A Sabukaru Introduction To Akira Kurosawa’s 'Dreams'
Under the protective archway of his family home, a young boy stands perplexed just before a heavy rainstorm while his mother dutifully collects various items outside, now wet from the downpour. The boy ponders the weather, a strange collision of sunshine and rain showers, with light shimmering through every droplet. It’s clear he wants to go outside, however, his mother warns him not to; that “foxes hold weddings on days like this” and “they hate it if anybody watches.”
This is the beginning of the first segment of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, a collection of eight distinct, yet kindred short films that portray various dreams of the late Japanese director.
Released in 1990, Dreams was the first film written solely by Kurosawa in forty-five years and acts as a recounting of the director’s most formative memories told through a cinematic lens. Encased in fantastical, oftentimes prophetic, narratives - from child to man, peach trees to nuclear holocaust - the films reflect a fertile slurry of nostalgia and retrospection; enabling Kurosawa to reflect on his life and legacy and reflect on the experiences that have since resurfaced as subconscious visions [dreams].
This article will attempt to discern those experiences and explore how Kurosawa projects the depths of his psyche in order to meditate, and comment, on contemporary issues, personal woes and prescient viewpoints. How, through experimentation and imagination, Kurosawa establishes a series of modern fables - allegorical and symbolic - that interweave to form a rich tapestry of universal musings and introspective narratives.
“The imagination is rooted in memory. Memory is the foothold, and you imagine from there”
Call to Adventure
The first segment of the film, “Sunshine Through the Rain”, is a fantastical interpretation of Kurosawa’s childhood memories of being told stories by his mother. Stories of legend, stories of truth - fables and folklore - presented via magical imagery and theatrical composition. “It’s an odd belief [in Japan] that if it’s sunny but raining, the foxes are having a wedding” insists Teruyo Nogami, Kurosawa’s longtime Production Manager, in an interview with Criterion for the 2016 Blu-ray release of Dreams. While not from the motherly standpoint, Nogami’s statement informs the nature of this piece: A sentimental depiction of the lessons and stories told to a child as to keep them from harm. In this sense “Sunshine” is affiliated particularly with the Japanese, who celebrate deep respect for the fox - kitsune - and regard them as “an important part in [...] animal lore”, linked with “fertility and death”, and who acts as a direct “messenger of Inari, the beneficent god of rice, harvest, and fecundity”, as explored by film scholar, Zvika Serper in his essay, Kurosawa’s Dreams: A Cinematic Reflection of a Traditional Japanese Context. Serper goes on to write that “the mere mention of the word “fox” to [the Japanese] evokes many connotations, and its appearance immediately stimulates the imagination”. This preconceived magical notion of the fox bolsters the curiosity of the boy, who, aptly called “I”, acts as the personification of Kurosawa’s child self. This intrinsic connection between Japanese folklore and Kurosawa exposes the inherent autobiographical lens of Dreams, which the director insists in Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s seminal companion documentary, Making of “Dreams” (1990), is “[his] own story. It’s about [his] childhood.” This is reinforced not only by Toshihiko Nakano’s performance as “I”, which Kurosawa himself helped construct, but also the film’s opening archway - a replica of the director’s childhood home with his family name even etched on its plate: “It looked like the house I lived in as a child. In Koishikawa” (Ôbayashi, 1990).
Dreams is unapologetically intimate in its depiction of memory and retrospection. In returning to Ôbayashi’s documentary, Kurosawa reminisces about the stories his mother would tell him as a child, providing actor Mitsuko Baisho, with specific guidance on how to play his mother and, as mentioned, informing the authenticity of Nakano’s distinctive performance. Kurosawa elaborates on the film’s autobiographical quality, explaining to the Hausu (1977) director that despite his old age - Kurosawa was eighty during the film’s production - “[his] powers of recall surprise everybody.” This power of recollection is explored fully throughout Dreams: a film that acts as the culmination of Kurosawa’s life and legacy, painstakingly detailed and brimming with parabolic woes on creation, destruction, love and loss. Spanning over fifty years in film and directing upwards of thirty features, he brings his career full circle; projecting his most prominent memories and life-long reflections through cyclical whimsey, magical realism and prescient storytelling.
Spurred by curiosity, “I” - Kurosawa’s youth incarnate - travels to a nearby wood, with trees as tall as mountains and hazy wisps of rain that glisten through the sun’s rays. He hides tentatively behind a mammoth tree and bears witness to a procession of strange humanoid creatures, all dressed up in beautiful wedding attire and glossed in vivid make-up. Journalist, Bilge Ebiri notes, in his essay Quiet Devastation, that the humanoid figures are the titular foxes, “made up of humans with elaborate makeup and fake whiskers.” Yet “they don’t look anything like foxes but are rather stylised depictions of foxes, as might be seen in traditional theater or folk celebrations.” Ebiri cites Serper, by suggesting that the presentation of the foxes comes from Noh theatre: a form of classical Japanese dance-drama which generally consists of a troupe of performers utilising highly stylised movement, dancelike choreography, props and costumes to tell a story. This can be seen when the procession, accompanied by a traditional Japanese score by Shin’ichirō Ikebe, moves past “I”, who watches passively from the tree. Moreover, Ebiri notes that “I”’s passivity might come from Noh theatre as well, citing that “In most of the plays, a waki… usually a traveller, visits a famous place where he encounters a local inhabitant, the shite… and asks to be told a story associated with the place.” While “I” does not ask his mother to tell him a story, she does so anyway and thus manifests “I” as somewhat of a passive observer, listening to the secrets of the associated place as the manifestation of the traveller. She tells of the Fox Wedding [Kitsune no Yomeiri]: a mythical phenomenon told in classical Japanese kaidan [“ghost stories”] with hazy lighting, fog-like showers, traditional Japanese instruments and otherworldly entities as typified by the foxes. The connections between Dreams and Noh theatre are undeniable and continue throughout the film, with every version of “I” venturing to hear a new story. This thereby cements the artform as a huge influence on Kurosawa, and in doing so, reinforces the recollective aspect of the film, with Noh being the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed.
