Film / Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (aka Dreams) is a 1990 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa.

It is a collection of eight loosely related vignettes supposedly adapted from, or at least inspired by, the dreams of Akira Kurosawa. The eight stories are:

• "Sunshine Through the Rain": On a rainy day, a little boy's mother warns him not to go outside, and especially not to go into the woods, as that is when the foxes like to have their weddings. Predictably, he doesn't listen, and draws the foxes' wrath.
• "The Peach Orchard": A slightly older boy sees a mysterious girl in the household while his sister and her friends are celebrating the "Hinamatsuri" ("Dolls' Day") festival. He follows the strange girl out to the remains of the nearby peach orchard, which his family chopped down.
• "The Blizzard": Four mountaineers apparently bit off more than they can chew, as they are stuck in the middle of a howling blizzard that has lasted for three days. Three of the men give up and sit down to die. The fourth goes on for a little while before stumbling and falling in the snow. He then sees a figure from Japanese mythology: the Yuki Onna snow maiden.
• "The Tunnel": An officer from the Imperial Japanese Army is walking home after the end of World War II. After going through a spooky pedestrian tunnel, he encounters some literal ghosts from his past.
• "Crows": A man checking out a Vincent van Gogh exhibit at an art gallery somehow plunges into one of Van Gogh's paintings and into 19th century France. There he meets Van Gogh himself (played by, believe it or not, Martin Scorsese speaking English).
• "Mount Fuji in Red": Atomic holocaust strikes Japan, as six nuclear reactors in a power plant explode, spewing radiation everywhere. The populace flees in panic, ending with an older man, a younger man, and a mother and child cowering by the seashore.
• "The Weeping Demon": A man is wandering around barren, post-apocalyptic Japan after another kind of nuclear holocaust, namely nuclear war. He meets a "demon", specifically, a man who has mutated due to the radiation and is now growing a horn out of his head.
• "Village of the Water Mills" A backpacker wanders into a rustic village with water mills turning in a peaceful stream. He meets a 103-year-old resident of the town (played by Chishū Ryu) who tells him that the village lives without modern technology, in harmony with nature.

Produced by Steven Spielberg, a Kurosawa fan who got Warner Brothers to fund the project.

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Tropes:

