He had some dreams!

Dreams (Japanese, 1990)
Director & Story: Akira Kurosawa

Of all of Kurosawa's films that I have watched so far, this is one that I found least connected to. It is supposed to narrate a few of the director's dreams. I suppose he is also working in his sleep.

It is a series of 8 sequence of dreams. There is minimal dialogue but more of depiction of Japanese cultures and beliefs.

In the first, 'Sunshine through the rain', it highlights the folklore that believes that when the sun shines through a heavy downpour, the fox is getting married. People are expected to stay indoors. Failure of complying may prove fatal, as the young protagonist soon discovers.

'The Peach Orchard' displays the importance of peach in the Japanese culture. The Dolls which are the pillars of the peach festival are upset with the boy who chopped his peach tree.

In 'The Blizzard', the spirit of the mountain in the form of a beautiful woman, saves 4 dispirited mountaineers who were caught in a bad blizzard to reach the summit of their destination.

'The Tunnel' narrates the frustrations and the guilt of a commander in WW2 who was captured by enemy whilst his whole platoon including his anti-tank dogs perished.

'Crows' is a psychedelic presentation with CGI input from George Lucas. A painter is transported into Van Gogh's painting and he travels through the landscape, which uses Van Gogh's paintings as theme, in search of Vincent. Martin Scorsese gives a cameo appearance as the ear sliced near lunatic painter. This is the only snippet where English is spoken.

The last three segments ('Mount Fuji in Red', 'The Weeping Demon'  and 'Village of the Watermills') highlight the danger of nuclear reaction, its devastation, its danger of fauna and flora and finally the yearn of people to reject modernity and to go back to the pre-modernisation era. It ends like the starting scene from Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' with a serene view of stream with hypnotising sounds of flowing water and the restlessly swaying water weeds in it!