Customer Reviews

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

5 star:		(103)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Akira Kurosawa's dreams are better than mine. If this is what he saw when he closed his eyes, then I can understand how from that mind sprang the Seven Samurai and the rest.

"Dreams" is maybe the most personal, most "Japanese" of Kurosawa's films, and along with that it is perhaps the most difficult one for Western audiences to appreciate. This is saying nothing against Western audiences, but many of the themes and myths on display may not be familiar, and the imagery and metaphors may be lost without the appropriate background. I definitely appreciated it more after living in Japan, and becoming familiar with the countries folklore and literary story-telling style. Hina Dolls, the Yuki Onna, the mountain villiges like islands of tradition amongst concrete modern Japan...

"Dreams" is beautiful, on a purely visual level. The cinematography is exquisite and the colors and light are displayed with the eye of a painter. It is appropriate that Van Gogh plays a role in one of the many dreams. Like Van Gogh, the stories in "Dreams" are expressionistic and vivid, yet with the subdued emotions that is the hallmark of Japanese literature. This is not the wild, raw statement of a younger Kurosawa.

Story-wise, the dreams play with the themes of death and loss, both human and of nature. The displacement of Japanese forests, the lack of safety standards at nuclear power plants, the loss of traditional Japan, the pointless loss of lives in war...melancholy themes at best. Yet at the end, hope is offered, in a small nook and cranny, like a flower blooming amongst concrete.

The DVD itself is a small disappointment, and I would rather have this belong to the Criterion Collection, but better to have it than not have it.

This film has in it some of the most beautiful cinematagrophy I have ever seen. If reviews where it is criticised as being slow or arrested worry you as to whether you should rent or buy it I would judge it like this: if the thought of walking through an art gallery and taking several minutes to sit or stand in front of some pictures to fully study and appreciate their beauty seems "slow" or "arrested" to you then you might not like it, if you can imagine yourself enjoying watching an expresionist/art noveau/surrealist set of pictures come to life on your tv screen then you might like it. I am dissapointed in those critics who can't imagine the medium of movies having value unless they are built around a fast paced linear plot line. These are the same people who probably think poetry is a bunch of rubbish and "Finnegan's Wake" is an unreadable waste of time. I hope and pray and fantasize that the studio that owns the rights to this movie will release it in greater numbers, drop the price, and (glory of all glorys) release it on dvd. It is one of the greatest movies of one of the greatest directors of all time and should be more accesible.

With an eight-stories sequence, Kurosawa expresses the magic of chilhood, the importance of perseverance and resistance, the beauty created by Van Gogh, war and atomic menace unleashed spreading their horror, and, last but maybe most important, hope an joy when the travel finishes. A film not to be seen once but many times, and getting amazed on each.

I love this Film! It contains eight Dreams, Sunshine Through the Rain, The Peach Orchard, The Blizzard, The Tunnel, Crows, Mount Fuji in Red, The Weeping Demon and Village of the Watermills. Every Dream is unique, beautifull and Breathtaking.

The Dreams shows us how destructive humans are towards the nature and ourselves. Kurosawa criticizes the past, the presence and the future.

Kurosawa (not the real kurosawa) plays in every Dream, from when he was a child in Sunshine through the Rain to when he is old and visits the Village of the Watermills.

All in all This is the best film ever and my personal favorite Kurosawa film. Its Beauty is so splendid and I loved every single Dream. I encourage everyone in the world to watch this film. The Masters Masterpiece

I am a huge Akira Kurosawa fan, I love all of his movies that I have seen. I am always impressed at his masterful story telling and cinematography. "Dreams" holds a special place in my heart because of it's breathtaking beauty. Beyond "eye candy", however, this film speaks intelligently of many things, life, death, solitude, guilt, redemption. This is one of those rare movies that can be discussed and analyzed and questioned for hours after viewing.

The Amazon.com review stated that this movie was "slow". How could one notice when one is busy looking at the amazing color, scenery, and imagery that is so masterfully created? "Preachy"? Perhaps, but they are good subjects to be preachy about - nuclear distruction, environmental distruction, not appreciating what one has... These complaints are the weak wingeing of shallow minds.

After every viewing of his films, I feel compelled to bow respectfully and say "Domo Arigato - Thank you very much".

One of Kurosawa's strengths as a sensei/master of cinema is his political use of the medium. Dreams, while nothing short of visual spectaculars, gives us a moral perspective of the artist through his luscious dreams. There are anti-war ("The Tunnel") and anti-nuclear power vignettes ("Mount Fuji in Red", followed by "The Weeping Demon") and concerns about environtal conservation ("The Peach Orchard".) There are other goodies as well: Japanese folklores meet the wild imaginations of young Akira ("Sunshine through Rainbow"; the brilliant "Blizzard") and the preachy ideals of an old man most reviews here comment on ("Village of the Watermills.)

What I treasure, as a Kurosawa fan for life, is the very personal glimpses the film allows into the older Kurosawa. It gives me terrible shudders to hear Van Gogh (an okay performance by Scorsese) say, "I don't have much time left to paint." But it is comforting to reach the film's end and listen with Akira Terao at the centenarian's suggestion of "happy funerals", if only to know that the sensei does not reject this life he so scrutinized with a critical eye in his art -- that he is at peace.

