Really good movie

Saw a really great movie tonight, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, (From IMDB about movie) at SUB films, student union board, with Clair.

It was really well done and consisted of various scenes, dreams, from the mind of the main character. The scenes do not relate to each other but contain the main character as the continuation feature of the movie. It starts with the young boy coming across a fox wedding, played with traditional Japanese costumed characters, he then has to go and find the foxes later to get forgiveness for seeing them during the procession. Hard to say what the meaning there could be, maybe that going to ask forgiveness is hard. Most likely it has to do with Japanese honor and ritual so that we as westerners miss the meaning behind it.

My favorite scenes were one called “Crows” and another called “The Tunnel.”

Crows is a look at Artists and the beauty of nature through the eyes of the director, as the main character, and Vincent Van Gogh. The main character starts looking at a painting by Van Gogh in a museum, he then entered into the paintings and walked through live scenes colored and set up like Van Gogh paintings. We come across Van Gogh painting scenes from his haystacks series, with the bright sun beating down on him Van Gogh says that people tend to look for the beauty in nature instead of letting the beauty come to us, that beauty can be found in any scene if you look for it. He then runs off saying that it is too beautiful and bright to stand there and talk, that the he needs to go paint.

The Tunnel is a good look at the life of a soldier after a war. We enter a tunnel and are confronted by a dog lit up with red light, after exiting the tunnel at the other end there are three more confrontations, first with a single dead soldier who does not believe he is really dead and that he had a dream that he had gone home, this scene is very powerful and reminds me of Jacob’s Ladder, another very good movie, after this we are introduced to an entire group of soldiers that do not realize they are dead. The main character ends up having to order them to about turn and march back into the tunnel. Then we are confronted by the dog again, I believe that the dog is a representation of the “Dogs of War,” not sure it this a Japanese image though.

Overall this is a very well made movie and wonderfully shot. See it if you can.