Review of Dreams (1990) by Christopher P — 12 Dec 2008

I got the impression from Rhapsody in August that post-Ran, '90s Kurosawa was sub-par in most ways. That he had nearly lost his gift for storytelling. I was way off. Dreams did nothing but impress me almost the entire way through, and now I want to see his final film, Madadayo.

Dreams is Kurosawa at his most metaphorical and avant garde. I would say it's probably his most personal work, and as one of his biggest fans, it was near-exhilarating to watch. A series of surreal, disjointed vignettes, or short films, represent actual dreams the filmmaker had during his life. It is a bizarre look inside the subconscious head of a genius, and they really do feel like lucid dreams in both their complete surreality and subjective reality, if that makes sense.

Each dream is a sort of parable, with a particular message to be found about life, or nature, or war, or humankind. Several of them seem to deal with nuclear/Cold War overtones, something that obviously bothered the director in his life. Among my favorite dreams are the lone commander in the tunnel who is revisited by the ghosts of his dead soldiers; the catastrophic meltdown, eruption of Fuji, and the colored radioactive gasses; and the beautiful adventure through the paintings of Vincent van Gogh.

It's not a masterpiece, and certain dreams are quite a bit more boring than others. It could also be called a self-indulgent film. But it's uniqueness, genius, and beauty only further solidify Kurosawa in my mind as the greatest filmmaker who ever lived.