Ok, the box reports "Anamorphic Widescreen"... But the screen aspect - which hadn't been respected already on LaserDisc edition - has been even more trimmed down in the DVD edition. The DVD aspect ratio is only 1.8:1, while when released on screen the aspect ratio was 2.35:1!

I already checked out if they used the entire frame of the Super 35mm original and it was not the case, as the DVD has fewer image details and lateral image compared to the LaserDisc edition. Alas!

The sound is very good but comparable to the LaserDisc edition.

Finally, the DVD has no extras at all - something disappointing, as Kurosawa declared at the time of theatrical release that the special effects available at the time were used to their maximum extent. And that he wouldn't commit other three of his dreams to the screen because there were no sufficient SFX at the time to allow this.

A rather disappointing release. At least, the movie is beautiful, but I'll stick with the LaserDisc edition.

To better experience Kurosawa's best film, it helps to understand the context in which the script was written. To many Japanese people, either because of their Buddhist or Shintoist religion, or because of the many childhood stories they have heard, the world is alive with spirits. These spirits could be described as angels by the Christian ethic, but much better as jin by the Muslim ethic. Jin describes them better because jin are not necessarily good or bad. Similarly, kami are spirits which could be good or bad depending on the situation.
Virtually every one of the individual dreams in the movie has these spirits. Understanding that what you are seeing on the screen is not supposed to be a person -- it is supposed to represent a spirit helps empower the film. In some segments, it is obviously -- the storm woman from the dream on the mountain is clearly not human. But in the peach orchard, realizing that the girl never was intended to be human -- she represents the spirits of the peach trees -- both in an individual sense in that she could be one peach tree and in a universal sense in that she represents all peach trees everywhere or the idea of peach trees in the abstract.
Historic Guilt:
The extreme amount of guilt that Japan as a nation felt after WWII is expressed in the tunnel. This extreme guilt may be hard for some non-Japanese to believe because the Japanese government has not made as many public statements as other nations, such as Germany or even the Catholic church about the Christian Crusades. The Japanese sense of guilt is a powerfully internal event that can not be discussed openly. Seen in this light, the tunnel dream is overwhelmingly powerful.
There are no Mountains with Mercy:
In any given year between six and 18 mountaineers die in the extreme wilderness of the Japan Alps. Few people associate Japan with extreme mountaineering. The Alps are relatively short -- 3,000 meters mostly, but the construction of the mountains is rugged, sharp towering walls of granite -- formed by volcanic action and showered down upon by more than 100 inches of precipitation annually. Winter mountaineering is very dangerous and avalanches or whiteout snow storms are an ever-present threat. For Japanese, having grown up with the news reports of teams lost while climbing, the dream on the storm could well be a personally touching segment.
It's hard to export Dreams, because this movie is so heavily endowed with cultural references. It is nonetheless a remarkably beautiful dream.

Being a great fan of the old 1991 Laserdisc version of this movie, I was excited to finally hear that a DVD copy was available. I purchashed it right away in hopes of showing off my progessive scan DVD player (with component hookups) and my snazzy new 16:9 widescreen 46" Sony HDTV. Sadly, this DVD version's quality wasn't anything like I remembered.

10 years ago, I owned this movie on the old Laserdisc format, and the quality was unbelievable. The colors in every segment seemed so perfect, so sharp - that the movie was almost surreal in it's presentation. It just jumped out at you with impossibly perfect reds and stunning blues. I remember loading this Laserdisc when friends came to visit and I really wanted to WOW them with the "new digital laserdisc" technology.

Sadly, it appears this DVD version is a transfer from an inferior, analog source. The widescreen complaints from other reviewers confirm this suspicion. Sure, the DVD looks good, and sounds good, but just doesn't have the impact - color/picture/etc - that the original did. Film grain and dust specks are clearly visible throughout the movie and most edges are fuzzy. My 4 year old DVD of West Side Story is sharper and more vivid than Dreams. I can't stress enough that this DVD seems to be more of a transfer than an actual remastered version of the original.

This DVD reminds me of the Goodfellas DVD transfer, which was also released years ago without any significant DVD bonus features or, more importantly, an enchanced digital transfer from an original copy.

Perhaps I'm being picky, but I remember Dreams as being both a wonderful movie *and* a fabulous technological showpiece for my home theater system. Now it's just another DVD in my collection, looking as technically "good" as Animal House or Heat. Hopefully Criterion will release an enhanced, completely remastered version of this fantastic film in the near future.

This was Kurosawa's unfinished swan song. Spielberg took up the reins after Kurosawa passed away and made sure this was finished. Unlike other Spielberg collaborations, it's difficult to determine who did what in this anthology.

This is a series of mini-movies, all but one dealing with man's relationship with the environment. The exception is a love letter to Van Gogh's art with a fun guest appearance by Martin Scorcese.

Throughout each of these dreams, Kurosawa interweaves his vision with Japanese folklore and psychological insights into modern Japanese culture. Many of the themes in these movies are similar themes he's touched on in his earlier movies-- anxiety about the nuclear age, a need to respect history, a love for classic literature and fairy tales.

All of these stories are visually stunning, even though some are more emotionally moving than others.

A great way to finish his career, and a loving tribute by Spielberg to Kurosawa's favorite themes and style.