Dreams: Like Walking Through a Painting

Dreams (1990) was one of Akira Kurosawa’s last great films before his death in 1998. Although some consider this film a disappointment, it is truly a visual masterpiece that, in my opinion, is unequaled. Dreams is broken into eight independent stories that are based on some of Kurosawa’s actual dreams. Each story is simply presented as is, with no attempt to connect it with the others. Other than the simple statement at the beginning of each, “This is a dream that I once saw” (konna yume wo mita), there is no underlying narrative as there often is in anthologies. If it is late at night and you are falling asleep, this is a movie that you could easily stop and resume the next day. There is no real reason anybody has to watch it straight through, though the sheer beauty of the film may compel you to do so anyway. A few of the stories are based on Japanese mythology and a few more have fairly simplistic political messages. There is nothing particularly deep about any of them on the surface. However, the sheer aesthetic beauty and mystery, much like in real dreams, convey a powerful message that has to be felt more than contemplated. I’ll review each dream individually, so this may be a long review. I will also have a succinct conclusion for people who are not interested in reading my thoughts on every segment.

The Dreams
“Sun Through the Rain” is based on the old Japanese myth of the “fox wedding,” which is often told to Japanese children (I’d liken it to the story of Icarus in the west). According to this myth, when it rains, the foxes have weddings in the forest that are off limits to all humans. Foxes in Japanese mythology are usually bad omens (though not always. Inari, the spirit of harvest/business is a fox) and are therefore to be avoided. In this dream, a young boy is warned by his mother not to go into the forest when it is raining. However, curiosity gets the best of him and he witnesses the fox wedding, which is portrayed as a dreamlike parade of people in masks that look similar to those in Noh theater. Upon witnessing the dream, his mother refuses to allow him back into the house and gives him a dagger, delivered to her by the foxes, with which he is supposed to kill himself. This story in particular probably makes very little sense to people unfamiliar with Japanese culture. However, perhaps more so for those people, “Sun Through the Rain” has a very bizarre, nonsensical quality that could only be found in a dream. Watching the strange procession of foxes through the rain is simultaneously peculiar and wonderful.

“The Peach Orchard” is set in the context of a Japanese tradition of making dolls to atone for sins and to protect against repercussion for one’s mistakes – practiced particularly in the event of an abortion or premature death of a child. This particular story is set during a small springtime festival in which girls make dolls to protect them during the coming year. A young boy (the same one in the first dream I believe) follows a girl to a barren peach orchard and is confronted by a group of dolls that are angry at his family for chopping down the peach trees. The boy is truly saddened by the loss of the once beautiful Peach trees and expresses his sorrow to the dolls, who grant him one last look at the peach blossoms in return. Anyone who has seen a Wallmart pop up where a forest used to be, or a parking lot built where a park used to be can relate to the little boy as he cries over the loss.

In “The Blizzard,” a party of four men is hiking through a snowstorm that is progressively getting worse. Their leader demands that they drive on to the next camp, but the rest of the party slows down and, giving in to the cold, collapses on the ground. A female apparition clothed in white, the “snow spirit,” appears to the leader and reveals that the camp is, in fact, just a few hundred meters away. This is the dream that I like the least out of all of them, but it is still very well done. Everyone has been at the end of his rope at one time or another, and there is always something that pulls us back up.

“The Tunnel” begins with a soldier standing in front of a gaping, dark tunnel. Before he walks through the tunnel, he is harassed by a strange dog. Upon reaching the other side, he meets Private Noguchi, one of his soldiers who, though obviously dead, attempts to go home to his family. Soon, he hears marching of many soldiers coming through the tunnel. The rest of the platoon that, under his leadership was completely wiped out with the sole exception of himself, emerges and stand at attention in front of him. The soldiers do not realize they are dead, and the commander must convince them to go back through the tunnel in spite of his guilt at being responsible for their deaths. This dream can be taken in a number of different ways. To me, this story is about trying to overcome regret. However, to my father, who is a war veteran, this dream had a more potent message about war, guilt and death.

