Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about Akira Kurosawa's nineteen ninety anthology film Dreams, which is
Speaker 3: exactly what it says on the box. This is a
Speaker 3: collection of eight short vignettes that take the form of
Speaker 3: dreams and nightmares. I had never seen this film before
Speaker 3: this week when I picked it out for the show,
Speaker 3: and I love this movie. But if you watch it,
Speaker 3: you should know what you're getting into, especially if you've
Speaker 3: liked other Corosawa movies. This is not Seven Samurai that's like,
Speaker 3: you know, a gripping, exciting story. This is a movie
Speaker 3: that really asks for your patients as an audience member.
Speaker 3: The pace is moody and slow. There is no central
Speaker 3: or overarching plot. There are some themes and character types
Speaker 3: that recur, but each of the eight short stories is
Speaker 3: essentially self contained, and they partake of extremely varied tones, settings,
Speaker 3: and pacing. Some of the stories are like a weird
Speaker 3: kind of improvisational fairy tale. Some are frightening, baffling encounters
Speaker 3: with monstrous entities. Some are kind of idyllic meetings between
Speaker 3: a curious protagonist and a thoughtful character, and some are
Speaker 3: apocalyptic visions of a doomed earth. You really get all
Speaker 3: different kinds of dreams in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, this is a great film. I'm so glad
Speaker 2: you picked this one, Joe. This is not a Chrosall
Speaker 2: film I'd ever seen either. Generally, I'd seen just a
Speaker 2: handful of his Samurai epics, Throne of Blood being from
Speaker 2: years back.
Speaker 3: But it's of my favorites too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I had not. I had not rewatched or
Speaker 2: watched any Krosawa recently, so it was great to dive
Speaker 2: into this one. And yeah, I absolutely agree. This movie
Speaker 2: is true to the title, just steeped in the texture
Speaker 2: of dream in a way that is I think, far
Speaker 2: far more sublime than the mere trappings of the cinematic
Speaker 2: dream sequence. Curasawa, with signature excellence here generates a strong
Speaker 2: ambience of dreams, often, or at least it seems to me,
Speaker 2: with a one two punch of first intriguing monotony and
Speaker 2: then this emotional upwelling.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think I know what you mean that
Speaker 3: many of these stories have a kind of earlier middle
Speaker 3: section where something is kind of either slow and contemplative
Speaker 3: or frustratingly repetitive and monotonous, and then suddenly there is
Speaker 3: a breakthrough. There's some kind of catharsis where something of
Speaker 3: powerful emotional significance happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I found this very very interesting and
Speaker 2: very true to my experiences with dreams and my recollection
Speaker 2: of my own dreams. Intriguing monotony. Here is not a
Speaker 2: dig at the picture or a kursawa. I think it's
Speaker 2: it's ultimately kind of a revelation that we see dreams
Speaker 2: presented in this manner, where like you know, generally our
Speaker 2: dream the dreams that we have night to night are
Speaker 2: not worthy of cinematic adaptation, but I think people may
Speaker 2: recognize this basic form. Like I had this dream and
Speaker 2: I was like I was trying to put together some
Speaker 2: Ikia furniture and I couldn't put it together. And this
Speaker 2: just kept happening for what seemed like hours, and then
Speaker 2: my dad showed up and I had a conversation with
Speaker 2: my long deceased father, that sort of thing, you know,
Speaker 2: with so like a one two punch of monotony, lost
Speaker 2: in some sort of an environment or a situation that
Speaker 2: may not have anything that's really driving it forward, and
Speaker 2: then there's some sort of emotional upwelling. It's almost like
Speaker 2: the dream is the garden of the subconscious, populated seemingly
Speaker 2: by weeds of various thoughts, memories, and observations, and then
Speaker 2: some powerful emotional resonance emerges through and into this dream garden,
Speaker 2: taking on its trapping.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a lot of these stories are like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that that emotional upwelling. It might be love,
Speaker 2: it might be fear, it might be regret. So in
Speaker 2: any way, what I'm trying to say is yes to
Speaker 2: all of that. Dreams is not a fast paced film.
