Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human Surprise! We're here! Dad, what is that? It's a... hungry horse! Dad, wrong hungry horse. This is a horse in a field. I meant the family pub, with daily deals like buy one burger, get one for a pound on Fridays, candy, mania and free life sport. Oh... Yeah, that does make more sense. Say yes to unbelievable value for the whole family. Hungry horse. Say yes. Search online and book your table. Visit hungryhorse.curryuk for full teas and seas. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lam. In today's episode, we're going to be airing an episode that originally came out six twenty, twenty twenty five. It is Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. This is a gorgeous film and very surreal and fittingly dreamlike. So this one is a real pleasure to discuss. Hope you enjoy it as well. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lam. And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking about Akira Kurosawa's 1990 anthology film Dreams, which is exactly what it says on the box. This is a collection of eight short vignettes that take the form of dreams and nightmares. I had never seen this film before this week when I picked it out for the show. And I love this movie. But if you watch it, you should know what you're getting into, especially if you've liked other Kurosawa movies. This is Not Seven Samurai. That's like, you know, a gripping, exciting story. This is a movie that really asks for your patience as an audience member. The pace is moody and slow. There is no central or overarching plot. There are some themes and character types that recur. But each of the eight short stories is essentially self-contained. And they partake of extremely varied tones, settings and pacing. Some of the stories are like a weird kind of improvisational fairy tale. Some are frightening, baffling encounters with monstrous entities. Some are kind of idyllic meetings between a curious protagonist and a thoughtful character. And some are apocalyptic visions of a doomed earth. You really get all different kinds of dreams in this movie. Yeah, yeah, this is a great film. I'm so glad you picked this one, Joe. This is not a Kurosawa film I'd ever seen either. Generally, I'd seen just a handful of his samurai epics, Throne of Blood being my favorite from years back. But it's one of my favorites, too. Yeah, but I had not rewatched or watched me and Kurosawa recently, so it was great to dive into this one. And yeah, I absolutely agree. This movie is true to the title, just steeped in the texture of dream in a way that is, I think, far, far more sublime than the mere trappings of the cinematic dream sequence. Kurosawa with signature excellence here generates a strong ambience of dreams. Often, or at least it seems to me, with a one to punch of first intriguing monotony and then this emotional upwelling. Oh, yeah, I think I know what you mean, that many of these stories have a kind of earlier middle section where something is kind of either slow and contemplative or frustratingly repetitive and monotonous. And then suddenly there is a breakthrough. There's some kind of catharsis where something of powerful emotional significance happens. Yeah, yeah. And I found this very, very interesting and very true to my experiences with dreams and my recollection of my own dreams. Yeah, intriguing monotony here is not a dig at the picture of Kurosawa. I think it's ultimately kind of a revelation that we see dreams presented in this manner, where like, you know, generally our dreams, the dreams that we have night to night are not worthy of cinematic adaptation. But I think people may recognize this basic form. Like I had this dream and I was like I was trying to put together some IKEA furniture and I couldn't put it together. And this just kept happening for what seemed like hours. And then my dad showed up and I had a conversation with my long deceased father. That sort of thing, you know, so like a one to punch of monotony lost in some sort of an environment or a situation that may not have anything that's really driving it forward. And then there's some sort of emotional upwelling. It's almost like the dream is this garden of the subconscious populated seemingly by weeds of various thoughts, memories and observations. And then some powerful emotional resonance emerges through and into this dream garden, taking on its trap. I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah, a lot of these stories are like that. Yeah, and that emotional upwelling, it might be love, it might be fear, it might be regret. So in any way, what I'm trying to say is yes to all of that. Dreams is not a fast-paced film. If you're more familiar with Curacao's action and drama films, this is a different beast. I also want to highlight that I watch this film with a fever. I'm I just returned from some extensive travel and something came back with me. And this is a this is a good fever film, I have to say. You find yourself sort of drifting in and out. This is the perfect film to do it. And there was a time or two where I caught myself falling asleep a little bit, which sometimes happens when you become horizontal and you watch films. But it's extra interesting with this picture because like Curacao has already put you into the monotony of the dream sequence, you know, into the dream world. And so you find yourself slipping into that dream world for real. I feel like all of them would be good to fall asleep and then wake up again to accept Mount Fuji and Red. Yeah, that one's got to be real tough to kind of suddenly realize what's going on. Yeah, that one that was we'll get to that one. That one was the rougher one for me. But anyway, this is our first Curacao film on Weird House Cinema. We've, of course, mentioned him numerous times in passing on the show because, of course, a, it's impossible to discuss Japanese cinema without acknowledging Akira Curacao. And, you know, that's certainly the case, too, with something like a Godzilla film, even, because those several of the Godzilla films we've talked about on the show were helmed by Isher Ohanda, Curacao's friend and a frequent collaborator under Toho Studios. And then on top of all of this, it's ultimately impossible to discuss cinema at all without eventually referencing Curacao as he's one of the most famed and influential filmmakers of all time. Yeah, I would say the majority of his films, at least the ones I've seen, are not really in the Weird House Cinema space in that I absolutely love them, but they're a little bit more straightforwardly realism bound. You know, they're often realistic period stories. They don't really get into the kind of weird genre as we talk about. There are some very weird things in Throne of Blood, even though it is basically a Macbeth adaptation. Yeah, Throne of Blood is the one that previously I considered that to be the Curacao film we might get to. But this, I think, is an even better fit for the show. Oh, yeah, because obviously this is Dreams and what's weirder than Dreams? I mean, Dreams are the classic Weird House Cinema. Before there was cinema, there was the Weird House Cinema of the interspace. That's true. Oh, by the way, this is Akira Curacao's Dreams or sometimes just Dreams. It's often referenced by that title. Not to be confused with 1995's Memories, an excellent animated anthology from Katsuhiro Otomo. These are two very different films, but I have caught myself on multiple occasions, confusing the two titles in my mind. So I suspect I'm not alone here. Memories is anime and it's excellent. It's also an anthology. This is live action and it's Curacao and it's also an anthology. So I thought it might be good at the top here to go ahead and do a brief rundown of the eight different Dreams in this movie with like a one or two sentence summary of each, just so that we can refer back to them more easily as we go along talking about the themes and the connections and stuff. And then we can talk about the plot in more detail later on. But OK, so the eight segments are the first one is called Sunshine Through the Rain. In this one, a young boy wanders into the forest during a sun shower when it's raining, but the sun is shining against his mother's advice and he witnesses the marriage ceremony of the Fox spirits, which is something he should not have seen. This first segment may be my favorite segment of all. I'm really excited to talk more about it. The second segment is The Peach Orchard. This takes place on a festival day in Japan called the Day of Hinomatsu or the Dolls Day Festival, sometimes the Girls Day Festival. On this day, a boy follows a spectral girl dressed in pink and white out to the terraces where a peach orchard used to grow and the spirits of the now destroyed peach trees appear in the form of dolls and they talk to him and they perform a traditional dance. The third segment is called The Blizzard. In this segment, a group of four mountain climbers are struggling to reach camp in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. And the climbers, they're overwhelmed by the snow. They begin to succumb to the cold and their leader has a blood curdling vision of a snow witch. And the fourth segment, The Tunnel. While walking home after the end of a war, presumably World War Two, a Japanese military officer has to pass through a tunnel on a mountain road. There he meets first an angry dog strapped with explosives and then a soldier and then a company of soldiers who died under his command. The fifth segment, Crows. This one is more lighthearted. A painter is looking at the works of, how are we going to say his name in this episode? I always, Vincent, the painter Vincent Van Gogh or Vincent Van Gogh. I'm just going to say Van Gogh. I know that's not the correct original pronunciation. I'm sorry. That's how I always learned it when I was growing up. The paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, he looks at these paintings, he admires them, and then he sort of appears within the artistic world of Van Gogh. And then finally meets the artist and learns things about his vision and kind of interfaces with his view of art and the world. After that, we get a segment called Mount Fuji in red. This is where the terror really ramps up. Our Kurosawa surrogate here in many of these segments, or probably in all of them, you can view the protagonist as some form of Kurosawa himself, either as a child or sort of alternate life version of himself. In this segment, our Kurosawa surrogate finds himself in a massive crowd of people fleeing a disaster. We see Mount Fuji in the distance appear glowing hot, framed by explosions. And then a man in a suit appears to explain that these explosions are caused by a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. And the people are being killed by clouds full of radioactive isotopes. And it just gets worse from there. Next, we have the weeping