Movie Review –Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

A solemn little boy comes out of his house one rainy morning to find the sun shining. His mother, practical and no-nonsense, looks up at the sky and says that foxes hold their wedding processions in such weather. ''They don't like to be seen by people,'' she says, and goes about her business.
The casual remark is enough to send the boy into the forest, where the trees are as large and imposing as California redwoods. Even the ferns are taller than he is. The rain glistens within the shafts of sunlight. The boy moves with a certain amount of dread. This is forbidden territory.
In a moment of pure screen enchantment, a strange wedding procession slowly comes into view, the priests in front, followed by the bridal pair, their attendants, their families, their friends and their retainers. They walk on two feet, like people, but that they are foxes is clear from the orangey whiskers on their otherwise rice-powder-white, masklike faces.
The procession appears to be choreographed. The foxes march in unison to the hollow clicking sounds of ancient musical instruments. Every few steps their haughty manner becomes furtive when, as if on cue, they abruptly pause, cock their heads to the side, listen, and then move on.
This is the sublime beginning of ''Sunshine Through the Rain,'' the first segment of the eight that compose ''Akira Kurosawa's Dreams,'' the grand new film by the 80-year-old Japanese master who, over a 40-year period, has given us ''Rashomon,'' ''Throne of Blood'' and ''Ran,'' among other classics. The film opens today at the 57th Street Playhouse.
One might have expected ''Dreams'' to be a summing up, a coda. It isn't. It's something altogether new for Kurosawa, a collection of short, sometimes fragmentary films that are less like dreams than fairy tales of past, present and future. The magical and mysterious are mixed with the practical, funny and polemical.
The movie is about many things, including the terrors of childhood, parents who are as olympian as gods, the seductive nature of death, nuclear annihilation, environmental pollution and, in a segment titled simply ''Crows,'' art. In this, the movie's least characteristic segment, Martin Scorsese, sporting a red beard and an unmistakable New York accent, appears as Vincent van Gogh, beady-eyed and intense, his head newly bandaged.
Van Gogh explains the bandage to the young Japanese artist who has somehow managed to invade the world of van Gogh's paintings, entering just down-river from the bridge at Arles: ''Yesterday I was trying to do a self-portrait, but the ear kept getting in the way.''
''Dreams'' is a willful work, being exactly the kind of film that Kurosawa wanted to make, with no apologies to anyone. Two of the segments may drive some people up the wall.
''Mount Fuji in Red'' is a kind a meta-science fiction visualization of the end of the world or, at least, of Japan. As the citizens of Tokyo panic, Mount Fuji is seen in the distance, silhouetted by the flames from the explosions of nuclear plants in the final stages of melt-down. ''But they told us nuclear plants were safe,'' someone wails.
In ''Mount Fuji in Red,'' the nightmare of nuclear holocaust, expressed in psychological terms in Kurosawa's ''I Live in Fear'' (1955), is made manifest in images of cartoonlike bluntness.
It may be no coincidence that Ishiro Honda, who has worked off and on as Kurosawa's assistant director since 1949, and is his assistant again on this film, is one of those responsible for such Japanese pop artifacts as ''Godzilla,'' ''Rodan'' and ''The Mysterians.''
''The Weeping Demon'' segment is Kurosawa's picture of a Beckett-like world, one ravaged by environmental pollution. ''Flowers are crippled,'' someone says, looking at a dandelion six feet tall. Horned mutants roam the earth. In this last pecking order before the end, demons with two horns eat those with only one.
''Dreams'' is moving both for what is on the screen, and for the set of the mind that made it.
Among other things, ''Dreams'' suggests in oblique fashion that the past does not exist. What we think of as the past is, rather, a romantic concept held by those too young to have any grasp on the meaning of age.
In this astonishingly beautiful, often somber work, emotions experienced long ago do not reappear coated with the softening cobwebs of time. They may have been filed away but, once they are recalled, they are as vivid, sharp and terrifying as they were initially. Time neither eases the pain of old wounds nor hides the scars.
For Kurosawa, the present is not haunted by the past. Instead, it's crowded by an accumulation of other present times that include the future. The job is keeping them in order, like unruly foxes.
The foxes in ''Sunshine Through the Rain'' are not especially unruly, but their power is real and implacable. When the little boy returns home from the forest, he is met by his mother, who has run out of patience with him. She hands the boy a dagger, neatly sheathed within a bamboo scabbard, and tells him the foxes have left it for him.
Since the boy has broken the law protecting the privacy of foxes, they expect him, as a boy of honor, to kill himself. The boy is bewildered. His mother sighs and says that if he can find the foxes again, he might persuade them to forgive him. In that case, he can come home. In the meantime, the door will be locked.
The boy looks hopeful. ''But,'' his mother points out, ''they don't often forgive.''
A little boy is also the ''I'' figure, the dreamer, in another magical segment, ''The Peach Orchard,'' about the fury of some imperial spirits when a peach orchard is chopped down while in bloom. The boy explains that he tried to stop the destruction. Because they believe him, the spirits allow him to see the orchard as it once was.
As these spirits, life-size dolls representing ancient emperors and the members of their courts, begin to sing, the air becomes thick with orangey-pink blossoms and the doll-figures turn into trees. The effect is exhilarating.
In ''The Blizzard,'' a mountain climber is tempted to give in to his frozen exhaustion by a beautiful demon. ''Snow is warm,'' she tells him soothingly. ''Ice is hot.'' ''The Tunnel'' is about a guilt-ridden army officer who must persuade his troops, killed in battle, that they are indeed dead, and that nothing is to be gained by trying to hang onto life.
The film's final episode, ''Village of the Watermills,'' features Chishu Ryu as a philosophical old fellow, the elder of an idyllic village where the air and water are clean, where villagers take no more from nature than they need, and where people live on so long that funerals are times of joy and celebration. The style is lyrical, the mood intended to be healing.
''Dreams'' is absolutely stunning to look at and listen to. It is, in fact, almost as much of a trip as people once thought ''Fantasia'' to be.
More important, though, is that it's a work by a director who has continued to be vigorous and productive into an age at which most film makers are supposed to go silent. Movies are a young man's game. ''Dreams'' is a report from one of the last true frontiers of cinema. ''Akira Kurosawa's Dreams'' is rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''). It includes sequences that could frighten very young viewers.