“I” stares too long and the procession quickly stops to a halt after sniffing out their young observer. He runs home only for his mother to place a knife into his hands and to tell him that he must seek out the foxes and ask for their forgiveness or perform seppuku - a ritual suicide - in their presence. Thus, with fear abound, “I” travels to a nearby field strewn with flowers of endless variety and walks nervously into a rainbow - where his mother says the foxes make their homes. This is what writer Joseph Campell, in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, would describe as the “call to adventure”, a “mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, [lured], carried away, or voluntarily [proceeding], to the threshold of adventure.” “I”, after witnessing the elusive fox wedding, is now lured under the segment’s second archway - the rainbow (the threshold of adventure) - and into the dream world, either to save himself or die trying. These are of course reflective of the hero’s journey to find enlightenment: the treasure in which Campbell purports to be the be-all and end-all of everything. Echoed throughout almost every story - myth or religion-based - the hero must venture the confines of the self to attain, what would be described in Zen Buddhism as the truth that all human beings are Buddha (God). Therefore, it is Kurosawa, as “I”, who walks tentatively towards adventure, and through memory and reflection should return a hero “with the “Ultimate Boon” (self-enlightenment) at his dispersal. We are simply along for the ride.
The Hero
When discussing the endless genius of Kurosawa, the emphasis tends to centre around his early samurai films - Rashomon (1950), Throne of Blood (1957), Yojimbo (1961) etc. - the melancholic punch Ikiru (1952) and his equally impressive crime thrillers Drunken Angel (1948) and High and Low (1963). Yet, while those films, as monumental as they are, stand out as some of Kurosawa’s greatest cinematic achievements it could be argued that his true magnum opus comes much later in the director’s legendary career, in Dreams.
For those who are unfamiliar with Kurosawa or the multiple triumphs of his cinema, to put it simply, he is widely considered Japan’s greatest ever director and, above all else, has inspired the world of cinema to such an extent that there is perhaps no other filmmaker as influential as him.
Kurosawa’s longtime translator, Catherine Cadou, and Akira Kurosawa in “Kurosawa, la voie” (“Kurosawa’s Way”)
Lauded by filmmakers across the cinematic spectrum for his adaptability, universal themes and humanistic approach to character, Kurosawa - from Shinagawa City, Tokyo - emerged out of post-war Japan, a country still coming to terms with the trauma it faced during and after WW2, and, as uttered by Martin Scorsese in Catherine Cadou’s Kurosawa's Way (2011), “brought the two hemispheres together” through cinematic wonder.
“That’s how cinema is. It’s made of interweaving influences that overcome distances, cancel out distances. For me, it’s as if there were just one film called ‘The Story of Cinema’”
Kurosawa, of course, would later be echoed by the likes of Sergio Leone in his magnificent spaghetti westerns. So much so that A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Clint Eastwood’s follow up to his breakthrough performance in TV’s Rawhide (1959), would be revealed as a near carbon copy of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Yet, despite an infamous lawsuit that resulted in a settlement outside of court for reportedly “15% of the worldwide receipts of A Fistful of Dollars and over $100,000”, Kurosawa praised Leone for making “a very fine film”, but that it was indeed “[his] film”, while Eastwood would go on to admit that, after only realising the similarities between each picture after seeing Yojimbo at the cinema, “[he has] a lot to owe to that film.”
Dreams
Back to Dreams: Kurosawa’s legacy piece. A piece that is so personal, so reflective, and so meticulously Japanese that to recapture its essence would require an assimilated understanding of the very essence of the director himself.
After “I”’s opening adventure in the first segment, we move to a very similar setting, a family home, with our hero slightly older, and played by Mitsunori Isaki, in “The Peach Orchard”: a tale about loss and life, in equal measure.
Taking six plates of treats to his sister and her friends sitting playfully in an adjacent room, clearly embodiments of Kurosawa’s three real-life sisters, “I” steps up to a display of some dolls that seem purposefully reminiscent of those seen during hina matsuri (the Dolls’ Festival, otherwise known as the Peach Festival, momo no sekku). The festival, according to Serper, is “one of the very few occasions when little Japanese girls have parties at which they and their girlfriends partake of sweets and food offered to the dolls [...] symbols of divine purification.” This can be seen in their floral wear, with bright colours and fertile hues of yellow, pink and green - their doll-like perfection only matched by the aforementioned hina dolls. “I” turns and asks where the sixth girl is, that he was sure he saw six people in the room and as such, he brought six dishes. His sister rebuts his observation, claiming that there was never a sixth person and that “I” must be sick. This reflects another aspect of Kurosawa’s childhood; claiming in his 1981 memoir, Something Like an Autobiography, that “as a young boy, he was so silent and inert, so uncomprehending of all that was occurring around him [...] that his family feared he might be mentally disabled” as cited by Ebiri. This is further inferred by the passive performance of Nakano in the previous segment, yet arguably, through Isaki’s hysteria, becomes fully realised here.
A young girl - dressed in pink and with traditional bells dangling from her wear - appears before “I”. Seemingly invisible to everyone but “I”, She runs off and he follows, desperate to understand the apparition.
The girl leads him to a multi-levelled hill where “I”’s chase is prevented by a parade of musicians and dancers, clad in traditional Japanese attire and noh-theatre-esque makeup to echo the hina dolls and the springtime clothes of his sisters. They tell him that they are the spirits of the recently cut down peach orchard which used to stand proudly upon the hill. They talk of the scourge of the orchard, blaming the boy for not trying to stop the atrocity and accusing him, when he cries, of only missing the peaches, not the orchard itself. He rejects this accusation affirming that “I can buy peaches at the store. But where can I buy a whole peach orchard in bloom?” The spirits accept this notion and proceed to serenade the boy with music - traditionally Japanese - in order to recapture the beauty of the orchard one last time.
