Part of Akira Kurosawa: A Retrospective
A vivid story of life, loss and renewal through a series of eight dreams — from a young boy’s dream of a wedding procession of fox spirits, through dreams of himself as an artist, to dreams of a nuclear-poisoned future, to a final dream of an old man at peace in a beautiful village. Inspired by actual recurring dreams, Kurosawa cast actors — Martin Scorsese and Chishū Ryū, most notably — as his own surrogates in a visually sumptuous journey through the filmmaker’s imagination. Interspersed with reflections on the redemptive power of creation, Akira Kurosawa’s DREAMS is both a showcase for its maker’s artistry at its most unbridled and a deeply personal lament for a world at the mercy of human ignorance.
4K digital restoration supervised by cinematographer Shoji Ueda
“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…. 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.” —Vincent Canby, NYT Critic’s Pick, New York Times (Aug 24, 1990) “When Akira Kurosawa wants to talk about his reveries, skid to a halt, sit down and watch. Listen. Drink. And please keep your eyes off that damn watch…. AKIRA KUROSAWA’S DREAMS, eight fantasies by one of the cinema's last visionaries, is a magnificent, immensely absorbing experience.” —Desson Howe, Washington Post (Sep 14, 1990)