Akira's Crow

Dreams

Dreams (夢, Yume^?, aka Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, I Saw a Dream Like This, or Such Dreams I Have Dreamed) is a 1990 magical realism film based on actual dreams of the film's director, Akira Kurosawa at different stages of his life. The film is more imagery than dialogue.　The alternative titles ("I Saw a Dream Like This") are a translation of the opening line of Ten Nights of Dreams, by Natsume Sōseki, which begins: Konna yume wo mita (こんな夢を見た^?). The film was screened out of competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.^[1]

Contents  [hide]  1 Dreams 1.1 Sunshine Through The Rain 1.2 The Peach Orchard 1.3 The Blizzard 1.4 The Tunnel 1.5 Crows 1.6 Mount Fuji in Red 1.7 The Weeping Demon 1.8 Village of the Watermills 2 Cast 3 References 4 External links

 Dreams

The film consists of several dreams based on Kurosawa's own, throughout his life. The dreams are eight separate segments in the following order:

 Sunshine Through The Rain

There is an old legend in Japan that states that when the sun is shining through the rain, the kitsune (foxes) have their weddings (this is a common theme globally – see sunshower). In this first dream, a boy defies the wish of a woman, possibly his mother, to remain at home during a day with such weather. From behind a large tree in the nearby forest, he witnesses the slow wedding procession of the kitsune. Unfortunately, he is spotted by the foxes and runs. When he tries to return home, the same woman says that a fox had come by the house, leaving behind a tantō knife. The woman gives the knife to the boy, implying that he must commit suicide. The woman asks the boy to go and beg forgiveness from the foxes, although they are known to be unforgiving, refusing to let him in unless he does so. The boy sets off into the mountains, towards the place under the rainbow in search for the kitsune's home.

The Peach Orchard

Hina Matsuri, the Doll Festival, traditionally takes place in spring when the peach blossoms are in full bloom. The dolls that go on display at this time, they say, are representative of the peach trees and their pink blossoms. One boy's family, however, has chopped down their peach orchard, so the boy feels a sense of loss during this year's festival. After being scolded by his older sister the boy spots a small girl running out the front door. He follows her to the now-treeless orchard, where the dolls from his sister's collection have come to life and are standing before him on the slopes of the orchard. The living dolls, revealing themselves to be the spirits of the peach trees, berate the boy about chopping down the precious trees. But after realizing how much he loved the blossoms, they agree to give him one last glance at the peach trees by way of a slow and beautiful dance to Etenraku. After they disappear the boy finds the small girl walking among the treeless orchard before seeing a single peach tree sprouting in her place.

[edit] The Blizzard

A group of four mountaineers struggle up a mountain path during a horrendous blizzard. It has been snowing for three days and the men are dispirited and ready to give up. One by one they stop walking, giving in to the snow and sure death. The leader endeavors to push on, but he too, stops in the snow. A strange woman (possibly the Yuki-onna of Japanese myth) appears out of nowhere and attempts to lure the last conscious man to his death - give into the snow and the storm, she urges him on, into reverie, into sleep, into certain death. But finding some heart, deep within, he shakes off his stupor and her entreaties, to discover that the storm has abated, and that their camp is only a few feet away.

