Dreams

This might be the most unique movie I have ever seen. An anthology of many of the Director’s dreams that he elected to bring to life on screen. I am finding it incredibly difficult to rate the movie as a whole, so I have decided to rate each of the 8 separate dream segments and decide on an overall once I have considered their value altogether. 1. Sunshine Through the Rain A young boy ventures out into a field during a sunny rainstorm despite his mother warning him not to, that foxes hold their weddings during sun storms. He sees a fox wedding procession and is told to kill himself by this almost ethereal group of creatures as he has seen something forbidden by man to see. I can’t help but feel like it’s probably about childhood wonder and curiosity, but then why would he have to kill himself? 3/5 2. The Peach Orchard Probably the most artsy, strange, and dreamlike of all 8 segments. A young boy goes into a peach orchard after all the peach trees had been cut down and see a group of masked individuals claiming to be the peach trees’ spirits who lecture him on not caring enough about them to save them. They perform an odd dance in mourning of the orchard and at the very end a zoomed out shot sees that the figures have been replaced by tree stumps. Incredibly strange and it felt like I was on an acid trip while watching, but it gave a decent lesson on protection of nature and how nature is just as alive as we humans are. 3.5/5 3. The Blizzard This was an absolute drag to get through, it’s the weakest segment of the film. It focuses on a team of men scaling a mountain during a terrible winter storm. But it is like a 20 minute segment for no reason because it was all in slow motion for some stupid reason and there was hardly a word said the whole time. And some angel comes out of the sky and covers the leader in her hair to keep him warm when his whole crew died? It was too long and too weird to be all that good. But the message it gave about the indomitable human spirit and the unwillingness to give up even in the face of death itself is inspiring, I will say that. 2.5/5 4. The Tunnel The most emotionally powerful segment of the film. An old war general travels through a dark tunnel and is confronted with the ghosts of all the soldiers who died under his command in war. He is torn apart emotionally by the survivor’s guilt accompanying himself being the sole survivor of his company, and his belief that it was his mistakes as a leader that led his men to their deaths. It’s an incredibly deep and touching segment on his internal reflection on whether or not he believes he even deserves to live, and why he was the one “chosen” to survive over all of those other men. 4.5/5 5. Crows An artist (probably representing Kursaowa himself) literally steps into the world of one of Van Gogh’s paintings, wandering through the landscape. The colors in this segment are incredible, they’re vibrant and bright and they represent the beauty in the world that this artist is obsessively seeking to learn how to capture from his idol Van Gogh. Van Gogh is played by famous director Martin Scorsese which I thought was a fun casting. He monologues for a long time about beauty, like yes Kurasowa we get it nature is pretty there is beauty everywhere in small things. Even if it is a little exposition heavy, the message is still there the world is still gorgeous and the character dynamics are still entertaining. I really liked how after we meet Van Gogh for the first time and he tells us about all the small beauties in the world we see the artist chasing Van Gogh through many of his paintings trying to find him to learn more from him, and completely ignoring what Gogh told him and not bothering to look around at the beauty of the paintings for more than a second. It’s poetic how ignorant man can be. 4.5/5 6. Mount Fuji in Red A nuclear power plant by Mount Fuji has exploded, causing people to flee the nearby city while Mount Fuji and the sky around it glows a haunting, looming blood red. The attempts at escape by the people near Fuji are futile, as the toxic radioactive red smoke has likely already caused multiple severe cancers to start forming in their bodies, but due to humanity’s unrelenting desire to survive they flee still, hoping for the small sliver of a chance that they have to live to come true. There is some random old man who is apparently just an expert on all things radiation and explains all the scary things about all the radioactive smokes coming at them, which feels convenient until it is revealed that he is one of the people who allowed the nuclear plant to go forth with its production. Kurasowa loves his monologues and gives the old man more than one. He seems very cynical about humanity and believes that it is humanity that will destroy humanity, and he seems to be right. The segment closes on the family that kurasowa chose to follow for the majority of the segment being essentially consumed by the toxic red smoke, and the father’s futile attempts to try and clear it away with his jacket. But it’s too late, the cancer will soon set in, not even the children are safe from the destruction humanity is capable of bringing upon itself. 4.5/5 7. The Weeping Demon This is probably the most horrific and simultaneously thought provoking segment. It’s a real head scratcher to figure out because it’s so long. It’s a post apocalyptic wasteland. Humanity has brought itself to ruin, and a man in tattered clothing wanders alone through the smoke and ash and destruction and barren lands searching for something, but not knowing what he is searching for. It’s aimless wandering, alone in the shadow of humanity’s destruction of itself. He comes across a grotesque and mutated demonic creature who acts incredibly strangely, brining him through a huge mutated flower field to show that humans have caused irreparable damage to life on earth, including to humans. It is revealed that this creature was once human but was changed into what it is now through “human greed that destroyed the world” whatever that means. Two incredibly cynical dream scenarios in a row is kinda crazy given that they both convey pretty much the exact same idea in different ways: humans will bring destruction upon ourselves. The demon does a lot of monologuing, which is getting pretty repetitive as it seems like there always has to be a monologue character. And some how for all that monologuing he never explains how “humanity’s greed” and “dumping milk into a river to keep prices up” made the world essentially a nuclear fallout zone. The little blood pond surrounded by demon’s with horns that hurt like “cancerous tumors” is such a strange scene. I’m honestly baffled as to what it could possibly mean, my only guess being that the demons are a representation of humanity being hurt by their own greed. They wanted water to themselves so they drank it, and it was radioactive so it caused them to grow cancerous tumors in the form of horns, making them think that they were demons. So they went a little crazy. That would explain the original demon asking the man if he also wanted to become a demon before lashing out at him. Could be a killer metaphor. I’m not sure where the man wandering through the wasteland came from and why he doesn’t know anything about the toxic earth that has clearly been that way for many years. Did he just spawn in? Was he in a bunker? I have no idea. 4.5/5 8. The Village of the Water Mills A young traveler finds his way into a remote Japanese village where the entire town is a century behind modern life, making their livings farming and using water mills like they would have in the 1800’s. It’s peaceful, serene, quaint and beautiful in the village, giving a nice relief from the horrors of the previous 2 segments. The people living in the village live in harmony with nature. I think this is Kurasowa’s ideal vision for the future of humanity. Where we live in harmony with nature and use it to our advantage without taking more than we give back to it. Again, there’s an old man that gives hella monologues, but I lowkey didn’t mind because every sentence that came out of his wise old mouth was so beautiful and reflective, so thought provoking that I had to just sit there and think about my life for a while. Everything in the village is literally sunshine and rainbows. The death of a passing traveler marked a tradition where his grave got flowers every day for generations. Funerals are joyous celebrations of life. Villagers prioritize love of nature and of one another over all else. Everyone dies peacefully at old ages, after living full lives. It’s an idealistic version of humanity where everyone is good, and everyone has a fruitful and serene life to reminisce upon into their old ages. The message this segment leaves the audience with is that life isn’t nearly as hard as most people make it out to be. It’s actually a beautiful thing to be alive, it’s something to be celebrated. Something to be cherished. An opportunity to get out into the world and appreciate all the endless beauty to be found around every corner, and all the love spread all around the world by all the people out there who are truly good. The funeral procession scene is also one of the most touching and joyous scenes in cinema history in my opinion. I think it was the perfect choice to end the movie with this celebration of humanity instead of one of the more cynical or experimental dream segments Kurasowa illustrated earlier on into the movie. Absolutely emotionally healing. What a beautiful segment. Perfection. 5/5.