“Dreams” from Akira Kurosawa
How many dreams can a person have in his sleep? What we live as life is nothing more than a dream. So how many lifetimes does a person see in this dream? How many does he remember?
“Dreams” is my first meeting with Akira Kurosawa. The great director Akira Kurosawa was exactly 80 years old when he made this movie. So we can call the film one of his mature works. Maybe at the end of his career, I couldn’t help thinking that he wanted to leave a few pieces of advice for the 8 stages that a person can live in his life.
Throughout the movie, I felt like I watched 8 independent short films, but when the movie was finished and I watched the movie over and over again to digest it, I realized that Kurosawa divided a lifetime into 8 separate phases and gave a piece of advice for each phase. We cannot ignore that there is around life cycle in the movie. The boy watching the wedding ceremony of the foxes in his first dream, and was accompanying a funeral as a 103-year-old man in the last dream of the film.
A piece of information I learned more connected me to the film: We can only keep 8 minutes of dream memories before waking up or going to deeper sleep. I wonder if Kurosawa chose 8 dreams by thinking like that. Did he want to tell us about the 8 minutes he remembers from a whole lifetime before falling asleep or waking up?
Of course, this was my opinion.
The main reason for its 8 films is that it symbolizes the 8-stage path to wisdom in Buddhism.
1st DREAM and 1st ADVICE
Be brave!
In the first dream, we see a boy who does not listen to his mother’s words and sees what will happen if he is caught secretly watching the wedding of the foxes.
An amazing scene! Like a real dream, extraordinary. Not allowing the child to come home in fear and closing the doors on his face The knife and the rainbow in your hand.
This dream made me think that witnessing some memories would be as precious as life itself.
And as the child came to the rainbow, the doors of a new adventure opened.
2nd DREAM and 2nd ADVICE
Trust in Honesty!
Peach Garden. Our character is a little bit bigger. I think we can say it in adolescence here. I think the illusion of a beautiful girl running away from her and not being able to reach her confirms me. The child is still aware of the value of something in life. And he gets a chance to witness a special moment in for his honesty.
If we say that Kurosawa’s brother’s being a silent storyteller did not affect these scenes, we would be doing it unfairly. Also, note that the colorfulness of the first dreams faded and darkened as they passed on to other dreams.
3rd DREAM and 3rd ADVICE
Show Determination!
Snowstorm. In this episode, our character is in his youth. Climber. It is about an adventure in which he climbs the mountain with his camp friends. While we think he has moved away from the camp, we actually see at the end that he has not made much of way. I know very much that people of this youth age live, I think it is a good reference to the delusion that I have progressed too far.
I think that the blizzard exhausting mountaineers for a while and falling asleep for a short time is the complacency of the youth. But the determined mountaineers saw that they did not go far from the camp with the end of the storm that survived the freezing.
Determination is perhaps one of the most difficult virtues young people have to demonstrate. Young people who want to be successful must be aware that they are at the beginning of the road and must show patience and determination on the way to the top.
4th DREAM and 4th ADVICE
Accept the responsibility!
With this movie, we can clearly see Kurosawa’s outlook on wars. It was impossible for Kurosawa, who had a lifetime of war periods, not to mention the war. Against the mentality that blesses pain and death, I am sure that these words hit their faces like a slap:
“They call you a hero, but you were all killed like dogs.”
In many films, the dog symbolizes death and the tunnel rebirth. As I watched the character of the commander crossing the tunnel, frightened by the dog behind him, I can say that I was once again speechless by Kurosawa’s poetic style.
5th DREAM and 5th ADVICE
Be passionate!
Crows. In the film, we watch the man who examines the paintings in the exhibition find himself in Van Gogh’s world and wanders through the canvases.
Kurosawa was a painter from the very beginning. We watch his passion for painting and his greeting to Van Gogh with this film. The painting that appears in the scene where the man follows him after talking to Van Gogh and disappears from behind the hill is the last painting Van Gogh painted before committing suicide.
This painting, decorated with crows symbolizing death, contains a farewell letter. Art, the passion to produce, and suicide were common points between Akira and Van Gogh. Kurosawa, who lost his brother in a suicide, also attempted suicide but was not successful. After this attempt, he made a film again and Oscar awarded Akira Kurosawa with the lifetime achievement award. From the moment he fell at the bottom, he regained the reputation he deserved. The only thing that helped him in this was his passion.
6th DREAM and 6TH ADVICE
Be merciful!
A good chapter on a nuclear explosion and the way human beings destroyed the world and how the decisions are taken will affect everyone.
7th DREAM and 7th ADVICE
Be wary of authority!
Each scene is like a painting in this episode that depicts the post-apocalyptic episode. Haze and smoke are Kurosawa’s signature.
8th DREAM and 8TH ADVICE
Search for simplicity!
With this episode, Kurosawa has depicted a paradise. As we saw in the tunnel section, Kurosawa is not someone who likes to glorify pain. He even gave death an air like going to a wedding and tried to explain that the unnecessary desires and desires of people will not end and that many things that are glorified are empty and insignificant.
Akira Kurosawa awoke from his sleep. We will remember him with what he told us.