Again, “The Peach Orchard”, much like “Sunshine”, is undeniably autobiographical, yet told via magical allegory. It depicts the inability of children to act upon tragedy and the confounding notions of death and loss at such a young age. One of Kurosawa’s younger sisters, Momoyo, in real life, died very young and abruptly when he was a child. In his memoir, he recalls playing with Hina dolls with that sister “who died suddenly in fourth grade - as if touched by a swift, evil wind!” It could be argued that the young girl at the beginning, who leads “I” out to the desecrated peach orchard, is the embodiment of this sister. Thereby making the encapsulating parable a childlike representation of the difficulty of accepting mortality as finite and letting go of those who, as Takashi Koizumi - Kurosawa’s long-time assistant director - confirms, the director was very fond of. This is reflected by the tale’s final image, which shows the reality of the dead orchard, in which all but one cherry blossom tree is cut down and flowerless. It can be ascertained that the remaining tree is symbolic of the lingering memory of Kurosawa’s beloved sister, and the dancing spirits - magical embodiments of the hina dolls they used to play with. Additionally, Koizumi continues in, an interview with Criterion, to illustrate the importance of Momoyo in this piece by elaborating that “In her posthumous Buddhist name [in Zen Buddhism a name is given to those deceased as to prevent them from returning to the mortal realm] they used the characters for “peach orchard”.” Positioned in the same spot as the girl only moments earlier in the film, it’s no doubt that the remaining cherry blossom represents Kurosawa’s dead sister and the entire affair reflects his childhood handling of her death. In returning to Serper who cites film scholar, Tsuzuki Masaaki’s, interpretation that “the whole episode [is] the chinkon [repose of souls] of this sister”, Kurosawa utilizes his understanding of the Japanese Shinto religion to symbolically put Momoyo to rest; taking his guilt, his childhood misunderstandings of death and his spiritual modes of acceptance; resurrecting and immortalising her through film and performance.
The next segment of the film, however, features a full-on aesthetic U-turn, depicting a group of mountaineers as they make their way through a turbulent snowstorm on their ascent up a nameless mountain in “The Blizzard”. Kurosawa takes the vibrant, melancholic, whimsy of his previous two segments and throws them to the wind, thrusting the viewer into a setting most bleak and violent, while maturing “I” accordingly (now played by Akira Terao).
The mountaineers, shot in slow motion, battle their way through the blizzard, seeking any sign of their camp, the only safe haven upon the tumultuous peak. Their lethargic movement suggests cramping and frostbite - typical ailments of such a treacherous climb. It could be argued that Kurosawa establishes a metaphorical narrative about the persistence of man, the tale of Sisyphus from Greek mythology, cursed with the eternal punishment of forever rolling a boulder up a hill in the depths of the underworld. Yet, as “I”’s followers begin to falter and fall beneath the snow, Kurosawa evokes a more provocative sentiment: that of suicide and the uphill struggle therein to stay afoot amidst depression; such heavy snowfall.
Kurosawa was no stranger to suicide, attempting it himself in 1971 due to his failing eyesight and gall stones but more greatly due to the financial failure of his recent films and their declining cultural relevance. Thus, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to relate the blinding snowstorm as reflective of his loss of sight, and the mountaineer’s slow movement as that of the fall into depression, which is known to cause psychomotor retardation: a visible slowing of physical and emotional reactions. This is further reflected in the film’s following hurdle, which comes after “I” seemingly gives up, falling in with his companions and finding comfort in the cold snow. A woman, clad in a white, snow-like gown, seems to float down from the heavens, a kindly smile on her face and singing a serene, yet haunting song. She caresses “I” who appears at peace with his decision to fall, gently enveloping him with long strands of her sparkling hair. “The snow is warm”, she says, “The ice is hot”. The woman could be considered not only symbolic of the tragic fate of many mountaineers, who wonder lost amid deep snow, losing their minds in thinking that they will be safe and warm beneath it, but also of the pull to suicide; the echoing thought that drives many to believe that to give up is so much easier than the pain of going on. This reiterates Kurosawa’s attempted suicide, who after the strife of losing his perceived relevancy thought to throw it all away in death. Yet, it also echoes another painful memory for Kurosawa, that of his brother, Heigo, “a narrator (benshi or katsuben) in silent movies” who committed suicide at the age of twenty-seven “after talkies [talking pictures] put an end to his artistic career.” Kurosawa admits in his memoir that his brother’s death changed the way he saw the world and that losing him remains, as coined by the chapter in his autobiography, “A Story I Don’t Want To Tell” (Kurosawa, 1981).
Kurosawa’s life, filled with death, is recounted in Dreams. From his sister to his brother and only a few years later, his older brother, who died when Kurosawa was only twenty-three, the director, with sentiment abound, re-lives these experiences through film and film magic. He projects his most painful memories through the cathartic mirror of cinema, leaving us with the hopeful image of “I” who after such torment, chooses against death, and rises from the snow, dragging his companions with him to the nearby camp, now made visible by the departing blizzard. This is perhaps reflective of Kurosawa’s own determination to live; that after his attempted suicide he would come back and make some of the most significant films of his career.
The woman, now revealing “her wild mane” and wrinkled forehead is exposed as a demon, a figure from Noh theatre, to be “vanquished” and driven away by the hero, as affirmed by Serper who recalls the episode “The Snow Woman'' in Kobayashi Masaki’s Kwaidan (1965) - another collection of short films influenced by the ritualistic elements of Noh and Kabuki - as a possible reference. Kurosawa explores the pain of death and the incessant dragging of depression and suicidal thoughts, allowing his fictional embodiment to not only save himself from the suffocating snow but his companions also. Perhaps these companions act as personifications of those he has lost along the way; again, like his sister in “The Peach Orchard '', immortalising them on the silver screen and allowing their stories to reach more joyful ends.
Kurosawa continues the retrospective immortalisation of his life through cinema in the next segment of Dreams, in the anti-war elegy, “The Tunnel”. However, this time, the story is not so based on the director’s direct experiences with the subject, but on his overall adverse sentiment towards war and its detrimental bringings.
“I” stands at the opening of a large tunnel all clad in military uniform. He depicts a soldier on his way back from war, an experience which Kurosawa himself never truly shouldered after he was turned away from his army physical during World War Two (he would later be conscripted too late and thus never fought in the Imperial Japanese Army).
