Sunday, March 18, 2012
Comment on Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
Comment on Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams." How was it seeing such a stylized and different use of film? Critics are divided down the middle; they either loved it or hated it. Why the big difference? In fact, two reviewers commented for the Washington Post in 1990—the one I didn’t quote didn’t like the film at all! (rated 7.6/10 at IMDB and 83% by users at Rotten Tomatoes but only 53% of critics liked it).
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Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams,” for me, was a magical experience. Even when I was sometimes frustrated by his slower pace (the dream “The Blizzard” in particular), it was still worth looking and imagining. Kurosawa, in his final film, touches on many facets of the human experience in all its elemental struggles. I can never forget the character at the end of “Mount Fuji in Red” trying in vain to blow away the toxic red smoke with his coat. Indeed a futile exercise and one that acquired new resonance in light of recent events in Japan, ones that have led to the shutdown of nearly all of Japan’s nuclear reactors. I, too, looked on in wonder at the procession in the forest in the first dream and gasped at the offered short sword and the mother’s words that the boy would need to kill himself if he did not have the fox’s acceptance of his apology. Yes, as Jackson told me after class, the film is sometimes difficult due to its representation of Japanese culture, but I don’t mind that at all. Having a window into new and variant ways of thinking and seeing the world is not a bad thing; in fact, it opens my eyes to my own world. The final dream, “The Village of the Waterwheels,” seemed to speak to our modern insanity before it had even begun in earnest. I wonder what Kurosawa would think of people walking out in front of cars while deeply engaged with a small screen held in their hands? The “take it slow” mentality shown in the dream, along with its simple statements like, “Why would we have lights? Night is supposed to be dark,” will stay with me. Thanks very much Jackson for sharing this film with us.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about Japanese Culture, but I could tell that the the dreams were based on that or some issue they maybe dealing with. As a whole I am not sure I liked it. But at the same time I did not hate it. I found one dream in paticular to be very stupid. A few more to be boring, the rest visually stunning and enjoyable. I did like the waterwheels one and what it stood for. I do believe that man and technology are destroying this earth, and that we do need to rewind back to the way it use to be before the first car was ever made. My favorite dream was, the Crows. I Loved how he chose to film the character in all the different paintings.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the camera work goes, I felt he stayed to long on a subject in some scenes, and that he was kind of off on some of the camera shots, which I noticed the most in the Peach Orchard. As he tried to show the dolls dancing, some of the scence did not seem to line up nicely. It seemed as though a begginer was making the movie within that area of the dream. Something like I may do if I was filming a movie.
Thank you Jackson for sharing this film, finally something different. I guess I will say, overall it was a wonderful experience.
I recommend the film of "Dreams" by Akira Kurosawa which was screened out of competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Kurosawa was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, producer, and editor. The film “Dreams” is his last three films (the others are: “Rhapsody In August” （1991）and “Not Yet”（1993）before he died in 1998.
ReplyDelete“Dreams” is a magical realism film based on actual dreams of Kurosawa at different stages of his life. It consists of eight dreams: 1.Sunshine Through The Rain, 2. The Peach Orchard, 3.The Blizzard, 4.The Tunnel, 5. Crows, 6.Mount Fuji in Red, 7.The Weeping Demon, 8. Village of the Watermills. These 8 dreams are combined as a microcosm of the life, from birth to childhood, the pursuit of civilization and the destruction of nature, the pursuit of convenience and the destruction of the ecological, at the last, return to natural basic life.
The first dream, Sunshine Through The Rain, is base on an old legend about foxes’ wedding and the second dream, The Peach Orchard, is referred to Hina Matsuri, the traditional Doll Festival in Japan. The cultural gap may causes the foreigner don’t like them due to not really understanding. I preferred the fifth dream, Crows. It’s amazing and creative in which a man actually go into the Van Gogh's painting unconsciously, and ran inside the vibrant and sometimes chaotic world inside Van Gogh's artwork. The visual effects for this particular segment were provided by George Lucas. The sixth dream in the movie "Red Fuji" seems to accurately indicate the major nuclear disaster event after 20 years, March 11, 2011, of Japan. I also prefer the film ends with a haunting melody from the excerpts of "In the Village", part of the Caucasian Sketches Suite No. 1.
We may dislike the too much preaching in the movie, but I think as an eighty-year-old artist and environmental concerned prophet, Kurosawa may be not able to endure the stupid of human anymore. Therefore, Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams" is actually the one causing human reflection for the destruction of the ecological nature and civilization. It allows us to reflect on our lives and the survival attitude to face the world. (367 words)
Thanks so very much for sharing the film with us, it felt right at home........^^
DeleteI still don’t have a word to describe the film because it was so intriguing for me to see how Kurosawa depicted the world’s disaster that we’re facing it today.
ReplyDeleteI just don’t know how he did it when he made the film in 1990s, I feel he was predicting nowadays’ problems; the nuclear power plants will blown up like “Mount Fuji in Red” and fuming the smokes someday (not right now, of course!). “Weeping demons” is the film depicts us in the future (now) if we keep waste our energy, and later we become the demons.
But I mostly liked the first part of the film because it is kind of like in my culture; it’s been a folktale that if it’s raining while sunny, then it means the fox and the tiger get married. When I saw that part, it was so funny because I thought it was just a folktale. But, I understand that the Westerners don’t understand the concept of the first part of the film.
This movie, Dreams, is one of the favorite movies of Jackson, so I have seen a couple of times before. The first time, I didn't understand the first dream, Sunshine Through The Rain, why a boy's mother gave him a acute knife when he saw the foxes’ wedding.
ReplyDeleteThe second dream, The Peach Orchard, touched my heart when I saw a leader of peach God agreed to bloom the peach flowers for this boy. The peach God forgive the boy because he prevent his father to cut the peaches. If you don't understand Japanese culture, you don't like this two dreams. Like me, when I saw this part, I felt doubtful. After I understood her traditional culture, I admired the director, Akira Kurosawa who put Japanese culture into this movie so that he could keep and spread it.
The third dream, The Blizzard, showed some climber to met a snowstorm. A leader encouraged his fellows walked forward continually, but they couldn't bear the blizzard and fell down on the snow. The leader bravely competed against the blizzard. After he won, he found they almost arrived at their camp. If you insist until the end you must succeeded. I like this dream which had a slow tempo and a good theme.