What is the dream? It could be called a reflection of someone’s subconscious. Others would say it is seminal with great sadness, need, or longing. They can also quote others for a vision of the future, or an account of the past. Akira Kurosawa once said “Man is a genius when he dreams”. No one ever agrees on what a dream is, or what it means. Its foundation is too complex, too vivid, and too abstract for the conscious human mind to understand. With that in mind, the visions presented in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams are a veritable pool of possible meanings, some grand, others in specific features. As a cinematic depiction of a progressive dream world, Dreams presents a series of eight shorts presenting different positions and trends in the life and character of Kurosawa himself.
He deals with the most frequent themes throughout the film, transcending all the briefs and tying his images together as if at random. One of them stands out in particular as an image of the struggle for identity. This struggle for identity, a common thread in Kurosawa’s films throughout his life, is more specifically linked to the role of cultural and natural identity. Kurosawa is able to express, more specifically in five particular short Dreams, the way in which humanity and nature can cover or shape the personal identity of one person. This is done through a special act of defiance. Kurosawa, as discussed in the four arguments, actually uses defiance, both from the individual and from society as a collective to human culture and natural identity as a way of losing personal identity. Concurrently the theme of death throughout the film helps to exacerbate the way in which cultural defiance is the catalyst for losing one’s own identity.
The first eight films in Dreams is “sun through the rain.” Kurosawa, the first of eight films, is a child in this piece, still wearing a child’s kimono. He enters the front of his bedroom and watches as the rains begin to fall profusely. The sun shines brightly as his mother reminds him of the significance of such a storm. He tells her to stay inside as Fox holds the wedding in such a storm. The boy ignores his mother’s warnings and goes into the woods. There, while standing still, he watches the wedding procession of the fox. The camera works behind its back the entire time it’s hidden behind the back of a tree, helping to create a more voyeuristic view of the forbidden procession. As the fox noticed, he ran to his house.
His mother meets him at the door of his house and immediately knows where he has been. She hands him a wooden sheath that one of the foxes brought to her, and warns him that his punishment is to kill himself. She offers to find the foxes and ask for their forgiveness, instructing them to be under the rainbow. The short ends with him looking under the rainbow in a happy field of flowers. This child’s world is born of superstition and reverence. A brave boy makes a decision to venture out into the middle of a fox’s storm, ignoring his mother’s warnings, and tries to see what is not supposed to happen. Thus he flees from the world, he knows, from his former identity he knew from the world through defiance. As he creates a barrier against the culture, which his mother warns him about, he destroys the connection he knows with the world. Leaving with a lanto as he thought he would kill himself, he searched under the untouchable object to find the guardians of his identity. The foxes, in a place he could never really reach, hold the key to his life, his identity, which he is now searching for.
In the following sequence of the film, Kurosawa, similarly young, recreates the “Doll Day” party with the sisters, dressed as children in kimono. to his friends. He asks where the sixth girl is, and when his sister tells him that there is no sixth girl, he persists in his search and runs outside to find her. He runs through the woods and comes upon a hill full of life-sized versions of his sister’s party. They explain that the “Doll of the Day visit no more” ceremony is because the peach orchard of the boy’s family has been pruned. The blossoming orchard is thought to be the title of the ceremony. The boy cries and explains that it was not his fault that the trees were cut down. He was crying when he was killed, not wanting to cut them. And the grieving s spurs allow the trees, after which the hill is cut down and covered with all but one bush.
The aspirations of the boy in this part and his perspective on the world are unique to him in that a part of his identity has been denied. The culture represented by the dolls destroyed the family of the children when they destroyed the peach trees. They made a conscious decision to detest their traditions and remove part of their culture. In doing so, the boy has denied a piece of his identity and is forced to live with that loss. Because the world is changing around him, without his consent, he has left a sense of being lost, unsure of his place. The dolls on the hill mock him because of the participation of the human race. By developing the love of the peach blossom and the sadness she resists from the loss. The last shot, with the peach bushes, is one of revelation, in which the boy learns the true value of that part of the culture and the ability to endure beyond the destruction of his family.
