AKIRA KUROSAWA'S DREAMS Movie Review

Dreams
Yume

I Saw a Dream Like This
Konna Yume Wo Mita

I compare the critics who've labeled Akira Kurosawa's Dreams “uneven” to therapists who've listened attentively to a brilliant patient as he confides his innermost secrets, only to tell him when his hour is up that two or three of his private fantasies went on a little too long. If ever a director has earned the right to be self-indulgent, then surely it is this unparalleled visionary storyteller who may well be the most influential filmmaker of the century's second half. The eight short films that Kurosawa conjures here—they can't all properly be called “stories”—show the imagination and visual energy of the then-80-year-old artist in full flower and splendid color. The film leaps gracefully from the tale of a child who casually observes gods who sprang from a living orchard, to an eloquent and strangely reassuring brush with Vincent Van Gogh (played, in an inspired bit of casting, by Martin Scorsese), and inevitably to a horrifying vision of the nuclear devastation of Japan—an image that can never, it seems, be extracted from Japan's collective consciousness. If Akira Kurosawa's Dreams seems less of a coherent vision than some of his more formally perfect masterworks, it is because he wanted us to see his frailties and his fears. By sharing them with us, the world's greatest living filmmaker has given us an invaluable—and frequently thrilling—glimpse into the mind of a genius.

NEXT STOP … Amarcord, Kwaidan, The Phantom of Liberty

1990 (PG) 120m/C JP Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho, Meiko Harada, Chishu Ryu, Hisashi Igawa, Mitsunori Isaki, Toshihiko Nakano.Yoshitaka Zushi.Toshie Negishi, Martin Scorsese; D: Akira Kurosawa; W: Akira Kurosawa; C: Kazutami Hara, Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda; M: Shinichiro Ikebe.VHS, LV, Letterbox WAR, FCT