demon. In this segment, a man is climbing across a craggy, desolate landscape of rocks and gravel. And he encounters a monstrous man with a horn on his head. We learn that the man has been mutated by nuclear fallout and against a backdrop of giant dandelions. He explains the cannibalistic hell of the radioactive desert. And then in the final segment, we get a rapid sort of downshift back into out of all the horrors into a more contemplative mode. This is a segment called The Village of the Watermills, where our Kurosawa protagonist kind of ambles into an idyllic rural village along a river. And he meets a wise old man and observes the local customs. I mean, no surprise, but Kurosawa really nailed it here with the order. It's just it's the perfect. There's no other order for these sequences that would make sense. I think you you may have more to say about this because you were watching the documentary. But I have read that there were originally intended to be more dreams that appeared in the film, but the segments got paired back as production went along. In some cases, I think at the writing stage and some in some cases after some things were shot. But, you know, whatever the original intentions, it does feel complete and cohesive to me with this set of eight. Even though I now know there were originally going to be more. This just feels right. Somehow it got to the right place. Yeah. And from what I understand of Kurosawa's approach to filmmaking, this seems to line up with the way he approached things like you sort of fine tune it as you go. And then the eventual final form presents itself to you. And in that case, this is these are the segments and this is the order. That's interesting. And this might not actually be a contradiction, but I've always read about Kurosawa as a very, very meticulously planning in advance kind of filmmaker that like he can sort of see all the shots. In his head ahead of time. And he sort of is editing in his mind ahead of time. Have you read similar things? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was I had not really consumed much about the man or his approach to filmmaking prior to checking out a couple of the documentaries on the criteria collection disc for this film, which I'll reference here in a bit. But there's a behind the scenes, some behind the scenes footage where you could see him in action shooting the picture. And then there's a there's a great what 2011 documentary as well titled Kurosawa's Way. They get into this a bit as well. And yeah, one of the things that I found very interesting is that like he's apparently, you know, very much kind of a loner, a man of few words. There he would. He would what he would say about his process and certainly in his directorial approach was often succinct and to the point. But but he wasn't he was admittedly like not somebody that would talk about theory a lot like it kind like he sees it in his head. He knows exactly how he wants it to work. And then, you know, some amount of experimentation finding that that form. But he's not starting a lot of theory. He's not then doing a lot of film theory analysis of what worked and what didn't. And it's kind of left to all of the people that he influenced to come back and continually rewatch and and describe exactly what he was doing. Yeah, I was thinking about how sometimes people break down filmmakers into I don't know, I guess the rough division would be like technical filmmakers versus humanistic filmmakers. Those who are more concerned with with the technical expression of an artistic vision, you know, they're using their techniques and their skills to sort of put what they see in their head on the screen versus the humanistic vision that is more concerned with themes and characters and film as narrative and film as kind of, I don't know, an abstract product, something that you could explain and talk about and interpret the meaning of. And I think you could easily make the case that Kurosawa is very much both. Like you could make the argument that he is one more than the other, but in both directions. Yeah, yeah, like he has he has certainly has all those technical abilities and was exceptional at them. But they're they're kind of they kind of almost seems like they're internalized to a degree to where it's like all this is going on inside. And again, he's not discussing the theory of how it's all coming together. But it certainly comes together. You know, I had typed up a list of themes I saw emerging in multiple segments of the film that I was maybe going to talk about here. But actually, I think we should save that for later in the episode after we talk about the plot in a little more detail or the plots. All right. So we would usually say an elevator pitch here. I think we've sort of already given it. It's Kurosawa takes you on a tour of his dreams. Yeah, I would also submit oops, I had another dream. They do they do like there's a transition that often pops in to just say I had another dream. All right. If you would like to watch dreams, the Kurosawa's dreams. Fortunately, this one's widely available, various streaming options out there. You know, we can watch it digitally. I watched it on the Criterion Collection Blue Ray, which I rented from Atlanta's own Videodrome. Some excellent extras on this disc as you'd expect. And I'll be referencing some of those. It's a must purchase for anyone or a must rent for anyone who wants to go for a deeper dive into this movie. As of this recording, the film is not on Criterion Channel. But as with any streaming service, titles come and go there. I don't know if that's simply the case or it has something to do with the Warner Brothers aspect of this production. I'm not sure. But you can definitely get it on Criterion Collection Blue Ray or DPD, but it's not on Criterion Channel right now. Rural Britain. GigaClear goes further to bring you fast, reliable, whole home coverage. 100% full fiber, affirmative. Free Wi-Fi installation. Engineers ready to go. Amazon Eero Router. Next level. All from only 16 pounds a month. Cosmic Quasars. Switch to GigaClear. Faster broadband for Rural Britain. 18 month contract. Prices may vary. Verify at GigaClear.com. All right. Should we talk about the connections? Yeah, let's get into it. Starting, I guess, with Kira Kurosawa, the director and writer who lived 1910 through 1998. And I really have to preface here and say that it feels really challenging to do any sort of brief summary of such a cinematic icon. But, you know, here it goes. This brief summary here based on some information that I read at the excellent Kira Kurosawa.info page, which is really good, as well as the extras on the disc that I just referenced. So Kurosawa was the youngest child in a moderately wealthy Japanese family descended from the former samurai class. His initial creative interest was painting, which is interesting, given one of our segments in this film. But he followed GigaClear's work. But he followed his gifted older brother, Hago, in his passion for cinema. Hago worked as an onsite silent film narrator or Benchi at this time and apparently enjoyed some amount of success there. And as Akira lived with him at the time, he was able to gain entry into an array of films, plays and circus performances, which he would later cite as being very influential on his craft. Now, Hago's work dried up with the decline of silent films during the 1930s. Akira moved back with his parents and two of his sisters and Hago sadly died by suicide in 1933. In 1935, the Kira Kurosawa answered an advert in the newspaper from Photo Chemical Laboratories, PCL. This is what would go on to become Toho Studios. They were seeking new assistant directors to engage in a mentor apprenticeship program. And so Akira submitted an essay. I've read that it was kind of a cheeky submission where he's like, like, like the prompt was something like, what would you do to to fix Japanese cinema? And he's like, it can't be fixed or something. I don't know. At any rate, he won them over. He received a call back and he went on to work with numerous established and up and coming directors. A special note, his mentor, Kajiro Yamamoto. Kurosawa also took to screenwriting during this time. Saw the value of that. And they served as a second unit or assistant director on numerous films and wrote screenplays for a handful of films before co-writing and helming his first directorial effort with 1943's San Shiro Sugata, a serious judo drama. I've not seen this one, but I've seen some clips from it. And they discussed it in the extras on the disc. It was found in 1945 sequel, which he also co-wrote and directed. In the 2011 documentary, Kurosawa's Way on the Criterion Collection disc, they point out this picture's sublime portrayal of action. So it's a judo film. It's a wrestling picture, but like a serious one, not like a Santo picture or some of the latter Japanese pro wrestling of pictures and so forth. But the action is really interesting because it has pointed out in this documentary, there's less of a focus on the actual grappling or certainly the most impactful physical moments of the grappling and more on audience responses, audience, emotional responses to the impact. So we won't actually see the impact. We'll see how people respond to it. And then we'll see sort of the the results of that impact, which is very interesting. So Kurosawa's wartime work included propaganda films, which apparently also included to varying degrees, the the judo pictures, especially the sequel. His work during this time, sometimes was seen as too Western by censors. And his 1945 film, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, a period piece, managed to run afoul of both imperial Japanese censors and then subsequently American occupation censors for being, in one case, too democratic and then in the other case, too feudal. I guess this is often the case. If you're managing to to piss everyone off, you maybe you're doing something right. Now, we can't walk through every Kurosawa picture, but we might reasonably summarize his post war work along the stepping stones of no regrets for our youth in 46. The award winning one wonderful Sunday from 46 as well, I believe. And then 1948's Drunken Angel, considered by many to be his first major work and his first picture to feature Toshiro Mifuni, who Kurosawa would famously utilize in many of his masterpieces to come, including 1950s Rashomon, which earned him international acclaim, including recognition at the Academy Awards in 1952. And from there, Kurosawa went on to write and direct some of the best regarded films in cinema history, including but not limited to 54, 7 samurai, 57's Throne of Blood, 58's The Hidden Fortress, 61's Yojimbo, 63's High and Low, 1980's Keijimusha, The Shadow Warrior and 1985's Ron. These decades entail various ups and downs, industry changes, some unsuccessful Hollywood projects, most notably Runaway Train, which would