Dreams [Yume] **** (1990, Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baishô, Toshie Negishi) – Classic Movie Review 6427

The great Japanese writer-director Akira Kurosawa’s fascinating 1990 fantasy drama film is deeply personal work from the maestro, then aged 80, based on his actual dreams. It was Golden Globe nominated as Best Foreign Language Film.

It takes the form of eight visions, in separate short films running from boyhood to old age and death. They are mostly anxiety dreams about war, the pressure of time and, especially, the state of the planet.

The film looks and sounds superb (doing full justice to the theme), but some of the individual ideas are unable fully to sustain a 15-minute mini-movie. The short films are separate but characters and themes overlap, especially in terms of concern for man’s relationship with the environment.

Two sequences stand out: the Crows episode, in which an aspiring painter encounters Martin Scorsese playing Vincent Van Gogh, and the final segment in which a 103-year old man leads a joyous funeral procession and asserts that it is exciting to be alive.

Also in the cast are Mitsuko Baisho, Toshihko Nakano, Mitsunori Isaki, Mie Suzuki, Akira Terao, Mieko Harada, Yoshitaka Zushi, Chosuke Ikariya and Chishu Ryu.

It is shot by Takao Saito and Masaharu Ueda, produced by Hisao Kurosawa and Mike Y Inoue, and scored by Shinichirô Ikebe.

Kurosawa made two more films – Rhapsody in August and Maadadayo.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6427

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