After a few steps, a hostile dog comes bounding out of the tunnel, like “I” dressed in military wear - anti-tank gear - carrying explosives and barking wildly. Tentative yet determined, “I” continues into the tunnel and out to the other side, with the setting suddenly changing from night to day as if to give the impression of falling into a dream. On the night side, “I” hears an echoing from within the tunnel and out from its transitory confines marches a soldier, painted pale blue and carrying a rifle. With blackened eyes, it becomes apparent that this soldier, Noguchi, is dead; a walking reminder of the young men lost in WW2. Noguchi points towards a light on the hillside - his home - in the distance and recalls a story of him returning to see his parents: “I went home. I ate the special cakes my mother made for me. I remember it well.” “I” confirms that he’s heard this story before, from Noguchi himself, as the soldier lay dying in his arms, only the latter can’t remember it. It seems that as “I” has crossed the lengths of the tunnel - a symbolic crossing of the mortal realm - so have the tragic memories of his time at war.
In “The Tunnel”, Kurosawa laments the “stupidity of war”; exploring the last woes of a dead platoon unable to come to terms with their recent demise, and the meaninglessness of their sacrifice. After a few moments, Noguchi is sent off back into the tunnel only to be joined by the rest of his battalion, all of whom perished under the orders of “I”. In this, Kurosawa exposes perhaps the personal guilt he felt due to his inability to go to war, his rejection of the less-than-considerate lengths at which the Imperial Japanese Army implemented to protect and conserve the lives of their soldiers, and more intrinsically his overall contempt for the act of war itself: “I could blame it all on the absurdity of war, or the inhumanity of the military. But to deny my own mistakes and indecisiveness would be cowardly.” This sentiment reflects all of the above yet also brings into question Kurosawa’s criticism of the way the Japanese Government handled the last years of the war; with civil unrest abound and over two million military deaths suffered. While unable to fight, Kurosawa embodies both his personal remorse and that of the Military Generals, who chose to continue fighting after enduring terrible losses. Noguchi and company epitomise the attitude that an abundance of youth - lives just beginning - were wasted in fighting WW2. Young men and women dragged off to fight a losing war for the honour of a country and the very Japanese idea that to die in battle is a worthy death. Kurosawa completes this epithet when “I” states in the film’s closing moments that “To die in battle is to die like a dog,” framing the narrative with the barking dog running back out of the tunnel, now seemingly wounded and in a battle-fueled-frenzy.
Additionally, it would be remiss not to mention that Ishiro Honda - Kurosawa’s assistant director on Dreams (and the director of the original Godzilla, 1954) - was successfully conscripted in the war and thus took on a more hands-on approach with this segment, teaching the soldiers how to march, how to stand and how to hold their rifles like true Japanese soldiers. Honda, Kurosawa’s “most trusted friend” who Koizumu affirms “having around put [the director] at ease”, helps send off these soldiers, these symbols of anti-war, back into the tunnel and to sleep. To be at peace finally, and to symbolically put to rest the extensive losses of WW2 and all its encumbered grievances.
In Dreams, Kurosawa revives and explores his most personal memories, unconscious recollections, and most pertinent ruminations about life and life’s wandering shores. In both “Sunshine” and “The Peach Orchard”, he resurrects deceased family members, replicates familial settings and recaptures the whimsical naivety of childhood; exploring old wounds and formative memories through dreamlike fantasy and parabolic storytelling. In “The Blizzard” he explores the submerging faculties of mental health and the experiences he, and those he’s loved, have had to suffer in the wake of crises. In “The Tunnel”, he enlists Japan’s most destructive director, Honda, to expose the nascent contradictions of war; resurrecting a troupe of soldiers to convey the meaninglessness of their occupation and the callousness of their superiors.
Through cinema and cinematic experimentation, Kurosawa relives both his dreams and his memories - capturing the true essence of the director and personifying his woes, his regrets, his wisdom, and thereby his passions - via three focal lenses (the director famously utilised three cameras when filming) and monumental production costs: “Spielberg and Warner put up the money for Dreams. 1.4 billion yen. That’s a huge budget” (Nogami, 2016). Kurosawa, at the grand age of eighty, continued to work effortlessly to project his life and lessons on the big screen; illustrating each frame as if it were a painting, “carefully [designing] images from one corner of the screen to another” (Nogami, 2016). Hence, it comes as no surprise that the director originally wanted to be a painter, a dream which was squandered not by lack of talent but by the lack of income and the restrictions of the creative medium itself, as affirmed by the director when speaking with Ôbayashi:
“I simply couldn’t make a living as a painter. And I realized that with paintings, I couldn’t say everything I was thinking. There are so many things in the world I want to say something about, and I couldn’t do that with paintings.”
While lamenting his failure to become a successful painter, Kurosawa maintained his artistic capabilities, hand-painting each and every storyboard for Dreams (and for many of his earlier works) as “a useful means of explaining ideas to [his] staff.”
Akira Kurosawa’s Storyboard for “Sunshine Through the Rain” segment in “Dreams” | Courtesy of Far Out Magazine
Akira Kurosawa’s Storyboard for “The Tunnel” segment in “Dreams” | Courtesy of Far Out Magazine
This is, of course, reflected in his painstaking production efforts and even more candidly in the next segment of Dreams, which again resurrects an important figure in Kurosawa’s life: The endlessly influential, and egregiously disregarded (during his lifetime), Vincent Van Gogh.
“Crows” is the title of Dreams fifth vignette, which, needless to say, is a reference to Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows, the artist’s supposed final painting and, to many, one of his greatest works.
Vincent Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows”
The film begins with “I” at an exhibition of Van Gogh’s work, pacing enthusiastically past such famed pieces as Sunflowers (third version), The Starry Night, his self-portrait; finally landing on Langlois Bridge at Arles. He stares momentarily as the camera zooms closer to the painting, and then, “as if it’s in a dream”, he is transported into that very painting. Composed of rippling water made real by an underwater machine controlled by one of Kurosawa’s production assistants, and the colours of Van Gogh recaptured as vivid as they are on canvas, “I” finds himself wandering amidst the glorious wheatfields of Arles, southern France (painstakingly recreated in Gotemba, Shizuoka, Japan).
The first thing to note, of course, is the incredible effort put into replicating Van Gogh’s work. “We put a Van Gogh copy next to the camera and tried to make sure it was exactly the same” insists Nogami, who managed the production of the film and ensured that every little detail of the painting was replicated fully, planting myriad fake flowers and filling the river with blue dye as to attain the correct shade as the original.