ultimately be directed by another director in 1985, various setbacks, an excursion of the Soviet Union to shoot 1975's Dursu Yuuzala and a comeback partially produced by influential American directors who he had heavily influenced himself. And this was increasingly important as Japanese studios were in this time less likely to back him. And so he was increasingly turning to outside and foreign financiers. And certainly that's the case with dreams. Was it the case with his later films that they were regarded both in Japan and internationally as masterpieces, but they also didn't make a lot of money? Yeah, yeah, I've read, I was looking at like some contemporary Ebert reviews talking about like what happens when you have like a master who keeps doing their own thing, but doesn't necessarily, is not necessarily chasing what the audience wants. Then maybe some of that. I was looking at some information about how this film Dreams was received and I've seen it described as kind of like a largely muted response, both domestically and internationally. But at the same time, there was like a lot of excitement for it, especially among directors who admired his work so much. And another interesting wrinkle is that apparently, I mean, this comes as a surprise, I think for many, because I know when I started watching Carousel films, they were airing, I think, on Turner classic movies and or American movie classics even. Seems weird that they would be on American movie classics. The American movie classics showed a lot of different films. But at any rate, I had ready access to them on television, on cable. And nowadays, you know, you have all these excellent criterion collection additions. But apparently for a while, they weren't all necessarily available on home video with the exception of dreams because of the Warner Brothers connection. Oh, I see. So even if the initial response was kind of muted, more and more people have the opportunity to see Dreams. And of course, it gradually earned it more of a following and I think is also seen as this interesting outlier in Carousel's filmography. You know, there's nothing else quite like it among his other titles. My general impression is that a lot of critics don't put it at like his in his top tier list, you know, it's not in a lot of people's top five Carousel movies or whatever, but that it is nowadays widely respected. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those filmographies though, right? Where it's like, if you're talking about the seventh best Carousel film, you're still talking about a great motion picture. Yeah. So Carousel was honored at the 62nd Academy Awards in 1990. And he went on to complete two more films, 1991's Rhapsody in August and 1993's Madadayo. He was working on The Sea is Watching in 1995 when he apparently suffered a fall, leaving him unable to direct. And his health rapidly declined in the following years and he passed away in 1998. The Sea is Watching would ultimately be made in 2002 by a different director among a couple of other posthumous screenplay credits. Now, to come back to something I was talking about here earlier, one of the things driven home by numerous Japanese and international directors in Carousel was Wei, the documentary, is that he is really the epitome of a director's director. I imagine you could take that a step further now and say that he's a director's director's director or something to that effect. Meaning he is appreciated, especially by other practitioners of the art form, not just by audiences, but especially like people who make films really admire the way he makes films. Yeah, it seems really difficult to overstress his influence on modern cinema and directors around the world, directors who would often and continue to analyze every minute detail of how his direction of actors, lighting, framing, use of space and everything else came together on the screen. And it can almost be invisible, I think, to many of us because if you're watching a Carousel film, I mean, it's magic is going to work on you. You are going to, you're not going to necessarily, unless you're making an effort to, it's going to, it's spell is going to work. You're not going to be maybe thinking about how he's shooting everything. Because, and part of it too, I think, is because he was so influential. Many of the things he did simply became more or less standards of filmmaking. Yeah. I mean, it's true that a lot of times good technical directing does not really call attention to itself. It manifests in utter absorption in the narrative and content. Yeah. And so you're watching Seven Samurai, you might not be thinking a lot about the, you know, how every shot is being framed and how he captures movement and light and stuff. But you know that your attention is held very closely. And that's sort of like how it comes through to the average viewer. Absolutely. All right, let's move on to some other folks involved in this picture with less detail. We've covered the big one here, of course. Isher O'Honda, who lived 1911 through 1993, famed director of Godzilla, who we've discussed in the show, I think three different times. Most recently, in our discussion of 1964's Mothra versus Godzilla, he was a creative consultant on this picture. I think I read that, especially his experience in the military was used to choreograph the sequence called the tunnel, where we see military, we see army members marching in formation. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, I have to say that the Mount Fuji segment also feels very Hondo. Like you can imagine him at least standing in the background nodding and being like, yeah, if you nailed it, Kurosawa on that one. All right, getting into the actors here. Starting with the dreamer, generally credited as I, because we keep having that dead where we read the words, I had another dream. And then here is our dreamer, our dream walker, I. Our dreamer is played by Akira Terahou, born 1947, born into a successful acting family. He's also a musician, having been in the 1960s band The Savage. Joe, I included an album cover from The Savage. They don't look very savage. They look just like some very clean cut guys here. Yeah. They look like they're ready to head down to the sock hop. Yeah. But he subsequently launched a successful solo career. And I think in this, he took on a more edgy persona and often had kind of like a nihilistic kind of like dressed in black, wearing sunglasses thing going on. Holding a 12 string guitar, looking like nothing matters. So yeah, successful musician, award-winning musician. And then as an actor, he debuted in 1968, the Sands of Karobi and later appeared in Kurosawa's Run. He's also in 1996's Rebirth of Mothra and 2004's Kassern. This is one Kassern is not, I haven't seen either of these two films actually, but Kassern is one that I've seen in video stores for years because it has some sort of like a space ninja on it. I don't know much about it. If you out there are fans, write in and tell me all about it. You know, I was going to say in talking about the themes of the film that one of them is the self as both fluid and constant. The protagonist in each of these dreams, I think you could say is the same person and yet is also quite different in both in terms of apparent life history. Some aspects of personality seem to change. Sometimes the protagonist is assertive. Sometimes the protagonist is quite passive. That just varies a lot between the segments. And there's no narrative continuity between them. But there is a kind of thematic continuity. Like there, the segments are strung together by associations and preoccupations rather than causality. And so this was making me think I was trying to watch in the performance like, do the events of one dream at all affect the protagonist in a different dream? And I think you could see it going both ways. Like the events of the movie never seem to be literally additive. And yet they may be kind of like the other dreams are kind of stirring in the memory of the protagonist in the other segments. You know, I don't know exactly how you would read that into Tara O's performance here, but that does feel right. It feels like it's part of his story that there is, I don't know, somehow like not complete conscious knowledge of what was dreamt in the other dreams, but a kind of vague sense of I've had a feeling like this before. Yeah. And I mean, that's the way it often feels with dreams. You know, you might bring the content of one dream into the next. And also, at least in my own experience, like sometimes you're you in the dream, sometimes you're less you. And you're, and then so I feel like this character is, you know, sometimes, you know, I think in general we can think of him as a Curacaoist stand in. Sometimes he's more of a voyeuristic figure or even an avatar by which we experience the dream, though his role is more personal and intense in certain segments, namely the tunnel, which we'll get to. Yeah, definitely. I certainly had the tunnel in mind for his more like assertive and active roles. But almost always, and I guess this is often true of dreams, he's more reacting than acting on the world and often reacting with a kind of futility. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, there's all these, or most of these dreams, if not all of them, they begin with a sense of being trapped in something like, or maybe not trapped. Trapped is too strong a word, too nightmarish, like, you know, in the texture of dreams, like sometimes you're just there and you're a part of it. I don't know, it's hard to really state it. But anyway, yeah, I liked his performance. It kind of the exact details of it change from sequence to sequence. And then to be to be clear, in sub sequences, I, the dreamer, is played by a child, a couple of different actors, I believe. Mitsunori, Isaki, born in 77, and then another actor by the name of Toshiko Nakano, playing younger versions of the dreamer. I think you could argue that the segments of the film are roughly chronological in terms of the protagonist. I don't know if exactly, but like the first one, the protagonist is the youngest, the second one is the second youngest and then becomes an adult. And that does seem to progress through a kind of maturity arc in life from there. Yeah, I believe so. All right. Rolling through some of the other performances here of note, we have Matsuko Basho as the dreamer's mother in the first sequence, born 1946. Japanese Academy Award winning actress whose credits include 1979's Vengeance is Mine, 1980's Keijimusha, and a voice role in 2006's Tales from Earthsea. That's a Goro Miyazaki film. Adapted from the Ursula of the Wind. Yes. Yeah. Then of course, eventually we're going to get our Yuki Ono, the Snow Fairy or the Snow Woman, the Snow Witch, more on the details of this character in a bit. But this is of course a yokai that pops up throughout Japanese media. Played here by Miko Harada, born 1958. She was also coming off a major role in Kurosawa's Ron and her other credits include 79's The Inferno, 1988's Tokyo, The Last Megalopolis. That's one I haven't seen, but that one's kind of famous for a couple of different reasons, including the fact that HR Giger designed something for it. 2012's Helter Skelter. And, oh, I don't know anything about this one, but sometimes the title just catches you. 2016's If Cats Disappeared from the World. I'm enthralled. I need to know more about that one. Yeah. But anyway, she's won multiple acting awards in her native Japan. All right. In the tunnel sequence, we have a ghostly figure from the past that shows up. Private Noguchi, played by Yoshitaka Sushi, born 1955. Another Ron cast member who was also in a number of other pictures, including two other Kurosawa pictures. 