Dreams

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams chronicles segments of a man's life from boyhood to adulthood through dreamlike sequences. The first dream finds a young boy disobeying his mother and going out on a rainy day, and watching the foxes' wedding. Having now angered the foxes, his mother will not let him back inside her home and insists he go beg forgiveness. In another dream, the boy is taunted by the spirits of peach trees that had been cut down. When this boy is finally an adult, there is a dream where he is returning from war, and seems to be pursued by the ghosts of his fallen comrades that he had led. He must explain to these ghosts that they have died and to accept that fact and move on. In this dream there is a dog growling and guiding him that seems to symbolize the guilt he feels for the deaths of these men. This idea of war is continued into a dream where the world appears destroyed from nuclear energy, and everyone has died or will die from the effects of the gases that surround them. This dream goes on to a world where there are "demons" or people who have been painfully mutated from the effects of the poisonous gases. And in the final dream, this man comes upon a village where everyone lives naturally. Naturally being taken as literal as possible; where they use no man made energy, and are actually in the middle of using a person's death to actually celebrate life.

Arguably, the most enjoyable dream is Crows. In this dream, the man searches for Van Gogh and seems to actually wind up living through his artwork after speaking with him.


The most apparent theme of all the dreams is nature; being aware of nature, using nature, and most importantly, respecting nature. In the first dream, the boy does not show respect to nature and ultimately must either kill himself or beg forgiveness from nature. In the second dream, nature is taunting the boy for letting nature be destroyed. In the dreams about nuclear energy release, the effects of not taking care of the earth are highlighted. And in the final dream, the audience is shown how peaceful, simple, and happy life can be just by using natural resources to sustain life. Being one of Kurosawa's final films before his death, it's not unlikely that these dreams are a certain reflection on his own life and the world around him.

I found Dreams to be a very interesting concept. I mean, have you ever tried to explain a dream you had to someone, and it just didn't make sense, and there were pieces missing, but somehow it seemed so real to you at the time? Well, I think it'd be pretty darn cool to script and film whacky dreams you've had. I'm thinking maybe that's how David Lynch came up with Eraserhead... Kurosawa's dreams gives you a surreal look at the real world. Even though some of the concepts are strange, like the foxes' wedding story, it still has a point to be made.