Vincent Van Gogh’s “Langlois Bridge at Arles”
A huge admirer of Van Gogh’s and his work, Kurosawa had listed him in his autobiography as “one of the three artists he mentioned when he applied for work at a film company” and, in returning to his brother’s tragic death, “one of the three painters whose paintings changed the way the real world looked to him after [Heigo’s] suicide” (Serper, 2001). Kurosawa idolises Van Gogh endlessly in this piece. Through considerate reproductions of his work, to the graceful honour of Van Gogh’s in-film embodiment - he’s played by a certain famous film director known for his love of world cinema and his gangster movies to boot - Kurosawa resurrects the beloved, yet short-lived painter and extends to him a send-off of the highest veneration.
“I” finds Van Gogh in the middle of a wheatfield, painting furiously in the view of a local landscape of trees and sun, and with a bandage around his head: “Yesterday I tried to complete a self-portrait. I just couldn’t get the ear right so I cut it off and threw it away”. Speaking with an unmistakably New York accent, Van Gogh asks why “I” isn’t painting the aforementioned sunny landscape as “To [him] this seems beyond belief.” The choice to cast Martin Scorsese as the iconic painter speaks volumes of the adoration Kurosawa felt towards Van Gogh. Enlisting arguably America’s top director, and avid film historian, to play the art world’s most tragic hero can only suggest that Kurosawa and his team felt that Scorsese, who was filming Goodfellas (1990) at the time of the shooting, emitted at least a semblance of what Van Gogh meant to Kurosawa. Speaking with Nogami sometime in the eighties, when Kurosawa was visiting fellow director Francis Ford Coppola in New York, Scorsese came across as very intense. So much so that Coppola and the rest of their posse, which included the likes of Spielberg and George Lucas - the latter of whom procured his company Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to create many of the special effects for Dreams - would make fun of the Taxi Driver (1976) director for being so overly impassioned about cinema and subsequently Kurosawa, being such a legend of the medium. It was in this meeting that “Kurosawa had a sense [...] that Scorsese would be a good fit for Van Gogh” (Nogami, 2016). And through all the makeup, the vibrant orange hair, the iconic straw hat, it is this intensity that shines above all:
Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh in “Dreams”
“A scene that looks like a painting does not make a painting. If you take the time to look closely, all of nature has its own beauty. And when that natural beauty is there I just lose myself in it. And then, as if it’s in a dream, the scene just paints itself for me.”
Taking an impassioned artist, such as Scorsese, and allowing him to siphon his love of art and explore that through the eyes of Van Gogh, Kurosawa assimilates, to some extent, his personal impression of the beloved painter. Pacing around “I” and lauding his character’s passions, his god-given determination to create, through a soliloquy of superlatives and theatrical performance is arguably perfectly intense, albeit somewhat over-the-top (Scorsese is admittedly not a trained actor). Yet the film succeeds at capturing the painter, who reportedly showed signs now symptomatic of Asperger’s syndrome - isolation, odd mannerisms, problems expressing empathy, controlling emotions, or communicating feelings - and allowing his determination to speak through Scorsese’s ardent reading of Kurosawa’s script.
This intensity is further bolstered by the use of Frédéric Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 15 (also known as the “Raindrop” prelude) which plays intermittently throughout “Crows” but never as prominent as after Van Gogh’s speech, which ends with him comparing his work ethic to that of a locomotive, endlessly burning fuel in order to drive it’s inhabiting vehicle forward. Kurosawa even goes as far as to intercut raw footage of a steam train rolling onwards as to make the metaphor more tangible; which in itself, as is the use of Chopin’s “Raindrop”, a reference to Abel Glance’s La Roue (1923), a formative feature for Kurosawa who after seeing it “saw how fascinating cinema could be.” In addition, the director ensured that despite the rest of the film, which either uses music composed or retouched by Ikebe, that, for “Crows”, “Raindrop” stays exactly as it is; explaining in Making of Dreams that it was “irreplaceable”:
“That’s right. That couldn’t change. [Glance] made a film called La Roue, a wonderful film whose title in Japanese means “White Rose of the Railway”. It’s the story of a locomotive engineer. His fate and his state of mind were symbolised by a locomotive and wheels. And for the music [Glance] used the “Raindrop” prelude. La Roue really struck me as a great film. [...] I saw how fascinating cinema could be. It’s right up there on the screen. So I couldn’t drop that music.”
Kurosawa, seemingly a sea of references, commemorates both Van Gogh and Chopin, Glance and Scorsese in tandem. Moreover, he eulogises his brother Heigo, who Serper writes “inspired the personal parallelism Kurosawa saw in Van Gogh, who died very young, without fulfilling his artistic aspirations.” It’s not inconceivable that the director who, as mentioned, attempted suicide and whose brother succeeded in that stead, would relate to Van Gogh, who famously shot himself with a revolver in 1890, dying two days later with his brother Theo by his bedside.
Martin Scorsese and Akira Kurosawa
“The sun compels me to paint”. These are the last words spoken by Scorsese’s Van Gogh shortly before he marches off into the distance in search of a new vista to paint. Kurosawa then establishes the world of the film as a series of Van Gogh paintings with “I” traversing numerous pieces by the tragic artist, concluding on the titular Wheatfield with Crows. It’s a truly magnificent send-off to one of the most enigmatic painters who has ever lived, with many of the film’s production assistants waiting hidden in the barley field - which had been replanted with wheat “so it would match the painting” a full year before the shoot - opening cages filled with crows to fly out when Scorsese passes out of sight (Nogami, 2016). And while these crows were indeed multiplied and accented by ILM in post-production, it shows just how determined everyone was on and off-set to portray Kurosawa’s vision with the utmost authenticity.
With “Crows” Kurosawa resurfaces painful memories in the form of his most beloved, and short-lived, painter. Relaying his affection towards, and his post factum condolences for, Van Gogh, who embodies not only the tragic loss of his brother, and indeed the painter himself, but the entirety of cinema concurrently. Through the application of Scorsese as Van Gogh, Kurosawa extends his gratitude to film, the medium which enabled his career, by acknowledging what came before in La Roue and what is coming presently (through Scorsese). In Dreams Kurosawa connects the dots of his psyche, his life, his legacy and gives appropriate reverence to the figures, films and filiations that made it possible.