65's Red Beard and 1970's Dotsukata. Now, late in the picture, we're going to have an old man character who is fabulous, played by Chishu Ryo, who lived 1904 through 1993. Award-winning and long-lasting Japanese actor, his work spans six decades. And his other credits include Red Beard, 1953's Tokyo Story, and 1985's Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters. He also appeared in Vim Vendors until the end of the world in 1991. In many ways, this old man is kind of the soul of the movie, especially appearing as he does in the last segment. Yeah, he's terrific. I really love this performance. This guy's great. And he has some opinions. He's evolved the segment. He's just like, say an opinions into the camera. Yes. But he's great. It's got that quality of like, he's old, let him talk. Yeah. And I think he may have, I think this guy speaks more than anyone else in the picture. I don't know. We get a lot as well from the crying demon. And this character was played by Chosuke Ikaria, who lived 1931 through 2004. His other credits include 1991's My Sons and 1998's Bayside Shakedown. You know, one thing I didn't know about the cast when I picked this movie is that it was going to have Martin Scorsese acting in it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, playing Vincent Van Gogh. You have legendary American director and noted Kurosawa Admyre. Yeah. He's definitely in that documentary, Kurosawa's Way, talking about his experience on the film and his admiration for Kurosawa's work. And it's interesting because, yeah, so Scorsese himself, an admirer of Kurosawa and a studier of Kurosawa's work here, playing a master painter admired by the dreamer. And so it's kind of a neat inversion there. Literally following the master into his work here. Yes. Yeah. Is it true that he interrupted making good fellas to like fly in to shoot this? Oh, I didn't read that, but that sounds, or hear that in the doc, but that sounds likely, yes. I mean, that's the kind of respect that all of these directors had for him. I also found Scorsese's screen presence interesting because he does not come in the way sometimes like a well-known director cameo in acting can feel where it's like, oh, I don't know, it's like, I'm the big important person now here. I'm not ego crashing into the scene and taking it over. He feels very in service of the scene. He feel it's one of those performances where it feels like he is just trying to do what Kurosawa wants of him and is telling him to do. Yeah. Martin Scorsese occasionally does these little acting that sometimes playing a fictional version of himself, sometimes playing a fictional, a different character. But he's generally pretty good. Sometimes it's certainly a little broader in his performance. But yeah, that's a good point. He does seem to be essentially trying to play Vincent Van Gogh here. And I was also thinking this is also perfect like dream logic, you know, like I had a dream last night and I was having a conversation with Vincent Van Gogh, but he was also somehow Martin Scorsese at the same time. Yes. That's kind of the vibe here. Another fun little cameo, I guess you'd say, in that particular segment. The woman in the fields that the dreamer initially interacts with before being sent in the direction of Vincent Van Gogh is played by Catherine Kadao, who was Kurosawa's longtime personal translator and director of that 2011 documentary, Kurosawa's way. Oh, interesting. So she's the one washing in the river who tells him to stay away from Van Gogh because he's a madman. Yes. Yeah, just came out of the asylum. Yeah. Oh, and then getting to the music. The music here is, of course, terrific. And the composer accredited is Shinichiro Akibe born 1943 Japanese composer whose film work includes Kurosawa's Keiichi Musha, Rhapsody in August and Medeo. His other scores include TV's Future Boy Conan from 1978. That was an early directorial effort from Hayao Miyazaki and 2007's Glory to the Filmmaker. He won the Japanese Academy Award for composing multiple times. I think in addition to some original compositions, this movie does also feature some classical compositions. Like I think there's some shippan in it and stuff. But yes, the music is wonderful, especially. Oh, it's wonderful throughout. I'm especially thinking of the mysterious music in the very first segment. Also, I love the funeral procession music at the end. I'm not sure. Oh, yes. Yeah. I'm not sure different points in the film, whether we're looking at the composed score or needle drop score. But at any rate, it's all really good. Yeah. Oh, finally, I also want to note that if you start looking at the special effects credits on this film, you'll notice a lot of Western names via those connections that Kurosawa had with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. It's industrial light and magic handling special effects on this otherwise Japanese production. Apparently, they did this at cost. Though I have to say, watching the picture, I mean, it's not like you really noticed. It's not like ILM came in and made all the Fox people look like Wookiees or anything. I don't know. It's like the effects are, I guess, really good and often invisible. They're very organic. Yeah. Yeah. The effects feel almost humble in a way. Does that make sense? Is it not flashy? Just kind of manifesting? Yeah. There is some behind the scenes footage on the Criterion Collection just showing Kurosawa directing the scenes where we have the makeup effects for the Fox people as well as the Hornet demons. And, you know, he seems to be like, you know, sort of tweaking things a little bit. And in the case of the demons saying like, let's tone it down a little bit. Like, essentially, they look too much like monsters. So we want the viewers to understand that these are humans. So I get the impression that Kurosawa maybe even has had them scale back a little bit on things. Because, you know, often, I think it's the case in this picture that otherworldly beings, they do have a kind of like stage presence. Like they certainly come off like human beings in makeup. And there's not there's there doesn't seem to be an overt attempt to portray them as overtly otherworldly beings. Like there's humanity to them, I guess is essential here. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Should we jump into the plot? Let's do it. OK, so as I mentioned, there are these eight segments, we're going to talk about some of them, I think, in more detail than others. I wanted to start off talking about the first one. I love all the segments in this movie, but the very first one is probably my favorite. So I want to kind of look at it in some detail. And this is the one called Sunshine Through the Rain. So it begins with a young boy coming out the front door of his house, looking like he wants to go play outside. But just as he is heading out, it starts to rain. And I don't know, somehow that beginning in itself, even before we really are thinking of this as a dream that's so evocative of childhood, you know, the feeling of wanting to go outside and play and it starts raining. Or at least it was for me. I don't know, that feels like such a familiar and cutting kind of frustration. So the boy, he's come out the door of his house, but he stands under an archway in the gate that goes around the outside of the home. And he's watching the rain come down. And it is a sun shower. So the sun is shining, even though there is precipitation. And then from the background, we see the boy's mother emerge from the house and she hurries out into the courtyard to gather some baskets of something. I think maybe she was drying some kind of food items in the sun or something. And she's pulling the baskets inside and she calls out to the boy and she says, you're staying home. The sun is shining, but it's raining. Foxes hold their wedding processions in this weather and they don't like anyone to see them. If you do, they'll be very angry. And she runs back inside. So actually, maybe here should we do a little sidebar on the folklore of the Katsuni no Yomiri. This is the Foxes' wedding. Yeah, Katsuni, we've discussed in the show before. We're talking about Fox spirits in Japanese traditions. So yokai with supernatural abilities, often depicted as tricksters. So in this case, not so much tricksters and more more in line with sort of global traditions of like fairy folk of the unseen world who are out there going through their rights and observations. And sometimes humans can see into their world, but perhaps at their peril. