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Plot

Following up on his critically acclaimed, blood-splattered epic Ran, master director Akira Kurosawa looks inward with this collection of eight brightly colored dreams. The first section centers on a young boy (Mitsunori Izaki), who witnesses a forest wedding procession of fox spirits in spite of his mother's (Mitsuko Baisho) warning. The second section concerns the same lad who converses with peach-tree spirits after the trees have been cruelly cut down. This is followed by a party of mountain climbers struggling to make it back to base camp in the midst of a terrible blizzard. The fourth dream deals with a man (Akira Terao) -- a Kurosawa stand-in complete with the director's trademark floppy white hat -- who encounters ghosts of Japan's militaristic past in a forlorn tunnel. In the following dream, the same man ventures into a Van Gogh painting called The Crows and meets the artist himself (Martin Scorsese). The sixth and seventh dreams venture into nightmare territory -- one deals with a nuclear meltdown that threatens Japan while the other concerns post-nuclear mutants. In the final dream, Kurosawa meets a 103-year-old man (played by Ozu regular Chishu Ryu) in a utopian rural village.
MPAA Rating:
Genre(s):
Drama,Fantasy
Run Time:
120min.
Theatrical Release Date:
08/24/1990
DVD Release Date:
03/18/2003
Distributor(s):
Warner Brothers
Director(s):
Akira Kurosawa
Starring:
Akira Terao , Martin Scorsese , Mitsunori Isaki , Chishu Ryu , Mieko Harada
Themes:
Post-Apocalypse,Unrequited Love,Ghosts,Mythical Creatures
Tone:
Dreamlike,Lyrical,Meditative,Somber
Keywords:
Apocalypse,Holocaust,Japan,destruction,director,dreams,enchanted-forest,funeral,master [expert],monster,nuclear,painting,samurai,slice-of-life,social-issues,supernatural-forces,war,wedding
Country of Origin:
USA (08-24-1990)
Language:
Japanese