Speaker 2: If you're more familiar with Chrosawa's action and drama films,
Speaker 2: this is a different beast. I also want to highlight
Speaker 2: that I watched this film with a fever. I'm I've
Speaker 2: just returned from some extensive travel and something came back
Speaker 2: with me, and this is a This is a good
Speaker 2: fever film. I have to say. If you find yourself
Speaker 2: sort of drifting in and out, this is the perfect
Speaker 2: film to do it. There was a time or two
Speaker 2: where I caught myself falling asleep a little bit, which
Speaker 2: sometimes happens when you become horizontal and you watch films.
Speaker 2: But it's extra interesting with this picture because like Kurrasawa
Speaker 2: has already put you into the monotony of the dream sequence,
Speaker 2: you know, into the dream world, and so you find
Speaker 2: yourself slipping into that dream world for real.
Speaker 3: I feel like all of them would be good to
Speaker 3: fall asleep and then wake up again, to accept Mount
Speaker 3: Fuji and Red. That one's got to be real tough
Speaker 3: to kind of suddenly realize what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one was, we'll get to that one. That
Speaker 2: one was the rougher one for me. But anyway, this
Speaker 2: is our first Karrosawa film on Weird House Cinema. We've
Speaker 2: of course mentioned him numerous times in passing on the
Speaker 2: show because, of course, a it's impossible to discuss Japanese
Speaker 2: cinema without acknowledging a Kira Kurosawa. And you know, it's
Speaker 2: certainly the case too with something like a Godzilla film,
Speaker 2: even because those several of the Godzilla films we've talked
Speaker 2: about in the show were filmed by Ishil Hondakrasawa's friend
Speaker 2: and a frequent collaborator under tow Host Studios. And then
Speaker 2: on top of all of this, it's ultimately impop well
Speaker 2: to discuss cinema at all without eventually referencing Krosawa, as
Speaker 2: he's one of the most famed and influential filmmakers of
Speaker 2: all time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I would say the majority of his films, at
Speaker 3: least the ones I've seen, are not really in the
Speaker 3: weird house cinema space, and that I absolutely love them.
Speaker 3: But they're a little bit more straightforwardly realism bound, you know,
Speaker 3: they're often realistic period stories. They don't really get into
Speaker 3: the kind of weird genres we talk about, though there
Speaker 3: are some very weird things in Throne of Blood, even
Speaker 3: though it is basically a Macbeth adaptation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Throwing of Blood is the one that previously I
Speaker 2: considered that to be the Corosawa film we might get to.
Speaker 2: But this, I think was isn't even better fit for this.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because obviously this is dreams, and what's weirder
Speaker 3: than dreams? I mean, dreams are dreams are the classic
Speaker 3: weird house cinema. Before there was cinema, there was the
Speaker 3: weird house cinema of the inner space.
Speaker 2: That's true. Oh, by the way, this is a Cura
Speaker 2: Krosawa's Dreams, or sometimes just Dreams. It's often referenced by
Speaker 2: that title. Not to be confused with nineteen ninety five's Memories,
Speaker 2: an excellent animated anthology from Kutserhiro Otamo. These are two
Speaker 2: very different films, but I have caught myself on multiple
Speaker 2: occasions confusing the two titles in my mind. So I
Speaker 2: suspect I'm not alone here. Memories is anime and it's excellent.
Speaker 2: It's also an anthology. This is live action and it's Corsawa,
Speaker 2: and it's also an anthology.
Speaker 3: So I thought it might be good at the top
Speaker 3: here to go ahead and do a brief rundown of
Speaker 3: the eight different dreams in this movie, with like a
Speaker 3: one or two sentence summary of each, just so that
Speaker 3: we can refer back to them more easily as we
Speaker 3: go along, talking about the themes and the connections and stuff,
Speaker 3: and then we can talk about the plot in more
Speaker 3: detail later on. But okay, so the eight segments are.