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. So he's received this warning, but the young boy, he is maybe not deterred. He looks out at the downpour. He stands there and stares for a bit and then he wanders off into the forest. Yeah, I mean, mom's warning here was kind of asking for it. Like, don't go outside now because there are Fox spirits out there. You might see something amazing. And I love the scene in the forest here. So the forest is eerie and just pulsing with magic. So the trees are enormous. We don't see really the tops of the trees. We just see these these column like trunks. And the ground is covered in sprouting plants with long green leaves that come up to the boys waste. And we can see sheets of rain and mist are billowing sideways through the gaps between the trees. And then you can also see individual shafts of sunlight crossing down through holes in the canopy. And all this together makes the air appear to have a kind of silky shimmering texture. It's so beautiful and it looks like a place absolutely where magic happens. And as we watch the scene, there is just this mounting sense of the strange and unreal. For example, one thing is you see a close up of the boy who is he's walking silently through the woods. He's looking around, not saying anything. And I noticed he's dry. It's raining, but he's not wet. There's no music, no talking, just this kind of soft, skittering sound of rain on the leaves. And the boy just keeps looking around, wide eyed, like he is expecting to see something. And then he does see something. There is a bank of white mist and through it, he sees the outline of a shrine carved in stone. And then slowly music begins. We hear drums and a woodblock and a flute playing a slow, mysterious melody. The rhythm on the drums and the woodblocks is also kind of slow and stuttering. And over the background of this music, the boy watches a procession of figures slowly marching out of the fog. They are human dancers in Fox makeup. Rob, as you were saying, they are they're distinctly human in form. So they didn't try to make them quadrupedal or anything. They're they're standing upright, basically human. But their faces are painted a rosy white color with red fur over their noses and cheeks. And they have whiskers. The women are wearing veils over their heads and the men wear a sort of disc shaped hat. The first two men in the procession are carrying these cylindrical objects. I'm not sure what these are, but they might be some form of paper lantern. I know that Fox wedding processions in folklore are sometimes said to be carrying paper lanterns like you can see them as dancing lights. Yeah, I think that's what this is supposed to be. And their style of dancing is so interesting and evocative. They're these slow, almost glacial movements as they march along. And then sudden moves where they bend and twist and assume a pose all looking in the same direction. I think this is supposed to evoke when a wild animal senses your presence or get spooked. And then suddenly like flinches and freezes looking at you. Did you take the same thing from it, Rob? That's a good point. You know, I don't think I put that together when I was watching it, but but I think it's a great read. I will note that this is definitely one of the many sequences in the picture that feels like it could possibly go on forever in a good way. And that dream sense where it's like this is this is happening and and you're just in it. You know, who knows if the dream is going to is going to continue on to some point of emotional upwelling, though, of course, it will in this case. Lost time, very little consciousness of past or future. You're just you're just stuck in this moment. And the boy is watching this procession from behind a tree. He's very cautious. He's trying to hide and the dancers keep stopping and suddenly looking in his direction. But at first, he stays hidden until the last time they stop. And suddenly he's caught. They all turn and look at him and the boy panics and runs away back home. This is not played for horror or anything, but. And again, the makeup is is subtle and is definitely holding back. But it is a frightening sequence in its own way. Like the child has seen into a world he should not bear witness to. And they have looked back and seen him as well. But when he gets home, the danger is not over. Actually, the you might think, OK, he's escaped. He's back home now. When he gets back to the house, he finds his mother waiting for him at the front gate. And she's looking very stern and he approaches her kind of bashfully. Like he knows he's done something wrong. But she does not comfort him. Her face is very stiff and her expression is cold. And she says, you saw it, didn't you? You saw something you shouldn't have. I can't have such a child in my house. An angry fox came looking for you. He left this and then from a pouch in her sleeve, the mother produces a tanto knife. The boy takes it and he pulls the knife from the sheath. And the mother says, you're to a tone by cutting your belly open. And I was like, whoa, that hits hard because this is a little child. This is not like a, you know, not even like an like the little kid. And it hits hard. But this to me felt so real as a child's dream turning into a nightmare. It is so much more unacceptably threatening and dangerous than adults like to imagine children's dreams are. But this is, I mean, this is what I remember children's dreams being like, that there's a way that the child's mind is sort of uncensored. It is like it goes to much more bold and horrible and frightening places than adults want a child's mind to go to. And this felt like a real dream in multiple ways with like the, you know, the threat that you have to cut your own belly open, but also in the in the way that the mother is not comforting. Like he's done something bad and the mother has become alien and threatening to him. Yeah, yeah. But then here in the dream, the mother offers an alternative. She says, she says, go quickly and ask their forgiveness. Give that back to them. Talking about the knife. Give that back to them and beg for your life on your knees. And then the mother literally turns her back on the boy. She turns her back on him and goes inside and starts to close the gate in her son's face. And as she's closing the doors of the gate, she says, they rarely forgive even trivial things. You must go prepared to die for your sin. And then as the gate is almost nearly shut all the way, she says that until they forgive him, she can't let him back in. And then finally, the boy speaks. He pleads that he doesn't know where their home is. But the mother says, of course you do. Their home is beneath the rainbow. And so now we are in the gate shuts. And so now, afraid and alone, the boy sets out again into the woods with the deadly knife in his hands. And eventually he comes to a clearing and it's a meadow full of flowers. It's just huge mass of flowers, millions of flowers all in bloom in spring colors, yellow, white, pink and violet. And this mysterious music swells. And then we can see the boy from behind. This is probably the most iconic shot from the film. The boy is now entering a narrow valley framed by dark mountains. And in the middle ground, there is the meadow of the spring flowers and a rainbow bends over the field. And this has got to be the most beautiful and certainly the most frightening use of a rainbow in a film that I can think of. Because it's a rainbow that's obviously not just a disconnected vision that is pretty to look at as rainbows are often in movies. This is a place and it is the spectral castle of the vengeful fox spirits. And the boy stands there facing the rainbow. He's clutching the knife. He is amazed and afraid. And he begins again to walk to its center and the music is swelling up with these ominous notes on the woodwinds and then fade to black. Yeah. And that's the end. So we never see him face the fox spirits in the true essence of a dream. These vignettes often begin in the middle of the action or begin with a kind of unexplained arrival. And they often stop right in the middle of the story as well. Usually right as the tension is kind of rising to its peak. Yeah. I mean, that's the way it often is in dreams. How many times have any of you ever had a dream that finished? Had a third act, you know? Sometimes I guess that's the case. But generally it's like things kind of peter out or shift. And yeah, I agree. Very strong opening segment here. I agree on the danger and seriousness of children's dreams displayed here. And it seems a fitting way to look at the way that children are eventually thrust maybe without warning into out of their lives of protected curiosity and into a more serious world of reality. Though, of course, in this case, it's not quite reality. It's a supernatural threat. But still, it's like his world of just sort of play and curiosity has suddenly taken this sharp turn into threatening confines. Yeah, I agree with all that. And I just love so many things about this opening. The way it captures this authentic feeling of a child's imagination and dream world. The way that there is a thin line between beauty and amazement and absolute horror and that the way the story can just shift back and forth between the two or kind of capture them both at the same time, especially with the image of the rainbow. Yeah, absolutely. And again, yes, such an ominous use of the rainbow here, this rainbow gate into a certain degree of more adult world. OK, do you want to look at the peach orchard, the next one in order? Yeah. So this one also begins with a young boy in a house a little bit older than the boy in the previous dream. And it starts with him taking a tray of cakes to his big sister and her friends. And this episode takes place on Hinamatsuri or dolls day, also known as Girls Day. I didn't know anything about this beforehand, so I had to look it up. But this is a festival celebrated at the transition from winter to spring. I think these days it's often on March 3rd, where families pray for the well being of their daughters. It's sort of a health and well being of our daughters day. And the festival includes the display of dolls known as Hina Ninho or Hina dolls, which are styled after the Imperial Court of the Heyan period. So the protagonist, the boy, he brings a tray of goodies to his older sister, who is with her friends. And they're in a room with a tiered display of Hina dolls in the background. And the boy stops to look at the dolls and there's kind of a strangeness music sting that indicates something is a little striking or unusual. And then he realizes that he brought more food to his sister and her friends than is needed. He thought that she had five friends with her, but there are only four friends there now. And he insists that he saw another girl with them earlier, but the sister tells him no. There were no other girls here. He is being strange. But then he sees the girl again. He the other girl is dressed in pink and white and she's watching him from the hallway, but she disappears when he tries to get his sister to look and see the other girl. This is already a little creepy. Yeah. Yes. So he follows the girl in pink out through the back door, out into the bamboo forest, all the way to a green hillside with tiered terraces, much like the tiered display with the Hina dolls in the house. And the hill is covered in soft grass. And when he arrives at the hillside, he's sort of ambushed by a mass of people. They all come running out on the terraces and they are dressed up like the Hina dolls, but in life size. And I think there's sort of an emperor doll man, the leader of them all. He addresses the boy sternly and he says that they will never return to his house again because his family cut down the peach orchard that used to be on this hill. And he explains that they are the spirits of the peach trees, which are celebrated on the dolls day festival. And there seems to be kind of an implication that because of the family's treachery, they will also withhold their blessings from the family. And the boy begins to cry and the emperor yells at him. He tells him it's too late for tears. But then the queen doll remembers something. She says, this is the same boy who cried for the trees when they were being cut down. They say they remember he even pleaded with his family not to do it, not to cut down the orchard. And the emperor at first he scoffs at this. He says that was only because