The following parts of the film jump into the future and focus on a modern world in which Kurosawa’s identity crisis is with the modern world and its amenities, not a transition to that modern world. It takes a prominent position in the idiom of the human race in the form of atomic technology. In two separate short stories, “Mount Fuji in Red” and “Demon Weeping”, he condemns the nuclear aspirations of mankind, portraying the terrible. the world that would follow from the nuclear fallout. When looking at the way in which culture plays into this identity renegotiation, the issue of changing cultural identity arises. Ultimately, it becomes a matter of how the major powers of the nuclear age have failed their cultural roles. Kurosawa depicts this well in the first image of the two using Mount Fuji. He sees the mountain red and believes it will erupt. Then he learns that five reactors are about to explode. This realization increases the fear, but also increases the inevitable. Knowing that Japan’s natural icon, Mount Fuji, is not a strong hit. That the aspirations of men, represented by nuclear reactors, have created a force more powerful than Vulcan’s own thought is horrifying. The old man, one of the leading men, as he himself writes, says that it is against nature a great folly. Humanity’s disapproval of its culture and nature in the world is a destructive force for all people, writing the identities of all that remain. The next short message goes the same way, depicting the world as a nuclear wasteland, inhabited by cannibalistic demons, the remnants of humanity. Kurosawa ventures into this world without knowing where he is or why. The world was destroyed by the ambitions mentioned in the previous brief, and the identity of people was stolen and reformed in the context of demons. Because of people’s defiance, these demons are forced to live forever in eternal pain. At these forces the protagonist himself is left to express his surprise. When he spoke to the demon, he asked him to go away, he answered: Go, where? His life mission is destroyed by this new cultural definition, in which humans are now demons. He runs carelessly up the hill as he avoids such a fate.
The theme of death and destruction that follows all these shorts is not complete without a funeral, and Kurosawa depicts the scene in perfect contrast to the rest of the film. “The Village of Watermills” is an excellent example of the struggle between cultural identities in self-definition. Kurosawa, it seems, is a modern man who enters the countryside from the city and everyone witnesses his quality. One hundred and three year old asks and asks for one hundred. him from the village. Do you have electricity?” He responds by saying that the old man is unnecessary. He inquires about various other modern conveniences and the old man explains his purpose as people usually use nature. life”> nature and the culture they live to return to their mechanical needs. Kurosawa’s character seems to be amused by everyone, while at the same time he is interested. His questions are incessant, thinking how these people can live. such a dirty, peaceful life. as a vice. It also depicts the people of the mill village to confuse the culture of modern man, choosing to live in a world long removed from the way the world works now. The beautiful, harmonious picture of this world, even among the funerals, helps to declare its final message in the film.
Man’s disbelief against nature and natural culture, which has been man’s identity for thousands of years, is stupidity. As is clear in the four short stories mentioned, when someone has despised the world of nature and ancient culture, death is the result. A boy who witnesses a fox’s wedding is faced with the choice of suicide or an eternal quest. No choice is left for a new identity. He must be sought after. The world of the boy in “The Peach Orchard” is one of regret. In the dolls will no longer grace the house because of the boy’s family’s contempt for nature and the culture to which they belonged. the identity to which the child was born has been lost because of the stupidity of the elders. Short stories about nuclear fallacies portray the individual survivors of the conflict in a world of destruction. We must ask why such a world was created, and why the end of the rulers themselves is contrary to nature. Their modesty is taken away against the defiance of their elders, and they are left to perish. So the last short is the last depressing defiance. It depicts defiance from the opposite angle, a group of people the culture they are born into and returning to is safe and peaceful before them. The world of nature has long life and happiness in the village of Windmills. Because of the persistence of defiance in the film, it is possible to see the purpose of the utopian village at the end of the film. The act of defiance, withdrawing from the order of nature and trying to recreate a new identity for oneself is rendered a foolish idea. But the presence of some original natural and cultural identity is necessary in retaining a strong personal identity. Such is one of the many messages expressed in Kurosawa’s dreams.