The next segment, however, provides a more prescient view of life, or perhaps more fittingly, of death, as Kurosawa depicts in a suitably bleak manner, the end of the world via nuclear apocalypse.
“Mount Fuji in Red” begins with “I” amidst a sea of panicked civilians trying to escape the seemingly erupting Mount Fuji, which glows fiery red and emits gargantuan explosions as one might expect from a volcanic eruption. Yet, what we find out is that the volcano - a cultural icon of Japan - is not erupting and that instead, the nuclear power plant situated behind the mountain is suffering a large-scale meltdown.
Seeing Fujisan exploding in shades of red, and the white snow - so indicative of it - turning into molten sludge is terrifying, to say the least. Yet, the sentiment between the Japanese and any other nation would be poles apart in terms of its meaning and impact because, in a sense, Mount Fuji is Japan. Though mountains have often been regarded as holy places - dwellers of ancestral spirits and gods - none are as beloved as Mount Fuji. And in the opening moments of “Mount Fuji in Red”, Kurosawa destroys it completely. Taking the classically divine image of Japan’s most emblematic cultural icon - which has been the subject of countless paintings, poems, films and photographs - and defacing it via man-made means, symbolically disrupting the Japanese zeitgeist and erupting a foreboding sense of apocalypse. As written by Serper, “The sight of the mountain has a major influence on the consciousness of the Japanese, and Fujisan is worshipped as a sacred place of various kami [god, deity, divinity, or spirit].” Thus, to fully realise his nightmare of nuclear disaster, Kurosawa obliterates it in red, contrasting “with that of its original traditionally benevolent image” and showing a god on fire, as symbolic of the prophetic destruction of the nation he inhabits should humanity continue to use, and misuse, nuclear power.
“I” falls in with a mother (Toshie Negishi) and her screaming child as they stare frantically at the fiery spectacle. They’re joined by an older man, played by frequent Kurosawa collaborator, Hisashi Igawa, dressed in a business suit as they witness what the director describes as the end of Japan: “Japan is so small there's no escape.” The film cuts and we reemerge into a black wasteland of ash and smoke, with piles of discarded clothes, possessions and other items scattered around the devastation. The crowd has dispersed, the explosions halted and “I” and company, standing by nearby cliffside, proceed, in predictive fashion, to discern the latent blunders and hubris which have led to such a catastrophic outcome.
Clouds of coloured glasses begin to envelop the scene. Shades of red, yellow and purple fog over the once occupied area, now only strewn with material belongings; physical mementoes of a once-bustling civilisation now left to rot and radiate forever. The gasses creep closer; tinted symbols of the imminent death that awaits mother and child, “I”, and man, the latter of whom relays, despairingly, the fatal meaning of each colour:
“The red is plutonium-239. One ten-millionth of a gram will give you cancer. The yellow is strontium-90. It collects in your bone marrow and causes leukaemia. The purple is cesium-137. It accumulates in the gonads, causing genetic mutations.”
Through Igawa, Kurosawa explains the detrimental effect of nuclear radiation on the human body in rigorous detail. He focuses on the deadly results of the first two chemical gasses; those that will cause terminal illnesses by only being exposed to them for mere moments. Then, to further cement the irreversible damage caused by the nuclear mishap, Kurosawa describes that not even the children will be safe; those genetic mutations will make newborns into “monstrosities”; leaving the camera focussed on the mother as she frantically tries to escape the encroaching death. By explaining thoroughly, and plainly, the lethal effects of nuclear radiation, Kurosawa exposes his frustrations towards humanity and our persistent want to develop weapons and factories from nuclear means. And by leaving the film hanging on the woman and child - as symbols of new life now made futile by the radiation - he rails on the act of nuclear development completely, visibly highlighting his contempt through colourful chemicals:
“People are such fools! Radiation was dangerous because you couldn’t see it, so they found a way to dye it. But that only confirms you’re going to die. It’s just Death’s calling card.”
Through overtly pessimistic imagery and despairing sentiment, Kurosawa makes clear his attitude towards the use of nuclear power. By constantly evoking death and allowing his characters to fall into despair, the director clouds any sense of hope, thereby lamenting nuclear development in any capacity. This could be argued to be a reaction to the atomic horror that Japan faced at the tail-end of WW2; a tragedy that left hundreds of thousands dead and a nation traumatized by the annihilating potential of nuclear warfare. As Ebriri writes, “‘Mount Fuji in Red’ is, in some senses, a vision of the atomic nightmare that Japan had already lived through”. Kurosawa, who was no stranger to large-scale destruction - his brother had taken him to visit the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923 - explores the devastation of nuclear misuse through colour-coordinated death, unstoppable and irremediable. From gargantuan explosions that distort the image of Mount Fuji - as Japan personified - to the crowds of people turned to dust and escaping to the sea only to die from medical complications caused by radiation, Kurosawa echoes the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Allowing no respite for “I” or the mother, both of whom end the segment by trying desperately to save the children from the incoming clouds of certain death.
With “Mount Fuji in Red” Kurosawa condemns the use of nuclear power, exploring the terrible consequences of a meltdown and evoking the historic disasters in which Japan faced during WW2. He blames humanity, the creators of nuclear power, explaining in painstaking affect the potential of said creations to cause suffering on such a mountainous scale. Yet, to return to Nogami, it wasn’t unusual for Kurosawa to bemoan, to such a didactic extent, his ruminations about humanity’s wrongdoings, explaining that the “Death’s calling card” line was very typical of the director. Kurosawa - whose films, according to director John Woo (Hard Boiled, 1992), “are filled with a profuse spirit of humanism” (Cadou, 2011) - directs his lens to those who continue to create from nuclear power and attacks them head-on: “It’s simple: Human beings made something stupid, and we’ll never be rid of it” (Nogami, 2016).