the boy knew he would stop getting peaches to eat and all of the members of the court laugh at him. But the boy protests. He says, no, he says you can buy peaches at the store, but where can you buy a whole orchard of trees in bloom? He says he was crying because he loved the trees at themselves as living things. And then he starts to cry again. And then the doll people seem sort of ashamed. You can see them sort of looking at their feet and and hanging their heads. And the emperor accepts the boy's explanation. He says he's a good boy and that he will be allowed to see the orchard in bloom one last time. And then there's a dance with all of the figures taking place on the terraces and they perform these choreographed movements to symbolize the flowering of the trees. And then at the end of the dance, the boy sees the peach trees blossoming again and there are petals falling everywhere. He also sees the girl in pink and he tries to run after her, but suddenly he's back in the real world and all the trees are chopped down now. They're just bare stumps. All except one. There's one tree that has a limb covered in flowers kind of bouncing in the wind and he goes over to it and he looks at it and the end. What was going to happen next? We don't get to see. This is also a strong segment. I mean, like they're all strong. It's not like there's a weak one in the bunch. This one, maybe hit me, I think is weirder just because I wasn't familiar with the traditions and also I think my fever might have been spiking a little bit during the sequence as well. But yeah, I also really loved this one. Similar in some ways in theme to the first segment. I thought this one was interesting because the peach spirits themselves seem to abide by a kind of child's internal logic. The way that they think that he's actually a good boy because he cried because of the trees themselves and not because of just wanting to eat peaches. I don't know. That just feels like such a like a kid's way of thinking about this thing. All right. The next segment is the blizzard. I think we can be a little bit more cursory in talking about this one. Basically, it is four mountain climbers who are going up this mountain. They get hit by this blizzard. They're struggling in the snow. We see for a long time just them fighting against the wind and the snow trying to make their way uphill. But it is and they're trying to make the way to camp, but they can't see which way they're going. There's disagreement about whether they're on the right track. And eventually they begin to sort of get snowed in. They succumb to the snow and they're being covered up and they're freezing and they sort of settle down. And there's the implication that if they do this and they don't reach camp, they're going to die. And then we see things from the perspective of the lead climber, it's sort of the leader of all of them who's been trying to rally his friends to keep going. We see a figure begins to sort of put blankets over him, these shimmering blankets and shawls that go over his body like layers of snow. And this is from what I've read, this is supposed to be a traditional figure from Japanese folklore known as the yuki-ona, which might be like the snow princess or snow fairy, snow witch, something like that, the snow spirit, who I think is often threatening in nature. And here she's ambiguous at first, but then I think by the end we can learn is definitely a threatening figure. Yeah. My understanding is that it does kind of vary. So yuki-ona is a pretty famous yokai, generally regarded as a yokai because she's often more of a personification of the snow or of blizzards, though some tellings depict her as more of a yuri or a ghost, that of a woman who died in the snow. As Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt discuss in the book Yokai Attack, there is many different versions of this tale as there are mountains in Japan. The tale of the yuki-ona was famously adapted in the 1965 film Kaiden, which we might come back to. The core stories involve her sparing a handsome young man during a blizzard, like after brutally killing his compatriots with winter powers, but then sparing him on the condition that he never tell anyone about this. And so the young man survives and then as luck would have it, he meets a beautiful young woman the next day. The two fall in love, they're married, they eventually have children, and yet the whole time this need to tell the story of the woman in the snow steadily builds up inside him until one day he breaks and he tells his wife about what happened in the snow that day. And I don't want to spoil anything because it's pretty amazing, but essentially we see the ramification of him breaking his promise to the yuki-ona. Oh, well, the yuki-ona in this segment is quite scary and eventually though the climber does sort of overcome her influence. She's sort of lulling him to sleep in the snow and there's one moment when she is sort of defeated or blown away. She like turns into some kind of white cloth. It's like a white piece of clothing or flag or something and just like blows away in the wind and whoof. But then the man wakes up after the blizzard is gone and he sort of tries to, he revives his compatriots. I think they're all still alive and he sort of shakes them, tries to get them to wake up and then they realize their camp is like right there, they're right beside it and they didn't know because of the storm. A lot of reviewers flag this, at least from what I've seen online, as their least favorite segment. I think primarily because of how slow and monotonous parts of it are, like it is very dreamlike in that respect, especially in the first half of them just fighting through the snow and the wind is blowing. But I don't know, I like this segment and I really like the part where the snow witch speaks. When the snow witch comes up over him while he's lying down, she's putting the shawls over him and there's some kind of modulation on her voice. Like it's doubled or something. So it sounds very strange and you hear her saying the snow is warm. It's so frightening. Yeah. And my understanding is that this is sort of like the general vibes of the Yuccaona. It's kind of a take on hypothermia and the idea of like giving in to death in the cold snow. Zoya, it's pretty creepy stuff. The snow is warm. Okay, next segment is the tunnel. As we explained, this one begins with a military officer walking by himself on an empty road that cuts through the mountains. We somehow understand, I think, that he is coming home from war, I would guess by his uniform, that it's World War II. And he seems weary and beaten down, but he's still kind of clutching a sense of formal dignity. He has a kind of head held high aspect that some of the other characters and protagonists here wouldn't necessarily have. And as he comes up the road, he faces the entrance to a tunnel. It's hard to say exactly why, but there is something really just cursed and ominous about this tunnel. I don't think it's a set made for the film. It looks like it's probably just a real concrete tunnel somewhere. Yeah, but what a location. It's amazing. Just again, so ominous. And it reads on so many levels. Like, what is this? Is it a gateway to the underworld? It is nothing else, literally a gateway through the mountain. So many ways to take it apart. Don't go in there. But then from inside, he hears howling and whimpering the sounds of a dog. And then a dog runs out of the tunnel. And this is from what I've read supposed to be an anti tank dog. So it is a dog strapped with timed explosives, which was explored. And there were many of these trained as a weapon by multiple armies in World War II. I'm not sure how much they were actually used in combat, but they were at least trained. So in this case, it is a dog with a kind of saddle on its back covered in pockets. And the pockets are stuffed with grenades. It is a bleak and horrifying image. Yeah. And certainly fits with some of the themes explored in the picture about humanity's relationship to nature. Here, a great example of nature being twisted beyond mere domestication into actual weaponization. Pretty horrific. So the dog approaches the officer and snarls at him, but does not attack. And then the officer walks on into the tunnel, which is cavernous and echoing. We see these tracking these moving shots going through the tunnel, just looking up at the ceiling of the tunnel as kind of light plays on it as he's walking along. And we can see the officer's breath. We hear his boots kind of clapping and reverberating as he makes his way down to the other end. And then we see at the the emerging side of the tunnel, the sky is dark blue and illuminated by a red lamp, which I thought was interesting. Kind of reminds me of that Charles Dickens ghost story we talked about last October, the signalman with the ghost or the premonition appearing by the red light at the end of the rail tunnel. And so after the commander comes out the other end of the passage, he stops because he hears steps behind him. Who's that? He turns around to see and it is a ghost. It is a soldier in combat uniform with rifle and helmet and his skin painted blue, the blue fleshed being who should not be. And the commander recognizes him. This is someone known to the protagonist. This is Private Noguchi. But Private Noguchi was killed in action. And Noguchi is confused. He believes maybe he is still alive. He remembers going home after the war and being given rice cakes by his mother. I remember being comforted by his mother, but the commander has to explain to him, no, that was a dream you had. This is a dream about, you know, the dreams of others. That was a dream you had. You were shot in battle and you passed out. And you woke up and you told me you had that dream where you went home and saw your mother and she gave you rice cakes. Then you died in my arms a few minutes later. And Noguchi is so confused. He's, he points out a light in the mountains beyond and he says, that's my parents' home, that house right there where the light is. But the commander argues with him. He tells him he has to accept that he is dead. And he has to go to his rest. And he eventually, the ghost seems to give in. He turns about face and he walks back into the tunnel. But it's not over because then here comes everyone, the entire company who served under this commander. And they come marching out of the tunnel in formation. They're, you know, they're like calling out drill instructions. They come marching and they stand in order in front of him. And here there's a confrontation where ultimately the commander has to accept his responsibility for their death in battle, where he, he says he would like to blame the stupidity of war for the deaths of his men. But he knows in his heart that he bears personal responsibility for sending them into certain doom because it was, it was a futile attempt, but he, he sent them