The Tunnel

A Japanese army officer is traveling down a deserted road at dusk, on his way back home from fighting in the Second World War. He comes to a large concrete pedestrian tunnel that seems to go on forever into the darkness. Suddenly, an angry, almost demonic-looking anti-tank dog (strapped with explosives) runs out of the tunnel and snarls deeply at him. He proceeds with his walk, afraid, into the tunnel. He comes out the other side, but then witnesses something horrific — the yūrei (ghost) of one of the soldiers (Private Noguchi) whom he had charge over in the war comes out of the tunnel behind him, his face a light blue, signifying that he is dead.
The soldier seems not to believe he's dead, but the officer convinces him and the soldier returns into the darkness of the tunnel. Just when he thinks he's seen the worst, the officer sees his entire third platoon marching out of the tunnel. They too are dead, with light blue faces. He tries to convince them that they're dead, and he expresses his deep-seated guilt about letting them all die in the war. They stand mute, in reply to his words. He then orders them to about face, and then march back into the tunnel. Lastly, we see a second appearance of the hellish dog, from the beginning of this dream.
This is one of three "nightmares" featured in the film.
Akira Kurosawa's long time friend Ishirō Honda may have helped to direct, or have directed this piece entirely. The two always spoke of filming a story of a dead soldier returning from war.

Crows

A brilliantly colored vignette featuring director Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh. An art student (a character wearing Kurosawa's trademark hat who provides the POV for the rest of the film) finds himself inside the vibrant and sometimes chaotic world inside Van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the artist in a field and converses with him. The student loses track of the artist (who is missing an ear and nearing the end of his life) and travels through other works trying to find him. Van Gogh's painting Wheat Field with Crows is an important element in this dream. This Segment features Prelude No. 15 in D-flat major ("Raindrop") by Chopin. The visual effects for this particular segment were provided by George Lucas and his special effects group Industrial Light and Magic.^{[citation needed]}
This is the only segment where the characters do not speak Japanese.

[Mount Fuji in Red

The film's second nightmare sequence. A large nuclear power plant near Mount Fuji has begun to melt down, painting the sky a horrendous red and sending the millions of Japanese citizens desperately fleeing into the ocean. Three adults and two children are left behind on land, but they soon realize that the radiation will kill them anyway. The Weeping Demon
A man (possibly Kurosawa himself) finds himself wandering around a misty, bleak mountainous terrain. He meets a strange oni-like man, who is actually a mutated human with one horn. The "demon" explains that there had been a nuclear holocaust which resulted in the loss of nature and animals, enormous dandelions and humans sprouting horns, which cause them so much agony that you can hear them howling during the night, but, according to the demon, they can't die, which makes their agony even worse. The last of the three "nightmare" sequences. This is actually a post-apocalyptic retelling of a classic Buddhist fable of the same name.

Village of the Watermills

A young man finds himself entering a peaceful, stream-laden village. The traveller meets an old, wise man who is fixing a broken watermill wheel. The elder explains that the people of his village decided long ago to forsake the polluting influence of modern technology and return to a happier, cleaner era of society. They have chosen spiritual health over convenience, and the traveller is surprised but intrigued by this notion.
At the end of the sequence (and the film), a funeral procession for an old woman takes place in the village, which instead of mourning, the people celebrate joyfully as the proper end to a good life. This segment was filmed at the Daio Wasabi farm in the Nagano Prefecture. The film ends with a haunting yet melancholic melody from the excerpts of "In the Village" , part of the Caucasian Sketches, Suite No. 1 by the Russian composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov.

