Film: Dreams
Release date: 18th March 2003
Running time: 119 mins
Director: Akira KurosawaStarring: Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho, Toshie Negishi, Mieko Harada, Mitsunori Isaki
Genre: Fantasy/DramaStudio: Warner
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
This title has yet to receive a Region 2/UK release.
Pioneering the craft of motion picture, not merely in his native Japan but the world over, films such a Seven Samurai and Roshimon have had an indelible influence on generations of directors. For all this, however, it astonishes the general lack of attention Dreams has been afforded among the canon of Kurosawa's many notable masterpieces.
Dreams, as the title would suggest, is a compilation of eight vignettes inspired by dreams the writer/director recorded and accumulated over several years of his life. Some profoundly philosophical and others of a vividly visceral nature, both allow Kurosawa to indulge his unparalleled skill for dialogue and visual craft.
It is difficult not to understate the profundity of Akira Kurosawa's effect on the art of modern filmmaking. Recognised by scholars and enthusiasts of cinema, were it not for Kurosawa's body of work that left no facet of the cinematic form untouched film would not exist as it does today…
In a segment entitled ‘Crows’, a nameless character (Akira Terao) is featured encountering Vincent Van Gogh (played by director Martin Scorsese in the one scene in the film shot in English) after stepping into a hung Van Gogh being displayed in the stark white of a gallery hall. The painter’s Wheat Field With Crows is translated to screen in no less impressionistic a style than Van Gogh’s own brushstrokes. Meeting Van Gogh among the tall stalks of an expanse of golden fields, the nameless character (seen in the director’s token white sun cap) is berated by the artist who admonishes him for wasting time in a field with old men when there is so much to create, an obsession Van Gogh exclaims he cannot resist feeding.
This particular segment seems very much a personal statement on the part of Kurosawa, if gifted to him in a dream. Scorsese is among several widely recognised purveyors of cinema that have openly praised and attributed their own vision to the late Japanese filmmaker. Kurosawa in turn had credited Van Gogh as a principal influence on his vision as a director and the luscious colours with which the director animates the still painting could not make for a finer tribute. Likewise the coincidence of a sort of Scorsese’s portrayal gives the exchange a self-referential poeticism: the student (Scorsese) playing the master (Van Gogh) instructing the mentor (Kurosawa) on his obligation to his own artistry in a scene written and directed by Kurosawa.
In the films concluding piece, entitled ‘Village Of The Watermills’, another nameless traveller, again played by Terao (a recurring feature in the film, and in many other of Kirosawa’s work), happens upon the elderly operator of a rural Japanese watermill (Chishu Ryu). Set against the stillness of the brook over which the mill stands, and the measured turn of its wheel, the scene becomes at once a solemn meditation on the inevitability of death, and a deeply comforting appreciation and resignation towards the no less inevitable continuation of life. The scene serves as both a literal and figurative Buddhist lesson on the expanse of existence made perhaps the more poignant and wistful by Kurisawa’s passing earlier in 2010.
In compilation, as it is, the piece of pastiche offers as a whole a wide rendering of Kirosawa's prowess. Each vignette reflects the rich tapestry of Kirosawa's synaesthetic, some grand and mesmerizing in their visual allure, and others containing a profound minimalism and philosophical stillness. As the film represents to a large extent the culmination of a life spent behind the camera, it is a fitting introduction to the genius of its director to those unfamiliar with Kurosawa’s work and a timeless epitaph that should bring disciples of cinema to tears.
A film truly exemplifies the director’s pronouncement that “man is a genius when he dreams.” ABM
Pioneering the craft of motion picture, not merely in his native Japan but the world over, films such a Seven Samurai and Roshimon have had an indelible influence on generations of directors. For all this, however, it astonishes the general lack of attention Dreams has been afforded among the canon of Kurosawa's many notable masterpieces.
Dreams, as the title would suggest, is a compilation of eight vignettes inspired by dreams the writer/director recorded and accumulated over several years of his life. Some profoundly philosophical and others of a vividly visceral nature, both allow Kurosawa to indulge his unparalleled skill for dialogue and visual craft.
It is difficult not to understate the profundity of Akira Kurosawa's effect on the art of modern filmmaking. Recognised by scholars and enthusiasts of cinema, were it not for Kurosawa's body of work that left no facet of the cinematic form untouched film would not exist as it does today…
In a segment entitled ‘Crows’, a nameless character (Akira Terao) is featured encountering Vincent Van Gogh (played by director Martin Scorsese in the one scene in the film shot in English) after stepping into a hung Van Gogh being displayed in the stark white of a gallery hall. The painter’s Wheat Field With Crows is translated to screen in no less impressionistic a style than Van Gogh’s own brushstrokes. Meeting Van Gogh among the tall stalks of an expanse of golden fields, the nameless character (seen in the director’s token white sun cap) is berated by the artist who admonishes him for wasting time in a field with old men when there is so much to create, an obsession Van Gogh exclaims he cannot resist feeding.
This particular segment seems very much a personal statement on the part of Kurosawa, if gifted to him in a dream. Scorsese is among several widely recognised purveyors of cinema that have openly praised and attributed their own vision to the late Japanese filmmaker. Kurosawa in turn had credited Van Gogh as a principal influence on his vision as a director and the luscious colours with which the director animates the still painting could not make for a finer tribute. Likewise the coincidence of a sort of Scorsese’s portrayal gives the exchange a self-referential poeticism: the student (Scorsese) playing the master (Van Gogh) instructing the mentor (Kurosawa) on his obligation to his own artistry in a scene written and directed by Kurosawa.
In the films concluding piece, entitled ‘Village Of The Watermills’, another nameless traveller, again played by Terao (a recurring feature in the film, and in many other of Kirosawa’s work), happens upon the elderly operator of a rural Japanese watermill (Chishu Ryu). Set against the stillness of the brook over which the mill stands, and the measured turn of its wheel, the scene becomes at once a solemn meditation on the inevitability of death, and a deeply comforting appreciation and resignation towards the no less inevitable continuation of life. The scene serves as both a literal and figurative Buddhist lesson on the expanse of existence made perhaps the more poignant and wistful by Kurisawa’s passing earlier in 2010.
In compilation, as it is, the piece of pastiche offers as a whole a wide rendering of Kirosawa's prowess. Each vignette reflects the rich tapestry of Kirosawa's synaesthetic, some grand and mesmerizing in their visual allure, and others containing a profound minimalism and philosophical stillness. As the film represents to a large extent the culmination of a life spent behind the camera, it is a fitting introduction to the genius of its director to those unfamiliar with Kurosawa’s work and a timeless epitaph that should bring disciples of cinema to tears.
A film truly exemplifies the director’s pronouncement that “man is a genius when he dreams.” ABM
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