Kurosawa's Dreams

FINAL EXAM

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is a series of eight short narratives that compose a complete movie. Each story could stand by itself, but I believe these stories have a narrative thread which binds them together, which was time and death. There are commonalities that cement them together and when I finished watching it each time I felt that I had watched just one movie; it was put together in such a way that the stories somehow flowed together. I will give a brief synopsis of each story within the movie and proceed with going into greater depth in analyzing a few of the

segments.

*The first piece, titled "Sunshine Through The Rain", opens with a young boy whose mother warns him not to go out this day because the sun in shining and it is raining. On days when the weather is like this, foxes have their wedding processions and do not like to be watched. The boy runs out, finds the procession and is soon seen by the foxes. They get to his house before he does and give his mother a knife with which he is to kill himself. He goes to find the foxes forgiveness at their house, which is underneath the rainbow. This dream was unusual but beautiful, the masked paint on the foxes' faces exzuberated curiosity. Certain things like the door of the boy's house being shut was a symbol of isolation, my favorite scene in this dream would have to be when the boy was walking alone in sadness amongst the colorful bright flowers, the distance, height, and magnitude of the rainbow from the boy showed the measure of his destination.

*"The Peach Orchard", the next segment, involves another little boy, who brings one too many treats to his sister on "Doll Day" because he sees another girl. He follows the girl onto a stepped hill where many people are dressed up like dolls and confront him for his family cutting down the peach trees which were on that very land and this day is to celebrate the peach blossoms. He sticks up for himself and tells of his sadness about the affair; the dolls understand and allow him one last look at the orchard as it was.This dream contains a stately and graceful dance performed in a peach orchard, the costumes worn by the characters, representing peach festival dolls come to life, are sumptuous and colourful: the kimonos, quilted winter ones by the look, are worn layered one over the other. The music is measured and slow, and the dance is enhanced by the white, mask-like faces of the dolls: very regal, and very evocative. The dolls were grouped exactly the way the boy's sister layered them, from royalty (kings & Queens), servants, soldiers, then common people.The long scene when the flower petals fall on the boy's face and onto the ground like little gentle raindrops, exerted joy, because the boy was smiling, and the petals and the girl symbolized the new growth of the peach orchard.

* The third part, "The Blizzard", is about four men climbing up a mountain in the snow and their hope for survival as a snow storm approaches. The men all argue and begin to walk more slowly as the snow blows harder and harder. The leader is the only one who wants to keep going until they get to the next camp, everyone else is ready to give up. They all fall down in the snow to take a break. The leader is approached by a snow spirit who trys to act nice to keep the leader from rising up by talking sweetly and calmly, suddenly the beautiful spirit transforms into an ugly demon when the leader doesn't give in, and when the snow dies down the camp is right in front of them. The three other men who look dead until this point, get up and walk toward the camp. The greatness of time spent for the men to get to camp was meant for the suspense of the audience. This dream was about strength, courage, fear, and bravery, because the extent of the blizzard made the audience realize and feel for what these men were going through, their skin were frozen(potentially their skin will fall off), and even their snots were turned to snot-cycles. The gritty and cloudy image of the snow over the men's struggling bodies, moved the plot and theme along.

*"The Tunnel": The next opens with a gritty mixture of black and red lighting, with a former Japanese army officer emerging from it. As he approaches the dark tunnel a roaring,barking, vicious, and obviously angry dog suddenly stuns the timid officer with its loud barks and horrid appearance. Eventually the dog leaves, the officer walks through the tunnel with the curiosity of fear wandering if the dog was going to be back, but instead one of his unsure soldier appeared. It was an emotional and sad moment from then on, as they spoke back and forth about the death of this particular soldier, the camera direction made this scene personal and intimate by moving the camera back and forth as these two men spoke, or when they moved closer together. Even when the officer talks to the platoon as a viewer you can see the means communication because of the camera direction. At the end of this dream the dog reappears and acts the way in the beginning trying to chase the officer from the tunnel, the dog was a symbol for the crossroads between life and death.

*In "Crows", the fifth segment, an art student is in a museum studying Van Gogh's paintings when suddenly he is transported into the scene of one of his paintings of a bridge. He asks the women (in French!) washing clothes by the bridge where he might find Van Gogh. They tell him, but warn him that he has been in a lunatic asylum. He finds Van Gogh (played by Martin Scorcese) who talks to him (in English) about painting and how he cannot waste any of his time dealing with him. The man asks him (in English) about his ear to which Van Gogh replies he was painting a self-portrait, could not get the ear right, and so he cut it off. Van Gogh leaves him and the man begins to see everything as a Van Gogh painting. As he walks back through the village, he walks through Van Gogh's paintings. At the end he is back in the museum. Let me start by saying the paintings and color in this dream was extremely gorgeous and bright, the student walking through the paintings was well thought out, and the student in paintings brought the paintings to live, it made it realistic and imaginable to the viewers.