• After the End: "The Weeping Demon" finds Japan a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland, a ruin populated mostly by mutants.
• And I Must Scream: The demons in "The Weeping Demon" can't die. They are left howling in agony because of their horns, which are terribly painful. They can be killed however, which is why the demon who talks to the man wonders if maybe it would be better if the other demons ate him.
• Anthology Film: Eight short films directed by Akira Kurosawa.
• Arcadia: The village in "Village of the Water Mills" is a perfect example of Arcadia, a bucolic little hamlet beside a river where the villagers live in peace and harmony with nature.
• Ascended Fanboy: Martin Scorsese leapt at the chance to be directed by one of his all-time favorite directors.
• Asian Fox Spirit: In "Sunshine Through the Rain" the rebellious boy goes into the woods against orders and sees a kitsune wedding procession.
• Author Avatar: All the protagonists, with the possible exception of the IJA officer, are meant to be avatars of Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa loved painting and mountain climbing and was anti-nuclear power, and he was known for wearing hats just like the adult protagonist in six of these films. Starting with the third sequence, all the adult protagonists are played by the same actor (Akira Terao). The only possible exception may be the officer, as Kurosawa never served in the military (in fact, he got his start as a director at Toho during World War II).
• Bilingual Bonus: For Westerners, who might not know that the name seen above the gate in the first sequence is "Kurosawa".
• Book Ends: The first sequence features a wedding procession; the last, a funeral procession.
• Breather Episode: After two heavy downer episodes dealing with different kinds of nuclear apocalypse, the film concludes with "Village of the Water Mills", in which a traveler has a nice visit to a quiet, lovely rustic village.
• The Cameo: Yep, that's Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh.
• Chekhov's Volcano: Subverted in "Mount Fuji in Red". It looks like the volcano is erupting, but it's actually the six reactors of a nuclear power plant.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In "Mount Fuji in Red", dialogue indicates that the various radioisotopes being released by the nuclear reactors were dyed different colors to make them easier to see. This is absolute nonsense scientifically but allows for a terrifying visual as the man, the woman, and her child cower on the beach as billowing clouds of red plutonium-239 approach.
• Don't Go Into the Woods: The little boy in the first film disregards his mother's warning and goes into the woods. He sees something he's not supposed to.
• Downer Ending: "Mount Fuji in Red" ends with the man, the woman, and her child trapped on the edge of the ocean, doomed to die as they're enveloped by a radioactive cloud.
• Dream Sequence: Despite the title and the supposed premise, this trope is mostly avoided. The only short that one might describe as dreamlike is "Crows", and specifically the scene where the man goes into a painting. He then finds Vincent Van Gogh speaking English, before an even weirder sequence where he goes tripping through several Van Gogh paintings.
• Driven to Suicide: The older man in "Mount Fuji in Red" hurls himself into the ocean rather than die a slow death from the radiation billowing towards them.
• Empathy Doll Shot: An abandoned Baby Carriage is among the detritus left behind by the fleeing crowds in "Mount Fuji in Red".
• Fantastic Racism: Unbelievably, the mutant in "The Weeping Demon" tells the man that there's a caste system among the mutants. The more horns you have, the higher your caste. With his one horn he is on the low rung of mutant cannibal society.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": The funeral procession in "Village of the Water Mills" is regarded by the old resident as more a celebration, as the person being honored lived to the age of 99, and there was no point truly mourning someone who lived such a long, fruitful life.
  Old Villager: You seem to find that odd. But a funeral is actually a joyous occasion. It's good to live well and work hard, and then be congratulated on a job well done.
• Gave Up Too Soon: The mountaineer's three companions, as the storm finally breaks and reveals that they were no more than twenty meters away from their tent. Luckily they hadn't frozen to death yet.
• Green Aesop: Four of the eight vignettes are about either respecting and taking care of nature, or the tragedies that ensue when we don't.
• Harakiri: The surprisingly unsympathetic mom in the first sequence gives the boy a harakiri knife dropped off by the kitsune, and tells him that he has to disembowel himself, and his only option is to go to the kitsune and beg for mercy.
• Hellevator: Or rather a tunnel, but it seems like "The Tunnel" is a portal to some other world. It is dark and spooky. The far end is lit by a single red light bulb that bathes everything with an eerie red glow that is reminiscent of Hell. And once the officer emerges from the tunnel, he is confronted by the ghosts of his platoon.
• An Ice Person: The yuki-onna snow demon, a figure of Japanese mythology who appears to the mountaineer and seems to want him to freeze to death.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Although it may not count since the "demons" aren't human anymore. But in any case, the demons in "The Weeping Demon" are eating each other because there's nothing else.
• Ludd Was Right: The old man in "Village of the Water Mills" tells the visitor that the people of the village live without electricity or technology of any kind, which allows them to live in peace and harmony with nature, and to a ripe old age (it seems most of them live to be a hundred).
• Mental Story: If you imagine the "dreams" to be actual dreams, then they are Mental Stories as they all take place in the protagonist's head.
• Mood Dissonance: The wedding procession at the start and the funeral procession at the end have the opposite tones than what you would expect. The wedding procession of the foxes is silent, slow and subtly threatening. The funeral procession is lively and joyful with upbeat singing and playing.
• Nature Spirit: In Real Life, the hinamatsuri doll festival is strongly associated with peach trees, as it used to take place during the time of year where peach trees bloom in Japan. In "The Peach Orchard" the boy, following the mysterious girl, comes to the place where the peach orchard used to be, and finds the spirits of the dolls, which are actually the spirits of the peach trees. They are very angry about being cut down. At the end he sees one young sapling peach tree in bloom, that being connected to the mysterious young girl he followed to the orchard in the first place.
• Nuclear Mutant: The protagonist in "The Weeping Demon" finds a band of mutant "demons", who are actually humans that mutated and grew horns after being exposed to radiation. With nothing else organic around except for giant dandelions, they've resorted to eating each other.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The officer in "The Tunnel" is greeted by the spirits of his dead platoon. They look like the standard walking corpse stereotype, green skin and dark circles under their eyes, but they don't know that they're dead. Poor Private Noguchi pleads with the officer to tell him that it isn't true, because his mom and dad are still at home waiting for him.
• Portal Picture:
  • In "Crows" the protagonist is admiring "Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing" when somehow he plunges into the painting, and he is there, in the scene watching the women washing on the banks of the Arles Canal.
  • It gets weirder later in the film, as the protagonist finds himself running through several two-dimensional Van Gogh paintings, some of which are abstract sketches on white canvas.
• Ripped from the Headlines: "Mount Fuji in Red" was filmed four years after the Chernobyl disaster.
• Snow Means Death: It certainly does when you are stuck high up in the mountains, staggering through thigh-deep snow as a three-day blizzard howls around you.
• Survivor Guilt: It turns out that the captain in "The Tunnel" is the only survivor of his platoon; the rest were killed to the last man. He expresses shame over this. (Left unanswered is just how an officer happened to survive whatever action wiped out the rest of his platoon, but cowardice is hinted at.)
• Thematic Series: Four of the eight films are Green Aesops with general themes about respecting nature, taking care of nature, and not scattering nuclear waste around. There also seems to be a loose connection about the progress of life from childhood to old age. The first two are centered around children, and while the man in the last segment isn't old, he meets a 103-year-old man who talks about how precious life is.
• Was Once a Man: The mutant "demon" in "The Weeping Demon" explains that he was once a man, before the radiation from nuclear war mutated him into a monster.
• Weaponized Animal: The officer in "The Tunnel" is greeted in front of the tunnel by a barking, growling, teeth-baring Japanese anti-tank dog—note the explosive charges the dog is carrying. The Japanese practiced this in the final days of World War II as a desperation tactic to oppose the imminent American invasion, the one that never happened after they surrendered following the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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