though the ending of this is actually kind of funny, the next segment, possibly the very strongest, is heartrending:
An army officer treks a deserted road at twilight, on his way home from war. He comes to a pitch black tunnel. A furious dog emerges from the darkness and snarls and barks at him with a surreal sound of deep viciousness. He proceeds frightened and comes out the other side, but then beholds one of the soldiers over whom he had charge following him out, his face a light blue, suggesting with traditional Japanese theatricality that he is dead. The soldier doesn't believe he's dead, but the officer assures him and the soldier returns into the darkness of the tunnel, the entire platoon emerging out of the tunnel, all dead. He tries to convince them, and squeezes out his deep-rooted guilty conscience about leading them all to die. They stand silent and display a heartbreaking demonstration of undying loyalty. What I find to be the most beautiful and perceptive touch in this dream is that we see a second appearance of the dog, from the opening of this dream. When we see that it is strapped with explosives and all, we understand that it was an anti-tank dog that died with the rest of the platoon. Kurosawa understands the animal element of nature, the betrayal suffered by the enduring devotion of a dog.
Kurosawa then shifts back into elatedness with a luminous vignette where Martin Scorsese plays Van Gogh, who is without his ear and near his death. A student, presumably a grown Kurosawa, enters the vivid, effervescent and at times hectic world in the bounds of Van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the painter in a meadow. The student loses track of him and traverses through numerous paintings endeavoring to find him, scored to an infectious Chopin prelude. This is the most imaginary of the dreams, Van Gogh expressing some artistic outlook undoubtedly shared by Kurosawa, who steals us back to the shadows with inescapable nightmares of nuclear desolation. A nuclear plant melts down. Five people remain, realizing radiation will kill them. Next, a man finds wanders a foggy mountainous terrain and meets a mutated human with a horn who explains that there was a nuclear holocaust which eradicated nature and animals. These segments are more in character as essential Kurosawa and again in blunt disparity to the previous.
Then, following the warnings of impending catastrophe that clue one into Kurosawa's familiarity with the hero of I Live In Fear, the final dream leaves a tone of serenity, parting with the dream, if you will, of peace of mind if we could but accept the undemanding natural simplicities of life. A man finds an undisturbed village and meets an old man who tells that the village has long abandoned the control of technology and have chosen spiritual health over convenience. It is an apt and gratifying finale to a meditative film of overwhelming visual loveliness and vision.
Dreams certainly has a story structure, the transcendent magnificence that requires a look beyond its appearance is that these numerous segments are just what they are, fragmentary vignettes underscoring visual majesty and a mind's eye above traditional sequence.
Dreams may well appear self-indulgent to several, and does have a tendency to crawl at some point in each of the happy dreams. Nevertheless, it's a solace to one's sensory sanity, not necessarily to be seen the same way as most films. The way some find old black and whites to be comforting, taking them with their eyes half closed into a dreamy bygone universe, Dreams was initially intended for such an experience, from a filmmaker who for 45 years had proved time and time again his understanding the quintessence of the nature and purpose of cinema, and who later learned to reject criticism and make the films that he knew in his heart had to be made.
The first two dreams are seclusively Japanese but suggest Kurosawa's passionate concern for the environment. The images are invigorating: pastures of emerging flowers, and elegant processions and dances that, I must admit, seem too poised and rigid for a dream. The next two are in immediate distinction from the preceding flamboyance, creating the feeling of a story's turning point, just like a continuous feature film. They are dismal, austere contemplations of mortality and war. Mountaineers fight up a mountain during a blizzard, discouraged, eager to surrender. One at a time they submit to the snow. The leader persists, but he too yields. A mythological woman materializes enticing them to their demise. Though the ending of this is actually kind of funny, the next segment, possibly the very strongest, is heartrending:
An army officer treks a deserted road at twilight, on his way home from war. He comes to a pitch black tunnel. A furious dog emerges from the darkness and snarls and barks at him with a surreal sound of deep viciousness. He proceeds frightened and comes out the other side, but then beholds one of the soldiers over whom he had charge following him out, his face a light blue, suggesting with traditional Japanese theatricality that he is dead. The soldier doesn't believe he's dead, but the officer assures him and the soldier returns into the darkness of the tunnel, the entire platoon emerging out of the tunnel, all dead. He tries to convince them, and squeezes out his deep-rooted guilty conscience about leading them all to die. They stand silent and display a heartbreaking demonstration of undying loyalty. What I find to be the most beautiful and perceptive touch in this dream is that we see a second appearance of the dog, from the opening of this dream. When we see that it is strapped with explosives and all, we understand that it was an anti-tank dog that died with the rest of the platoon. Kurosawa understands the animal element of nature, the betrayal suffered by the enduring devotion of a dog.
Kurosawa then shifts back into elatedness with a luminous vignette where Martin Scorsese plays Van Gogh, who is without his ear and near his death. A student, presumably a grown Kurosawa, enters the vivid, effervescent and at times hectic world in the bounds of Van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the painter in a meadow. The student loses track of him and traverses through numerous paintings endeavoring to find him, scored to an infectious Chopin prelude. This is the most imaginary of the dreams, Van Gogh expressing some artistic outlook undoubtedly shared by Kurosawa, who steals us back to the shadows with inescapable nightmares of nuclear desolation. A nuclear plant melts down. Five people remain, realizing radiation will kill them. Next, a man finds wanders a foggy mountainous terrain and meets a mutated human with a horn who explains that there was a nuclear holocaust which eradicated nature and animals. These segments are more in character as essential Kurosawa and again in blunt disparity to the previous.
Then, following the warnings of impending catastrophe that clue one into Kurosawa's familiarity with the hero of I Live In Fear, the final dream leaves a tone of serenity, parting with the dream, if you will, of peace of mind if we could but accept the undemanding natural simplicities of life. A man finds an undisturbed village and meets an old man who tells that the village has long abandoned the control of technology and have chosen spiritual health over convenience. It is an apt and gratifying finale to a meditative film of overwhelming visual loveliness and vision.
Dreams certainly has a story structure, the transcendent magnificence that requires a look beyond its appearance is that these numerous segments are just what they are, fragmentary vignettes underscoring visual majesty and a mind's eye above traditional sequence.
Dreams may well appear self-indulgent to several, and does have a tendency to crawl at some point in each of the happy dreams. Nevertheless, it's a solace to one's sensory sanity, not necessarily to be seen the same way as most films. The way some find old black and whites to be comforting, taking them with their eyes half closed into a dreamy bygone universe, Dreams was initially intended for such an experience, from a filmmaker who for 45 years had proved time and time again his understanding the quintessence of the nature and purpose of cinema, and who later learned to reject criticism and make the films that he knew in his heart had to be made.