Rating: PG
Genre:
Drama
Theatrical Release: 08/24/1990(USA)
Release Date: 03/18/2003
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol/Por/Japanese
Dubbed: Japanese
Sound: DDS
Run Time: 120 Minutes
Flags: Suitable for Children
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
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.
~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
;)