“The Crows” has a short cameo by Martin Scorcese as Vincent Van Gogh. A young art student is transported back in time and sees Vincent Van Gogh working on one of his paintings. After having a conversation with Van Gogh about art, the student begins walking and finds himself literally walking through Van Gogh’s paintings. Though all the visuals in this movie are amazing, “The Crows” probably has the most stunning scenery of the entire film. Anyone who enjoys art, whether it be music, paintings or movies, knows what it is like to be completely immersed in a work, and this dream speaks to that feeling.

“Mount Fuji in Red” is a truly disturbing apocalyptic tale. A group of people meets on a cliff overlooking the ocean with the backdrop of Mount Fuji towering through an angry-looking red sky. One man explains that the nuclear reactors are exploding, and that radioactive smoke – colored to distinguish what element it is – will slowly kill everyone who survives the blasts. The man, a woman and her two children contemplate jumping off of the cliff to commit suicide as the colored smoke begins to float in their direction. Though this vision probably seems paranoid to most people – even opponents of nuclear power (of which I am not one) – it is vivid and disturbing, and speaks volumes to Japan’s very personal experience with and fear of anything nuclear. Regardless of the politics, this has a disturbing surrealistic, nightmarish quality to it.

“The Weeping Demon” might very well be a sequel to the previous dream, “Mount Fuji in Red.” It starts out with a man walking through a post-apocalyptic wasteland who meets a grossly disfigured man with horns growing from his head. The man explains that due to the fallout from a nuclear attack, animals are contaminated and impossible to eat, and plants are mutated and disfigured. Dandelions grow taller than people and roses have grotesque branches protruding from them. The horned people have been punished with immortality, eternally living in pain. The more horns a person has, the more evil deeds he did during his life, and the more he suffers. Again, although the effects of radiation are wildly exaggerated, the entire scene is still frightening. The disfigured humans are reminiscent of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombs who were often alienated and shunned after the war. Not simply a potent warning against nuclear weapons, but also a warning that bad deeds will catch up to everybody someday.

“The Village of the Watermills” is a serene, hopeful end to the sequence of often-disturbing dreams. A young hiker discovers a village that is isolated from nearly all of modernity and is functional through the use of several watermills. The hiker meets an old man who criticizes modern living and its disdain for the environment, and talks about how the village uses only what nature gives it. The man ends the conversation when he hears a large parade coming down the road and runs off to join it. The parade is actually the funeral of a recently deceased villager. It has an impressive selection of music and dancing, and is meant to celebrate the life rather than mourn the death of the deceased – perhaps a dream of how Kurosawa wanted his own funeral to be. This final dream obviously romanticizes “natural living,” but ends the film on a high-note, giving hope that the world is not as bad as perhaps we make it out to be. The village is simply beautiful and its peaceful atmosphere translates perfectly to the viewer.

Conclusion
This is not by any means a film that everyone will enjoy. To be perfectly honest, I am surprised I like it as much as I do. I am definitely not the granola-crunching sort of guy, so one would think that the artsy-fartsy style and leftist preaching would be a turn-off. However, the film is simply too beautiful for me to dislike. As I said before, the real strength of Dreams is not its obvious messages, which are pretty simplistic and dull, but the feelings it conveys. Dreams comes off more like a painting on film. If one could actually walk through a painting, as the character does in “The Crows,” I have a feel it would be exactly like this movie. It is aesthetically pleasing and very moving, but manages to avoid the pretension that I dislike in so many art house movies. Unlike most of Kurosawa’s famous films which, though usually set in Japan, have themes that can be enjoyed by people all over the world, Dreams has many elements that are distinctly Japanese. Therefore, this may make it an even more difficult watch for some people. However, a lack of knowledge might actually help in the case of this film; let’s face it, dreams are often exercises in confusion and nonsense rather than deep spiritual moments. Kurosawa, in many ways, manages to pull off both with Dreams.