Kurosawa’s contempt for humanity’s use of nuclear power, which erupts out of his retrospective awareness of his country’s widespread suffering caused by its misuse - and indeed no doubt by the Chernobyl disaster which occurred only four years before the release of Dreams - seeps drearily into the film’s next segment. Depicting a man-made-monstrous by a nuclear disaster, forced to feed or be fed upon by demons who wander an apocalyptic wasteland in constant pain from their newfound deformations, Kurosawa finalises his thoughts on the production of nuclear power in the film’s penultimate vignette, “The Weeping Demon”.
We find “I” stranded in what appears to be the apocalypse post the nuclear meltdown at Mount Fuji. While not explicitly a sequel to the previous segment, it certainly acts as a continuation of Kurosawa’s nuclear themes. The land is barren, grey, black and dead. Besides “I”’s patchwork attire, which sports muddy greens and creams, and the brown bucket hat so archetypical of director Kurosawa, there is no colour in sight. Just a creeping cloud of fog and a foreboding sense of dread.
It becomes clear to “I” that he’s being followed. With echoing footsteps proceeding each one of his, “I” halts and waits to see what manner of beast is making them. And somewhat fittingly, out of the sinister fog, comes a weeping demon, clad in rags and with a single horn protruding from his head. The demon speaks of how he came to be. How he was once a man, a farmer, who turned monstrous after dumping “tank trunks of milk into a river to keep prices up.” Through the demon’s confession, which he admits comes from an overriding sense of guilt, Kurosawa’s contempt for the allure of capitalism is displayed: A system of commercialised oppression that causes people to reject their humanity and put profit above all. This is reinforced by the later revelation that the demon, and the rest of the demons that exist in the apocalypse, eat each other for food; an expression of the devouring nature of capitalism, swallowing business, environments, livelihoods whole.
“I” and the demon move into a dead field, now only inhabited by massive dandelions and monstrous roses left “deformed and misshapen” by radiation. The demon reveals that “Long ago this [...] was a field of flowers. But then the hydrogen bombs and missiles turned it into a desert!” Kurosawa aligns his disdain for capitalism with that of nuclear warfare, suggesting that those responsible for the development of nuclear weapons are simply corporate parasites sucking the life out of the earth; leaving it dry and uninhabitable. This reflects the film’s prior segment in which the man in suit (Igawa) is revealed to be one of the workers of the fateful nuclear plant, assuming some of the responsibility for the immense suffering caused and grouping himself with the rest of the capitalists before throwing himself off the cliff: “I am one of those who deserves to die.” Through the weeping demon and the Igawa’s guilt-ridden salaryman, Kurosawa emits what Ebiri describes as “a portrait of the runaway capitalism of post-war Japan, with its tangle of shame and hubris.”
This is further supported by the fact that the demons, who’re burdened to wander the wasteland for all time, feeding on any semblance of life, also feel pain. Excruciating agony from their aforementioned horns, some of which come in pairs or trios that increase their level of pain exponentially. There is seemingly a class structure within the demon’s ranks. The more horns, the more powerful the demon, and yet the more pain it feels; feeding on its weaker kin, and perpetually wandering farther from its human roots. Kurosawa seems again to be pointing the finger at those in charge, exposing the callousness of corporations and forcing them to feel every ounce of pain and guilt deserved for their abuse. This is made clear in the segment’s final moments, where the demon leads “I” to a pool of blood-red liquid around which a flurry of demons - sporting horns of two or three - pace in agony, gripping their heads and wailing monstrously.
In “The Weeping Demon” director Kurosawa interweaves notions of economic disparity, nuclear misuse and environmental negligence, culminating in a decrepit look at Japan post-apocalypse with warped fauna and forlorn inhabitants to boot: “We turned the Earth into a dumping ground for toxic waste! There’s no healthy nature left.” Everyone and everything is monstrous, deformed by humanity’s excessive pollution of the Earth’s environments and our wanton abuse of power, whether through military or commercial means. The abusers have turned into demons, the flowers malformed, the fish have grown fur and the birds have only one eye. And Kurosawa punishes humanity - the capitalistic demons guilty of the decrepit state of the world - by forcing us to witness our engendered degradation of nature for all time. Unless of course, we’re eaten by another demon first.
Dreams' next and final segment brings Kurosawa’s guilt-trodden ruminations of humanity, and our seeming inability to refrain from destroying ourselves, to a whimsical and somewhat pedagogic end, presenting a celebration of life in death in “Village of the Watermills.”
“I” enters a quaint rural village upon a stream where he sees a group of children laying flowers on a large stone. Seemingly untouched by industry, and the labyrinthian confines of a modern city, the village is idyllic, with a creaking wooden bridge, thatched-roof houses and the titular rotating water mills that work to accentuate its pastoral aesthetic. “I” comes across an elderly man, dressed in traditional Japanese wear and fixing a broken water mill wheel by the riverside.
The man, played by Yasujirō Ozu alum, Chishū Ryū begins to tell “I” about life in the village, how they survive without electricity and the encumbered conveniences of the modern world: “We don’t need stuff like that.” He continues to renounce the technologies of the present, acknowledging the usefulness of tools such as electric lights while nevertheless exposing the inherent needlessness of them:
I: “Isn’t it dark at night?”
Old Man: “Night is supposed to be dark. We’d be in trouble if night were as bright as day.”
Through Ryū, Kurosawa criticizes humanity’s tendency towards laziness; as a species, we try so hard to separate ourselves from the natural world that we forget the essential truths of life and survival. In a near-didactic monologue, he portrays humanity as a hungry child, ever-wanting and endlessly unsatisfied; pointing the finger at scientists and inventors who “may be smart but so many of them are completely deaf to the beating of nature’s heart. They work so hard inventing things that make people unhappy.” It could be argued that Kurosawa is commenting on the technological revolution of post-war Japan; a country which up until the late 19th century was considered a feudal society, like Europe five hundred years earlier. It’s conceivable that after such a short period of industrialisation/modernisation, in which Kurosawa, in his memoir, still remembers the natural way of life he lived as a child, that the director would reject contemporary customs and yearn for the whimsical nature of the past. Moreover, Kurosawa’s use of Ryū speaks volumes to the director’s perceived nostalgia, being a star who was most famous around the time of his professional heyday and whose frequent director (Ozu), according to film historian Stuart Galbraith IV in his book, The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, championed many of his early works.
