Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Director: Akira Kurosawa

1990 / 119min / 35mm

Fresh off two late-career megaproductions, Kagemusha and Ran, Kurosawa made an unexpected turn to short-form with his omnibus film Dreams. The director’s stock of recurring dreams became the raw material for the eight magical realist vignettes comprising the film—the first he’d made since 1945 from a screenplay that he was sole author of. The result is a very personal, visually astonishing, and enormously poignant unveiling of the artist’s subconscious, the work of a filmmaker with nothing left to prove but a great deal to say, with various episodes reflecting Kurosawa’s concern for the environment and philosophy of art-making. (Martin Scorsese, playing the role of Vincent Van Gogh, appears with some memorable words on the latter subject.)

Part of Dream with Your Eyes Open