Saturday, October 10, 2009

Kurosawa's Dreams

If you find Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) at the rental store give it a try. I watched it several years ago and remember the evocative power of these 'dreams'. The film consists of eight different segments, each one a dream; Kurosawa's own dreams. Whether dreams he dreamed in his sleep or dreamed while awake we don't know.

The following one, 'Crows', is probably the film's weakest segment (the part where the aspiring painter walks through the painting stills looking for Van Gogh is cringe worthy, and are those commercially pre-stretched canvases that Van Gogh is carrying?), but interesting nonetheless. George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic provided the visual effects.

And Scorcese as Vincent Van Gogh...bleh. Bleh. Bleh. No thanks.

Dreams - Van Gogh from Thiago Barbosa on Vimeo.

2 comments:

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

My favourite dream is The Tunnel, because, you know, it counts as Horror. =P

When my students watched this film, the only other Japanese movies they had seen before were in the Horror genre--and so they kept expecting something horrible to happen, especially in The Peach Orchard and The Tunnel.

(I didn't get Scorsese as Van Gogh, either.)

Paul Stilwell said...

Of course, you're favourite genre, if I'm not mistaken! I remember The Tunnel being very eerie.

I'm going to have to watch it again, since I can't remember the peach orchard, and as well as some of the others.

I think my favourite was the one where the two men are travelling through the snow storm in the mountains. There was something about the motion of them walking and the pace of the whole thing that I found so waking or something.

I'm a sucker for long, slow sustained shots - that is, when they're not just pretentious.