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Dreams / Yume / Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams / Japan/USA / 1990

Why this isn’t regarded as one of Kurosawa’s best works is unknown to me. Though it requires us to have a strong and unyielding attention, anyone who sits through all two hours of the famed director’s deeply personal adaptations will find a rich tapestry of vibrant colors, arresting staging and scenery—the recreations of Van Gogh paintings are simply astounding—and a slew of recurring themes: The unrecognized innocence of childhood, the simultaneous beauty and cruelty of nature, the heavy complexity of man. Comprised of eight separate stories, each based on an individual dream, the most unforgettable is “The Tunnel,” in which a Japanese soldier returning home must confront his old infantry, an assembly of blue-skinned men who all perished under his command. After the concluding dream entitled “Village of the Watermills,” in which a young traveler is taught the lessons of simple living by a centenarian villager, it becomes undeniable that, at age 80, Kurosawa’s Dreams was a reflection on life; within 3 years, he would make his final film.

by Adam Balz | Source: Warner DVD
04 Feb 2007 2:24 PM | Comments (2)

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1. leo / 5 February 2007 / 9:27 AM / URL

   Vibrant colors aside, I find this to be easily among Kurosawa’s most dull films, not only slow-paced, but also largely devoid of ideas. There are moments of great visual interest (especially in the first two episodes), but the morals of most of the subsequent segments come off to me as either mawkish or simply trite, and many are retreads of much more powerful films. (I’d take I Live in Fear over any of the no-nukes stuff here any day.) And as charitable as I am willing to be to both directors, Scorsese’s turn as Van Gogh is just puzzling.

   But then, I’m really lukewarm on late Kurosawa as a whole. With the possible exception of Ran, the director’s late career strikes me as emphasizing his worst tendencies: either maudlin sentimentality (as here) or abject, lumbering cynicism (as in Kagemusha).

2. Adam B. / 5 February 2007 / 11:42 AM / URL

   You mean Van Gogh didn’t speak with a frenzied New York accent?

   Scorsese aside—it looks as though he dunked his face in a vat of ground cumin—I still found the meditative Kurosawa to be quite refreshing. You get the sense that these dreams could tell us more about the director than anything else, especially when the various storylines revolve around childhood.