into battle anyway. And I feel like this moment highlights a theme that I think appears in multiple segments of this movie, which is the theme of individual responsibility versus a kind of collective blame or stupidity. Specifically like, there's a theme of the inadequacy of placing blame for tragedies on abstract, impersonal forces or diffuse collectives. So there's the case here, but then the same thing happens in the next segment in Mount Fuji and Red where, or actually two segments later, where there's like a bureaucratic man in a suit and glasses who kind of contrasts a force of impersonal stupidity and arrogance that allowed the nuclear meltdown in that segment to occur. But then he acknowledges that he is personally to blame somehow, though he doesn't explain how. And this seems to be something that's on the dreamer's mind. It's one of these themes that comes up in multiple cases. Yeah, yeah. I want to also flag here that the makeup for the soldiers, the ghosts here is really, really well done. It is, it is again, you get a sense of Kurosawa pulling back from anything too monstrous. Like these are not, like this is not zombie makeup or what you might think of as zombie makeup. It really, but it's also not like straight up Kabuki makeup either. It's kind of like somewhere in this perfect place between Kabuki makeup and like just a corpse like Pallor. Yeah, the blueness of their makeup is so interesting as a color choice. It doesn't exactly suggest rot. It suggests a kind of changeness and like a become a different kind of being. Yeah. But anyway, so the commander accepts his responsibility and he orders his men to turn about face and to march back into the tunnel to essentially accept their destruction and go into death, go into their rest. And then you might think the encounter is over, but there is another escalation because we get the return of the dog. So the anti tank dog runs back out again and begins, it starts snarling and menacing the officer. And once again, it just ends at this moment of heightened menace where we don't know how it resolves. Great segment though. Really, everyone in it is stellar. Just the, I mean, everything about it, the way it's framed, the costuming, the location they use, just everything lines up on this one for sure. The next segment is Crows. This is the one that has the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. So it begins with the Kurosawa protagonist in a museum looking at Van Gogh's paintings. He's looking at Starry Nite and one of his self portraits. Oh yeah. Vinny experiences a little Stindal syndrome and just walks right into that painting. He goes into the paintings. I think the first one he enters is, so Van Gogh did a number of paintings of the bridge at Arla, AR, LES, if I'm saying that right, Arles or Arla. And I think the specific one that he appears in is the Langloe bridge at Arla with women washing. So that's a painting you can look up if you want. It shows like a bridge with the sort of, you know, drawbridge characteristic that can be raised so boats can pass underneath, but there's a carriage, a horse-drawn carriage on the wooden part of the bridge. And then down in the foreground, there are women washing clothes in the river. And our protagonist just sort of wanders into this scene and it's reproduced in a spectacular way. I love the way that the color qualities of the Van Gogh paintings are recreated in the sets and the lighting that Kurosawa puts together here. Yes, agreed. And I also like this is a nice pivot from the more serious or at least the more dramatic vibes of the last segment. Yeah, so the protagonist here wants to meet Van Gogh and he wanders around looking for him. He asks the locals where he is. They say he's a madman, but he finds Van Gogh in a wheat field painting or observing the wheat field and talking about painting. This a major visual theme here is Van Gogh's painting, Wheat Field with Crows, which shows like, you know, these the tall staves of wheat and then the crows flying up out of them into a blue sky. The version we see of Van Gogh portrayed by Martin Scorsese in this vignette seems to resemble the figure, at least as I found in a Van Gogh painting called Painter on the Road to Terrison or Terriscan. Again, not sure how to say that, but he's got a, you know, a wide straw hat and just a lot of stuff with him, you know, he's got all his gear and his painting and a satchel and all that. The Van Gogh we meet is very distracted, you know, he's never really giving the protagonist his full attention. His attention is on the scene and the landscape. And there's a lot of idea of like, you know, what's really valuable here is this scene and its beauty. And I must consume it and process it and turn it into something. And that's what that's what matters. And I'm sort of halfway giving you enough attention to talk to you, but only about what I'm doing. Doesn't he, this is the part where we have the line where old Marty Van Gogh says, why aren't you painting? Like, like you've got your stuff, like, like, what are you doing out here? Like, this is, this is why we're here. This is the reason we exist. Get to paint. Why are you talking to me? Why aren't you painting? Yeah. I think that's a nice little gentle self criticism here from Kurosawa, you know, that apparently Kurosawa was personally very interested in Van Gogh. Like, he'd read a lot of his letters and stuff and was interested in the man's life as well as his work. Yeah. And again, it makes sense given Kurosawa's early interest in a career as a painter before pivoting to a film. Next couple of segments, Mount Fuji and Red and the Weeping Demon are sort of the nuclear horror sell segments. So Mount Fuji and Red, as I said, the protagonist just finds himself in the middle of a disaster scene. I think when we first see him, everybody else is running in one direction, and he's walking in the opposite direction. He's like the only one and he's going against the flow of the crowd. And he sees Mount Fuji just looks like hot lava. It's just, you know, glowing hot. And there are these explosions and he learns that it's due to a nuclear meltdown. And as we talked about, they have these discussions, a man in a suit appears and he kind of explains things. There's this long digression about the different colored, like the different colors of fog and what radioactive isotopes they represent and how each one kills you in different ways. And they're like, well, we color coded them so you can know which type of fog is killing you, but it doesn't help you survive. It seems to be some kind of commentary on like the absurdity of like false senses of security provided by technology and that there are these threats that people just kind of rush into and we're given false assurance that it's going to be okay. But in fact, that was all, that was all just rosy talk. And in fact, this is real stupidity. And people are really to blame for this disaster. I think there's a lot to unpack here with just symbolism of all of this, because Mount Fuji, of course, is a dormant volcano. So the tallest peak in Japan, I believe the last eruption was 1707. But at the same time, it is very much a symbol of Japan. And then on top of that, we have the like, the dream logic here as well of the mountain we learn is not actually erupting. It is nuclear meltdowns happening like behind the mountain. But at the same time, everything has like the flavor of volcanic eruption. So it's like both things at once without being either. This one also has that horrifying sense of futility, because it ends with the really just gut wrenching scene where there's like a woman with two children who have joined him and the protagonist is trying to protect them as like the fog clouds billow toward them. And he's in this utterly futile gesture, he's like waving at the fog clouds with his jacket trying to like fan them away. But there's a sense that everyone is just doomed and there's nothing anyone can do. Again, ends right at the height of the action. And then goes on to the next segment, another nuclear horror segment called the Weeping Demon, where our protagonist is wandering in this volcanic landscape very much. It's almost like the slopes of Mount Fuji, maybe, where there's a kind of dark volcanic soil and all these rocks and mist and fog billowing everywhere. And he encounters this monstrous looking figure with a horn on his head, which I think is initially styled to be some sort of some kind of ony. Yeah, definitely some ony vibes to this creature. I also have to flag that I again am sick and had a fever while watching this film. I think my eyes shut for a second at the very end of the Mount Fuji segment and then reopened during the Weeping Demon. And I thought it was one segment. But there is kind of like a similar vibe, like he's heading off into the nuclear waste at the end of Mount Fuji. And now here we are in a different atomic wasteland. Yeah. And then after this, we get a long discourse from the demon as he explains this health they have created. He sort of explains himself as a mutated product of radiation. And then he they sit under these tree-sized dandelions that are twisted and mutated by the radioactive fallout. And then he talks about these different kinds of demons, these like grades of demons. The demon with one horn is scary, but the demons with one horn get eaten by the demons who have two or three horns. And they're also hungry. And then we see there's like a scene where the demon is like, come, I'll show you. And he leads the protagonist to this overlook where they look down at these gross like pools of pink and red water where all of these demons are like running around them in circles in a way that suggests representations from Dante's Inferno where, you know, in hell, you will have the damned sort of like running in pointless circles around something. And it's like they're calling out, they're ready, they're going to come eat them soon. But they're in pain themselves. They're suffering. Their horns caused them pain. And we learned so many things. The demon explains he was, again, there's this thing of like, I bear individual responsibility. He explains, I was a farmer who destroyed my harvest as part of a scheme to keep prices high. And, but they talk about other people who did other things who may have become even worse kinds of demons themselves. And so another just bleak horrifying segment that also ends with the demon just menacing the Coruscant protagonist and the protagonist is running away down the side of the mountain looking constantly like he's about to go headlong and tumble away. Yeah, he's like, he's berating him, right? Like get out of here. Do you want to become a demon too? Yeah. So this one was at once like as bleak as the previous segment, but also since we had these monster like beings, it also felt like a little more escapist. So it, I was, again, there, all of these segments are excellently put