Chishū Ryū in Ozu’s “Late Spring” (1949)
In “Watermills'', Kurosawa brings his lamentations, ruminations, memories and, of course, dreams, to a pensive close by allowing the audience to breathe. After traipsing through the nuclear apocalypse - a prescient and desolate vision of the future - in which the remaining facets of humanity are demonic, culpable and afflicted, “Watermills” offers a way out through nature. Ryū, who at the age of eighty-five struggled to remember Kurosawa’s near-nine minute monologue (which was shot in one take but edited into separate pieces later), dispels the myth that man cannot live without technology, and that through our benevolence towards invention and innovation, we are left ignorant to the qualms of the natural world:
“These days people have forgotten they’re a part of nature too. They can’t live without nature, yet they meddle with it and destroy it [...] They don’t notice that nature is being lost and they’re heading to extinction.”
Our existence on this planet is limited. Made even more so by man’s propensity to pollute, destroy, and consume Earth’s habitats. Yet, there is hope. By leading fruitful, considerate lives, in which we cultivate the earth’s environments, reduce our reliance on technology, assume the responsibility for the world’s inarguably deteriorating state and make waves to fix it; to not rely on technology to make us happy but to see life itself as our greatest gift:
“Listen, people go on about how hard life is, but that’s just a lot of talk. Honestly, it’s good to be alive. It’s quite exciting.”
The old man gets up to assume his role in a funeral that is taking place in the village. A celebration of the life of a woman, who, as described by the man “was [his] first love. But broke [his] heart and left [him] for another.” He wanders off jovially, laughing unmistakably at the inconsequentiality of life, and love, as he adorns his funeral wear and joins the musically charged parade.
Kurosawa frames his all-encompassing Dreams by way of two processions. The first being the fox wedding in “Sunshine”: A mystical, sinister and folkloric event that depicts a moment of growth for “I”, forced to leave the safety of his home and his mother, and journey into the great unknown in order to find enlightenment. This is symbolised by the rainbow in that particular vignette, a glorified archway beckoning “I” to enter the dream world. Yet, in “Waterwheels”, the adventure is complete, and the hero is returned. The old man, who in this sense, acts as the said hero (“I” as observer), bestows his enlightenment upon “I” (as Kurosawa). As “I”, and by proxy the viewer, have travelled the realms of memory, dreams and nightmare, so has the hero re-emerged from what Campbell describes as “the kingdom of dread” and the “boon that he brings” (the old man’s didactic wisdom on life, love and living) “restores the world”. While not his last film, Kurosawa brings his cinematic career, his life, his struggles, his adventure to a close in “Watermills.” Allowing his knowledge, his prescient woes, his vision to be expressed through the medium he knows best - cinema - and offering an “elixir” to heal the world's ailments (natural living). It is a story told time and time again, and yet, through its conception, and the purposeful injection of Kurosawa’s most intimate memories and life-long ruminations, he makes it entirely his. This is Kurosawa’s story. Full-bodied and brimming with his essence.
Akira Kurosawa and Chishū Ryū on the set of “Dreams”
Epilogue
In Dreams Kurosawa’s subconscious is laid bare; whereby his deepest musings and most formative memories are merged, through film, to establish an interconnecting web of parable and sentiment. Through its form, it allows the viewer a brief glimpse into the mind of a visionary, and through its function, it instils myriad prescient notions about life, death, peace and torment. Yet, through its themes, it captures the essence of the oneiric film theory. The theory proposes that films are but a projection of our innermost reflections; through the cinematic lens, the author instils latent repressions and subconscious contemplations both personal and communal, allowing the spectator to arrive at a purging catharsis by doing so. Professor Stephen Sharot writes in his essay Dreams in Films and Films as Dreams: Surrealism and Popular American Cinema, that “Dreams have frequently been associated with films and the experience of the spectator in the cinema” while Douglas Fowler, in The Kingdom of Dreams in Literature and Film: Selected Papers from the Tenth Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film, goes one step further to elucidate the intrinsic connection between dream images and the human story itself:
“The deep structure of human narrative is conceived in dream, and the genesis of all myth is dream; images arising from dreams are the wellspring of all our efforts to give enduring form and meaning to the urgencies within.”
Kurosawa’s Dreams makes this notion seem all too pertinent. His film, an evocation of his subconscious incarnate that utilises, perhaps inherently, the mythological connotations of a hero traversing the complexities of the self to arrive at some sort of enlightenment - “to give meaning to the urgencies within” - as proposed by Fowler. Yet through its manifestation, Kurosawa allows us to journey along with him. And, as our role of spectator inhabits, to project ourselves through Kurosawa’s cinema, through his dreams and to dream along with him. Bertolucci encapsulates this fully at the opening of the 1990 Cannes film festival, in which, shortly before Dreams’ premiere, he lauds the film’s intrinsic connection to the shared subconscious of cinema: “We will soon plunge into the collective hypnosis of your Dreams. Your Dreams will allow us to dream with you. That’s what I call cinema” (Cadou, 2011).
Directors Claude Lelouch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Jacques Cousteau, Costa-Gavras, Andrzej Wajda, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, and Bille August raise a glass to Akira Kurosawa at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.
In Dreams, we dream with Kurosawa. And through its prescient worldview and collective empathy, we are opened up to the very life force of Kurosawa’s being; his creativity, his experimentation, his ability to compound the infinite realm of the self into a picture as formative as it is final.
He was a director whose work exceeds the boundaries of death, whose themes ripple throughout time and space, whose imagination “never dried up” (Nogami, 2016). Bertolucci jokes that “if Kurosawa could make a film today, he’d do it in 3D”, reiterating the endless creativity of the renowned director who would eventually die of a stroke in 1998 at the age of eighty-eight (Cadou, 2011). One thing, however, is assured: that, to echo Nogami, there will never be “another director like Kurosawa”, and that his exceptional vision and reverberant insight will remain as prescient now, as it did then, as it will indefinitely.
About The Author
Simon Jenner explores meaningful storytelling through film and media, occasionally producing a little writing along the way.