*The sixth part, "Mount Fuji in Red", starts with a scene of total chaos. People are running everywhere, in every direction carrying their belongings. It appears that Mt. Fuji is about to erupt, but in truth the nuclear power plant behind the mountain has exploded and the five reactors will explode one by one spewing cancer-causing clouds to form and blow over the people. The man meets up with another man and a woman with her two children. The woman is scared for her children and talks about how nuclear power was supposed to be safe. The man tells them that he was one of the people responsible for the problem and for lying to the people, then he jumps into the ocean. The man tries to protect the woman and her children from the red dusty wind blowing which carries some disease-causing particles. Kurosawa's message here is as subtle as a brick: humanity is spoiling the world, with pollution, consumerism and ignorance. The gritty mixture of red and black was a symbolism of death and danger. The characters' yells, screams, and rampage for safety totally showed the theme and purpose for this dream, and it also moved the plot or story line along.

*"The Weeping Demon" involves a man who is walking among a thick cloud of fog, across a black wasteland, when the fog clears it reveals what appears to be a man in tattered clothes. This man was turned into a demon when he survived the attacks of nuclear bombs and missiles. The fallout from the attacks caused the land to turn to black rocks and the plants to mutate. The demon shows the man dandelions as big as humans and roses with stems growing out of them. Humans and animals are also mutated. The animals are so mutated that they cannot be eaten so the demons have 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 one feels and the more one has done to deserve the horns. The demon's horn has just started to hurt and approaches the man to become a demon also. The display of pain, anguish, facial expression, and body language from the demons just screams out the theme of this dream.

*In "Village of the Watermills", a man comes into a town on a river which has many, many watermills. He finds an old man who talks with him about the village. This village has no name, has no electricity, and is very close to nature. The man explains the good nature of the people through a ritual of putting flowers on a stone where the villagers once buried a traveler who died there. He talks about they only use firewood from trees that have fallen down on their own. This old man criticizes the way people live nowadays and how they treat the environment with no respect, which will end up with their deaths. As the two talk, they hear music approaching and the old man explains it is a funeral, the town celebrates hard work and living to old age which nearly everyone does in the village. This was a perfect dream to end all dreams, it was extremely beautiful, settle, gentle, and quite interesting because of the morals and lessons of life the old man talked about. The background in this dream remained consistent flowing rivers, flowers, and of course the focal point the watermills. The watermills was a symbol of life in this dream, and that death is a celebration also as well as life. At the end the man understands the true meaning of life, then he places a flower on the grave.

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams comprises eight dream sequences, featuring impressive special effects and beautiful scenery from Japan. Kurosawa's dream sequences are elusive, metaphoric and influenced by Japanese legends, reflecting in some way impressions from his own life. I was pleasantly surprised with dreams, not only in terms of content but also aesthetically. There are very few films that manage to embody personal, local and global concerns as Akira Kurosawa has managed in this production. I believe it is fair to say that Dreams portrays our individual and collective dreams, fantasies, and nightmares, reflecting that sometimes what we dream of today is what will keep us awake tomorrow. A nice range of representations of concerns from the deepest and most personal childhood worries and fantasies to the more complex issues of mental illness, extreme ambition, destruction of our environment, aftermath of nuclear explosions, aftermath of war, deforestation, and even death. In all I recommend this film to anyone who has the chance to see it, It is possible that Dreams may not appeal to a mainstream audience in terms of content because there is a lot of symbolism and critical engagement but the photography and sceneries are for sure something that should not go amiss for anyone. If you get the chance it is truly worth giving it your time, a fantastic experience.

Key Aspects:

1.The Rainbow is the key to the first dream .It involves curiosity of the boy,search of the rainbow.

2.The second dreams shows the loss,beauty of nature, the dolls are the key in this dream.

3.The aspect of death,courage,fear are shown in the third dream.The character of the spirit is the crucial one.

4.This dream too portrays death,fear,war,power,redemption and regret.The Dark tunnel,the red light,the dog add too the artistic flavor.

5.The painting of Vincent Van Vough’s are itself are a riddle.The crows,the missing ear are the key to this dream.

6.In the ‘Mount Fuji in Red’ dream Akira Kurosawa directly talks about the harmful affects of Nuclear Weapons and the end of mankind.

7.In the seventh dream Akira Kurosawa show the horrific,tragic life of Demons affected the Nuclear holocaust by which he makes a very emotional statement.

8.After the horrific previous dream Akira Kurosawa shows us the beauty of Nature and says that even death can be a moment of celebration.