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| The Cover of Kurosawa Akira’s Dreams |
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Buy this DVD at Amazon.com |
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| The Cover of Kurosawa Akira’s Dreams |
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Buy this DVD at Amazon.com |
Kurosawa, Japanese film maker extraordinaire, left behind this wonderfully diverse and engaging film called Dreams.
This film is not a single narrative, nor is it a collection of narratives that are somehow, in some artificial way, all linked to each other. Dreams are random. Dreams are unpredictable. Dreams take you to places and situations and experiences that are beyond our experience and anticipation. This is a collection of dreams, a collection of thoughts, ideas, visions, and moments. But these dreams are nothing like the dreams this writer has. These are not the dreams of white noise and scattered bits of dialogue, these dreams speak to us, but not in a pedantic manner. They teach us, but in ways that are surprising and unexpected.
Dreams is not just a collection of vignettes to watch. They are meant to be experienced.
One of the most stunning vignettes for this writer was the story of the peach blossoms. A group of kids are playing in a house and a little boy sees a girl that no one else can see. He follows the girl outside to the place where peach blossoms once grew on peach trees. All that is left are the stumps of trees. What appears before him is a huge life-size display of the dolls that are used in the "Hina matsuri", the "Dolls festival" for "Girl’s Day". The costumes of musicians and courtiers, singers and nobles are awesome. And the voices they speak with! Marvelous!
Other vignettes deal with imagination, regret, promises, and the surreal. An incredibly deep and moving film, packed with human expression and humane sentiment, Dreams is a DVD you can watch again and again. As a recommendation I would suggest not watching one vignette after another. They are all so powerful compacted that enjoying them as morsels of a magnificent feast is not a hyperbolic parallel, it is advice for how to enjoy and let the subtlety of each scene soak in. It’s easy to be overwhelmed with this DVD.
I have often complained at the lack of movie talent that comes out of Japan, or that is permitted so much audience on television. These actors who have graced this film, and many other Kurosawa films, seem to exist within a vacuum. They just don’t seem to live in the same Japan that I experience and see everyday. Watching 30 minutes of Japanese television would leave most viewers holding their ears for fear that their brains may leak out, but watching 30 minutes of Kurosawa’s Dreams can make you believe in a Japan so fabulous, so fantastic, so illusionary that you’d want to get on the next plane to Japan and see it with your own eyes.
Kurosawa’s uncanny sense of timing, of movement, tone, and of visual imagery is brilliant and timeless. There are not so many films that we can watch again and again, or visit in years to come with a fresh mind and take away from it with a new impression or understanding. Akira Kurosawa was locked into this sense of the eternal aesthetic, and does his nation and people an awesome service through this, and many other, films.
Masterful.
Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
February, 2006
This page is copyright © 2006 Mark Groenewold