Dreams

Eight segments drawn from Kurosawa's own recurring dreams: Sunshine Through the Rain, The Peach Orchard, The Blizzard, The Tunnel, Crows, Mount Fuji in Red, The Weeping Demon and The Village of the Water Mills. There is image instead of narrative, each piece standing alone with only dream logic holding them together. Martin Scorsese plays Van Gogh in Crows, taking a break from directing Goodfellas. George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic did the effects for the sequences that walk into Van Gogh's paintings, and did them at cost. Japanese studios had turned the project down. Steven Spielberg stepped in and helped Kurosawa get a deal with Warner Bros, which is why the film exists. Mount Fuji in Red shows a nuclear plant melting down, with different radioactive isotopes rendered as coloured clouds. It is Kurosawa warning openly. A ninth segment called A Wonderful Dream was planned and dropped when it became clear it would consume 3 million of the 14 million dollar budget. Who it is for: viewers who can give themselves over to image rather than story, and anyone curious about late Kurosawa. Who it is not for: those expecting every segment to be equally strong. At least two fall below the rest, and the film sometimes turns lecturing.