together. But in a way, this one felt like a nice turn away from the seriousness of the previous Mount Fuji sequence. And then we get a very sharp turn into different territory for the last sequence, which is the village of the water mills. So our protagonist here, the dreamer, arrives by foot in a small rural village beside a river. There are these old wooden water wheels turning in the current, I guess they're running mills and there are flowers blooming everywhere. And Kurosawa really takes time to show us the nature around there, to show us like green water plants waving in the stream, kind of like hair blowing in the wind. And the dreamer comes in and he watches the children as they sort of gather on a little island in the stream that's bridged, you know, they reach by bridge and they pick flowers there and they take the flowers and they lay them all on a stone. It's a very just beautiful kind of gentle scene. And the dreamer meets an old man who's working on a water wheel mechanism of some kind. And they have a long conversation where the old man just kind of explains his philosophy. They talk about all kinds of things. A big part of it is him talking about how they don't need technology in this village. The man's like, don't you have electricity here? And the man's like, we don't need it. And he's like, yeah, but what about at night when it gets dark? And the guy's like, night is supposed to be dark. And so the main thrust of the old man's philosophy is that people in the cities think that labor saving technology will make them happy, but secretly it just makes them more miserable. And they don't realize it until they have already destroyed the natural world and they can't get it back. Yeah, this segment is great in so many ways. It's definitely another rumination on this idea of the idyllic rural Japan versus modern urban Japan. Something that you see in multiple studio Ghibli pictures. So if any of you are certainly more familiar with the works of Miyazaki, you've seen this kind of vibe. And I believe, and I would go as far as to say, like this sequence too, like it feels very much in line with like a Miyazaki film too, and that we have just such vibrant colors. Like this is the world in full bloom. This is like, it is almost like an Eden to some extent. And oh, by the way, I should mention that that documentary, Kurosawa's Way, also features interview segments with Miyazaki. He's one of the many directors who talks about his admiration for Kurosawa's work. This segment absolutely has strong Miyazaki vibes, yeah, and that love for verdant nature and the environmentalist outlook and all that sort of thing. And then also, I think in this next moment, because after this, the protagonist hears what sounds like a celebration. He hears laughter and shouting and happy music. And the old man explains to him, actually, what he's hearing is a funeral. It's a good happy funeral. And this is another part of his philosophy. He says, well, when someone dies young, it's sad, but when someone dies in old age, it's a joyous occasion because they live to full life. So the people march and they sing happy songs. And the woman who died in the funeral that's being celebrated today was almost 100 years old. In fact, she was this old man's first love when they were both very young. She broke his heart, she married another, and then he just laughs about it. I love his laugh here. Yeah. There's also the protagonist asks the old man about the stone where the children laid the flowers and the man tells the story. He says that long ago, a traveler came to the village, much like our dreamer here, but he arrived sick, like he brought the sickness of the modern world with him, and he collapsed and died beside the river. And the people took pity on him, and they buried him right where he fell. And the stone is his grave marker and the children place flowers on it. It's hard not to think about the man who died as being kind of suggested as another version of the visitor of the dreamer here. And then from here, the old man goes off to celebrate the death of his first love, and the traveler watches the funeral march and listens to the happy music. And he feels kind of infused with the goodness and the happiness of this place. And we hear the music as well. And that's the end. The music is so terrific here. As I mentioned earlier, I don't know exactly what you call this type of song, how this factors into traditional Japanese music, but it's very joyous. Like the old man explains it, like this is a celebration of life. And you totally feel it. You see it on the faces of all of the villagers in this procession. It's just such a great vibe. I want to come back to that joy in just a minute, but I guess before we wrap up, I just wanted to mention a couple of the other interesting themes and threads I saw tying together these very different narratives. Rob, did you notice this theme of the dilemma of being destroyed versus being transformed? That like in several of the more nightmarish scenes, especially there is a dilemma faced by the characters in which they can either be annihilated, they can cease to exist, or live on transformed into something tortured and unnatural. This is a major theme of the Weeping Demon. It comes up in Mount Fuji in red where they talk about the idea of immediate death versus a slow death from the effects of radiation. It comes up in the tunnel because the dead soldiers can't acknowledge that they are dead and they must cease to exist, thus they go on in this baffled, twisted state of blue undeath. This clearly seems to be something that is on Kurosawa's mind. Another thing is across multiple scenes, I noticed a repeated theme of people getting no help from authorities and in fact authority figures suggesting that you must die. Like there are multiple scenes where someone is denied aid by someone who should help them or by an authority figure, like a parent, the mother in the first sequence, or a government official, or a military commander, or the corporate world. Yes, in all these cases the authority figure suggests there is nothing I can do to help you and you must die. Finally, and I think this brings us back to the last segment, there is a more theme that you get in both negative and positive visions. It's something about the holiness of nature, something about how the holiness of nature is not appreciated, but that there is promise in coming to see it. I think the clear statement of the idea is that the natural world is absolutely vital to us, but that we remain blind to how important it is until we have already destroyed it. This theme is made very plain in the speech given by the old man and the final dream where he's talking about the virtues of living simply and being in harmony with nature. He talks about the false promise of happiness through technology and convenience and materialism, but you see this theme occur at different levels through I think most of the segments, like the boy in the peach orchard is redeemed by proving that he hated the idea of cutting down the peach trees and that he loved the orchard for the living beauty of the plants, not just for the produce, not just for the material, the peaches they grew. In that segment, we see that some level of regeneration is possible. We see that one plant that is growing back, the promise of the future. In the crow's segment also, this is part of what Van Gogh, he discusses this kind of almost life or death drive to to find purpose and positive meaning in life by seeking out what's beautiful and valuable in nature and processing it through, to take that scene of nature and to make it part of himself and to make himself part of it. Then of course, that brings us back to the funeral at the end. There's something relieving and gorgeous and cathartic about the funeral because it suggests a way of happiness and purpose and goodness even in death by finding your life in the kind of state that these villagers find it, that they live in harmony with nature and they realize they see beauty around them and they take part of it. They don't remain blind to it. They become part of it and they work with it and it makes even death a happy thing. Yeah, yeah, a return to nature or return to traditional values. You see this as a recurring theme in Japanese media of this time period especially, but also I think globally as well. I mean, this idea of returning to nature, returning to the garden, you see that certainly throughout the later half of the 20th century and on through storytelling today. I don't think it's a revelation that thankfully we've completely abandoned. Or could hope to put into a kind of happy synthesis because I also don't think it's quite fair to fully embrace the philosophy that all labor-saving conveniences are bad or something that happiness is necessarily through destroying all machines and not having electricity. I mean, maybe it is, but I'm not sure that's the case. But certainly there is a lot of wisdom in the movie's plea to be more conscious and protective of nature and to see ourselves as being in an absolutely vital kind of personal relationship with it, each one of us and also together as a community. Yeah, absolutely. That's the dream anyway. In this case, Kurosawa's dreams. All right. Well, I guess that's what I've got on dreams. Rob, is the cold medicine flagging? Yeah, probably so. I believe I'm running out of energy here, but this is a great one. I'm so glad you picked dreams for us to watch here for this episode of Weird House Cinema. Again, it's widely available. It's well worth watching. Again, it's really hard to think of... I love dream sequences in films and television, but I find it rare that a filmmaker actually captures some true essence of dream. And Akira Kurosawa absolutely nails it here. Yeah. Yeah. All right, we're going to go and close it up, but hey, we'll be back next week with another cinematic masterpiece. Stay tuned for that one. Just a reminder that Weird House Cinema, this is the episode that publishes on Fridays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're also experimenting with a standalone playlist of Weird House Cinema, so you can find Weird House Cinema listed separately on whatever platform it is you have to get your podcast that, so check that out. And if you are on letterbox.com, you can find us there. We are Weird House. That's our username. And there's a list of all the films we've covered thus far and sometimes a peek ahead of what's coming up next. Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Pawsway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Travel the Steyana Lineway means all of this. It's closer than you think. Book Steyana Line to Europe and enjoy a Bring It All holiday Les Pack full of everything summer's made for. Start your holiday on board from only 96 pounds single car and driver. Book today at steyanaline.co.uk. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human