, also known as Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, is a 1990 magical realist anthology film of eight vignettes written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. Inspired by actual recurring dreams that Kurosawa had, it stars Akira Terao, Martin Scorsese, Chishū Ryū, Mieko Harada and Mitsuko Baisho. It was the director's first film in 45 years in which he was the sole author of the screenplay. An international co-production of Japan and the United States, Dreams was made five years after Ran, with assistance from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and funded by Warner Bros. The film was screened out of competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, and has consistently received positive reviews.
Dreams addresses themes such as childhood, spirituality, art, death, and mistakes and transgressions made by humans against nature.
Plot
The film does not have one narrative, but is episodic in nature, following the adventures of a "surrogate Kurosawa" through eight different segments, or "dreams", each one titled.
"Sunshine Through the Rain"
A young boy's mother tells him to stay at home during a day when the sun is shining through the rain, warning him that foxes have their weddings during such weather, and do not like to be seen. He defies her wishes, wandering into a forest where he witnesses the slow wedding procession of the foxes. He is spotted by them and runs home. His mother meets him at the front door, barring the way, and says that an angry fox came by the house, leaving behind a tantō knife. The mother gives the knife to the boy and tells him that he must go and beg forgiveness from the foxes, refusing to let him return home unless he does so. She warns that if he does not secure their forgiveness, he must take his own life. Taking the knife, the boy sets off into the mountains, towards the place under the rainbow where the foxes' home is said to be.
"The Peach Orchard"
In spring, on the day of Hinamatsuri (the Doll Festival), a boy spots a small girl dressed in pink in his house. He follows her outside to where his family's peach orchard once was. Living versions of the hina dolls appear before him on the orchard's slopes, and reveal themselves to be the spirits of the peach trees. Because the boy's family chopped down the trees of the orchard, the dolls berate him. However, after realizing that the boy loved the blossoms and did not want the trees to be felled, they agree to give him one last look at the orchard as it once was. They perform a dance to Etenraku that causes the blossoming trees to reappear. The boy sees the mysterious girl walking among the blooming trees and runs after her, but she and the trees suddenly vanish. He walks sadly through the thicket of stumps where the trees had been, until he sees a single young peach tree, in full bloom, sprouting where she stood.
"The Blizzard"
A group of four mountaineers struggle up a mountain path during a horrendous blizzard. It has been snowing for three days and the men are dispirited and ready to give up. One by one they stop walking, giving in to the snow and sure death. The leader endeavors to push on, but he too, stops in the snow. A strange woman (the yuki-onna of Japanese folklore) appears out of nowhere and attempts to lure the last conscious man into giving in to his death. He resists, shaking off his stupor and her entreaties, to discover that the storm has abated, and that their camp is only a few meters away.
"The Tunnel"
A discharged Japanese company commander is walking down a deserted road at dusk, on his way back home from fighting in the Second World War. He comes to a large concrete pedestrian tunnel, from which a barking and snarling anti-tank dog emerges. The commander walks through the dark tunnel and comes out on the other side. He is followed by the ghost of one of his soldiers, Private Noguchi, who had died of severe wounds in the commander's arms. Noguchi's face appears blue with blackened eyes.
Noguchi seems not to believe that he is dead. Noguchi points to a light emanating from a house on a nearby mountainside, which he identifies as his parents' home. He is heartbroken, knowing he cannot see them again, even while he remains respectful to the commander. Following the commander's wish that he accept his fate, Noguchi returns into the tunnel.
The commander's entire third platoon, led by a young lieutenant brandishing an officer's sword, then marches out of the tunnel. They come to a halt and present arms, saluting the commander. Their faces too are colored blue. The commander struggles to tell them that they are dead, having all been killed in combat, and that he himself is to blame for sending them into a futile battle. They stand mute in reply. The commander orders them to turn about face, and salutes them in a farewell as they march back into the tunnel. Collapsing in grief, the commander is quickly brought back to his feet by the reappearance of the anti-tank dog.
"Crows"
An art student finds himself inside the world of Vincent van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the artist in a field and converses with him. Van Gogh relates that his left ear gave him problems during a self-portrait, so he cut it off.
- Akira Terao as I
- Mitsunori Isaki as I as an adolescent ("The Peach Orchard")
- Toshihiko Nakano as I as a young boy ("Sunshine Through the Rain")
- Mitsuko Baisho as Mother
- Mieko Harada as Snow woman
- Toshie Negishi as Woman carrying a child ("Mount Fuji in Red")
- Yoshitaka Zushi as Private Noguchi ("The Tunnel")
- Hisashi Igawa as Power-plant worker ("Mount Fuji in Red")
- Chosuke Ikariya as Weeping demon
- Chishu Ryu as Old man ("The Village of the Water Mills")
- Martin Scorsese as Vincent van Gogh
- Kiku-no Kai Dancers as Fox wedding dancers
- Misato Tate as Peach fairy
- Mieko Suzuki as Sister ("The Peach Orchard")
- Masayuki Yui as Member of the climbing team ("The Blizzard")
- Shu Nakajima as Member of the climbing team ("The Blizzard")
- Sakae Kimura as Member of the climbing team ("The Blizzard")
- Tessho Yamashita as Second lieutenant
- Members of the 20-ki No Kai as Third platoon
Production
Writing and finance
Dreams is a series of eight vignettes based on director Akira Kurosawa's own dreams over the years. According to Teruyo Nogami, the film's production manager and Kurosawa's longtime collaborator, Kurosawa is the protagonist of each episode, in "one way or another". Written over the span of two months, it is the first produced screenplay that the director authored himself since 1945's The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail. Nogami said Chishu Ryu struggled to memorize his minutes of dialogue. Nearly three months into shooting, the ninth sequence was also abandoned. It opened in Japanese theaters that same month.
The Criterion Collection released special editions of the film on Blu-ray and DVD on November 15, 2016, in the US. Both editions feature a new 4K restoration, headed by Lee Kline, technical director of the Criterion Collection, and supervised by one of the film's cinematographers, Shoji Ueda. Also included in the release is an on-set making-of documentary directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi called Making of "Dreams", which was filmed during its production, and Catherine Cadou's 2011 French documentary Kurosawa's Way.
Critical response
Vincent Canby of The New York Times gave the film a mostly positive review, writing: "It's something altogether new for Kurosawa, a collection of short, sometimes fragmentary films that are less like dreams than fairy tales of past, present and future. The magical and mysterious are mixed with the practical, funny and polemical."
The Encyclopedia of International Film praised Kurosawa in relation to Dreams as having "long been a master of complex narrative. Now he wants to tell what he does." It praised the editing and staging in the film as "hypnotically [serene]", and called Dreams "one of the most lucid dreamworks ever placed on film."
Donald Richie and Joan Mellen wrote of the film and of Kurosawa: "Beyond himself, he is beautiful because the beauty is in the attitude of the director. This is evident not only in the didactic approach, but also in the whole slowness, in the quantity of respect and in the enormous, insolent security of the work. That a director in 1990 could be so strong, so serious, so moral and so hopeful, is already beautiful."
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 67% based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "This late-career anthology by Akira Kurosawa often confirms that Dreams are more interesting to the dreamer than their audience, but the directorial master still delivers opulent visions with a generous dose of heart."