Under the protective archway of his family home, a young boy stands perplexed on the precipice of a heavy rainstorm while his mother dutifully collects the outside paraphernalia now wet from the downpour. The boy ponders the tempest, a strange collision of sunshine and rain showers, with light shimmering through every droplet. It’s clear he wants to go outside, however, his mother warns him not to; that “foxes hold weddings on days like this” and “they hate it if anybody watches.”
This is the beginning of the first segment of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, a collection of eight distinct, yet kindred short films that portray various dreams of the late Japanese director.
Released in 1990, Dreams was the first film written solely by Kurosawa in forty-five years and acts as a recounting of the director’s most formative memories told through a cinematic lens. Encased in fantastical, oftentimes prophetic, narratives – from child to man, peach trees to nuclear holocaust – the films reflect a fertile slurry of nostalgia and retrospection; enabling Kurosawa to ruminate on his life and legacy and reflect on the experiences that have since resurfaced as subconscious visions (dreams). This article will attempt to discern those experiences and explore how Kurosawa projects the depths of his psyche in order to meditate, and comment, on contemporary issues, personal woes and prescient viewpoints. How, through experimentation and imagination, Kurosawa establishes a series of modern fables – allegorical and symbolic – that interweave to form a rich tapestry of universal musings and introspective narratives.
Kurosawa, Making of “Dreams”, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (1990).
“The imagination is rooted in memory. Memory is the foothold, and you imagine from there.”
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‘A SABUKARU INTRODUCTION TO AKIRA KUROSAWA’S ‘DREAMS” was originally published on sabukaru.online; a magazine which connects people with culture, products with context, subcultures with eras, artists with the world.
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