Celluloid Heroes

"Celluloid Heroes" is a song performed by The Kinks and written by their lead vocalist and
principal songwriter, Ray Davies. It debuted on their 1972 album Everybody's in Show-Biz.
Lyrical themes.The song names several famous actors of 20th century film, and also mentions Los Angeles's Hollywood Boulevard, alluding to its Hollywood Walk of Fame. The actors mentioned are Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, Bela Lugosi, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, George Sanders, and Mickey Rooney although some versions of the song, including recorded concert versions, are
performed with fewer verses and, thus, Marilyn Monroe, George Sanders, and Mickey Rooney are
left out. Davies uses the technique of personification (of the Walk's concrete stars) to create an intimate connection with the subject matter. The lyric has a warm, melancholy and nostalgic feel, and is driven by three underlying themes. First, "Celluloid Heroes" specifically cites the inhumane and exploitative manner in which the film industry can use its stars. Second, Davies suggests the
escapist fantasy world of movies as an attractive respite. "I wish my life were a non-stop Hollywood movie show," he writes, "because celluloid heroes never feel any pain," and "never really die." Finally, Davies treats as metaphor the sometimes ethereal and elusive nature of Hollywood fame and success. "Everybody's a dreamer, everybody's a star" is followed by a cautionary note to the listener - those who find success must maintain their guard, because "success walks hand-in-hand with failure along the Hollywood Boulevard."
"Celluloid Heroes" and the "Everybody's in Show-Biz" album was followed by Davies' and the
Kinks' pioneering but commercially unsuccessful and artistically uneven theatrical incarnation
(1973–1976)
The Kinks
he Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, North London, by brothers Ray and
Dave Davies in 1964. Categorized in the United States as a British Invasion band, The Kinks are
recognized as one of the most important and influential rock acts of the era.[1][2] Their music was influenced by a wide range of genres, including rhythm and blues, British music hall, folk, and
country. Ray Davies (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and Dave Davies (lead guitar, vocals) remained
members throughout the group's 32-year run. Original members Pete Quaife (bass guitar, vocals)
and Mick Avory (drums and percussion) were replaced by John Dalton in 1969 and Bob Henrit in
1984, respectively. Dalton was in turn replaced by Jim Rodford in 1978. Keyboardist Nicky
Hopkins accompanied the band during studio sessions in the mid-1960s. Later, various
keyboardists, including John Gosling and Ian Gibbons, were full-time members.[1]
The Kinks first came to prominence in 1964 with their third single, "You Really Got Me", written
by Ray Davies.[2][3] It became an international hit, topping the charts in the United Kingdom and
reaching the Top 10 in the United States.[3][4] Between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, the group
released a string of commercially and critically successful singles and LPs, and gained a reputation
for songs and concept albums reflecting English culture and lifestyle, fuelled by Ray Davies'
observational writing style.[2] Albums such as Face to Face, Something Else, The Kinks Are the
Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, and
Muswell Hillbillies, along with their accompanying singles, are considered among the most
influential recordings of the period.[1][3][5] The Kinks' subsequent theatrical concept albums met
with less success, but the band experienced a revival during the late 1970s and early 1980s—groups such as Van Halen, The Jam, The Knack, and The Pretenders covered their songs, helping to boost
The Kinks' record sales. In the 1990s, Britpop acts such as Blur and Oasis cited the band as a major influence.[1] The Kinks broke up in 1996, a result of the commercial failures of their last few
albums and creative tension between the Davies brothers.[6]
The Kinks had five Top 10 singles on the US Billboard chart. Nine of their albums charted in the
Top 40.[7] In the UK, the group had seventeen Top 20 singles and five Top 10 albums.[8] Four of
their albums have been certified gold by the RIAA. Among numerous honours, they received the
Ivor Novello Award for "Outstanding Service to British Music".[9] In 1990, their first year of
eligibility, the original four members of The Kinks were inducted into the Rock.
(Collected from Wikipedia)

Panthibhojanam

Eventhough Narayana Guru had built a number of temples and composed many poems in praise of popular Hindu deities, he had many atheist followers. This shows his love for humanity as a whole which is irrespective of any faith based affiliations. Many of his atheist followers in fact considered him as an atheist1. For instance, one of his prominent disciples Sahodaran Ayyappan was a militant atheist and one of the founders of Yukthivadi, the first rationalist/atheist magazine in Malayalam. When Sahodaran Ayyappan modified Narayana Guru's famous catchphrase, Oru Jati, Oru Matham, Oru Daivam Manushyanu (One Caste, One Religion, One God for Humanbeing) and re-written it as Jati Venda, Matham Venda, Daivam Venda Manushyanu (No Caste, No Religion, No God for Humanbeing), the latter did not protest2.

Casteism prevalent amongst the Hindus even in the first half of 20th century was so rabid that uppercaste people refused to have food along with the people belonging to lower caste and "untouchable" communities. Hindu scriptures were profusely quoted by them to justify this practice. The Ezhava community in which Narayana Guru was born too was not immune to this barbaric practice even after half-a-century of Narayana Guru's work. When Sahodaran Ayyappan inspired by Narayanaguru's message of caste-less and creed-less society launched what is called "Panthibhojanam" or community feasts participating people belonging to various castes and communities, the Ezhava lords called him "Pulayanaiappan" (Pulaya was used as a derogatory term for having feast with the "Pulayas", an "untouchable" community in the caste-hierarchy of Hinduism) and tried to forcibly prevent the feast. It is in this context that Narayana Guru came out in support of Sahodaran Ayyappan and sent the message reproduced alongside. Translated into English, the message reads: "Whatever be one's religion, costume, language etc, since their caste is the same, there is nothing wrong in having inter-marriages and community feasts". It is this message of Narayanaguru which transgresses the established canons of Hindu religion (or any religion for that matter) that makes Narayanaguru a rationalist icon.

To avoid the attempts made by a section of his followers to identify him with Hinduism alone, Narayana Guru was forced to state explicitly that he did not belong to any religious sects. Through a message he sent in the year 1916, he proclaimed : It is years since I left castes and religions. Yet some people think that I belong to their religion. That is not correct. I do not belong to any particular caste or religion.