DREAMS

Dreams is not Akira Kurosawa's best film by a long measure but it is my personal favourite. I have a fascination with his later films... by the time he made Dreams Kurosawa was 80 years old and legally blind. I find this an astonishing fact. Dreams is one of the most vibrant and visually arresting films I know of. He had obviously carried this film with him for many years prior to making it and it is a profoundly personal peice. The film is comprised of 8 short dream sequences which are sewn together to represent Kurosawa's view of the world. Within themselves the short stories make little sense, but collectively they are powerful. The common thread in each sequence is a lone man at different ages in each dream, starting as a child and finishing as a man. A logic assumption is that he represents Kurosawa himself. The film runs a gammit of themes from love to hate and most predominantly, the negative capabilities of man. His fear of a nuclear armageddon is represented in a dream sequence showing Japan being annihilated when Mount Fuji errupts and triggers all of the country's nuclear reactors. It's an irrational fear, of course, but I find this fear rather profound coming from an 80 year old man who thinks selflessly of generations to come. Incredibly when he came to make this film, no one in Japan wanted to fund it. Given the important cinematic body of work behind him, what a slap in the face... and so he turned to an industry friend, Steven Spielberg, who in turn convinced American companies to get behind the project... and they did. And finally a little peice of trivia... Martin Scorsese plays Vincent Van Gogh in a sequence titled "Crows". Its a really bizarre and surreal moment of European culture thrown into the mix. An excellent film which I highly recommend.

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