Speaker 3: The first one is called Sunshine through the Rain. In
Speaker 3: this one, a young boy wanders into the forest during
Speaker 3: a sunshower when it's raining, but the sun is shining
Speaker 3: against his mother's ad vice, and he witnesses the marriage
Speaker 3: ceremony of the fox spirits, which is something he should
Speaker 3: not have seen. This first segment may be my favorite
Speaker 3: segment of all. I'm really excited to talk more about it.
Speaker 3: The second segment is the Peach Orchard. This takes place
Speaker 3: on a festival day in Japan called the Day of
Speaker 3: Hinomatsuri or the Dolls Day festival, sometimes the Girl's Day festival.
Speaker 3: On this day, a boy follows a spectral girl dressed
Speaker 3: in pink and white out to the terraces where a
Speaker 3: peach orchard used to grow, and the spirits of the
Speaker 3: now destroyed peach trees appear in the form of dolls
Speaker 3: and perform They talk to him, and they perform a
Speaker 3: traditional dance. The third segment is called the Blizzard. In
Speaker 3: this segment, a group of four mountain climbers are struggling
Speaker 3: to reach camp in the middle of a terrible snowstorm,
Speaker 3: and the climbers they're overwhelmed by the snow. They begin
Speaker 3: to succumb to the cold, and their leader has a
Speaker 3: blood curdling vision of a snow witch. In the fourth
Speaker 3: meant the tunnel. While walking home after the end of
Speaker 3: a war, presumably World War II, a Japanese military officer
Speaker 3: has to pass through a tunnel on a mountain road.
Speaker 3: There he meets first an angry dog strapped with explosives,
Speaker 3: and then a soldier, and then a company of soldiers
Speaker 3: who died under his command. The fifth segment crows. This
Speaker 3: one is more lighthearted. A painter is looking at the
Speaker 3: works of How are we going to say his name
Speaker 3: in this episode? I always Vincent the painter, Vincent van
Speaker 3: goch or Vincent van Go. I'm just going to say
Speaker 3: van Go. I know that's not the correct original pronunciation.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. That's how I always learned it when I
Speaker 3: was growing up the paintings of Vincent van Go. He
Speaker 3: looks at these paintings, he admires them, and then he
Speaker 3: sort of appears within the artistic world of van Go
Speaker 3: and then finally meets the artist and learns things about
Speaker 3: his vision and kind of interfaces with his view of
Speaker 3: art and the world. After that, we get a segment
Speaker 3: called Mount fou and Red. This is where the terror
Speaker 3: really ramps up. Our Corrosawa surrogate here in many of
Speaker 3: these segments are probably in all of them, you can
Speaker 3: view the protagonist as some form of Kurusawa himself, either
Speaker 3: as a child or a sort of alternate life version
Speaker 3: of himself. In this segment, our surrogate finds himself in
Speaker 3: a massive crowd of people fleeing a disaster. We see
Speaker 3: Mount Fuji in the distance appear glowing hot, framed by explosions,
Speaker 3: and then a man in a suit appears to explain
Speaker 3: that these explosions are caused by a meltdown at a
Speaker 3: nuclear power plant, and the people are being killed by
Speaker 3: clouds full of radioactive isotopes, and it just gets worse
Speaker 3: from there. Next we have the Weeping Demon. In this segment,
Speaker 3: a man is climbing across a craggy, desolate landscape of
Speaker 3: rocks and gravel, and he encounters a monstrous man with
Speaker 3: a horn on his head. We learn that the man
Speaker 3: has been mutated by nuclear fallout, and against a backdrop
Speaker 3: of giant dandelions, he explains the cannibalistic hell of the
Speaker 3: radioactive desert, and then in the final segment, we get
Speaker 3: a rapid sort of down shift back into out of
Speaker 3: all the horrors, into a more contemplative mode. This is
Speaker 3: a segment called the Village of the Watermills, where our
Speaker 3: Kurosawa protagonist kind of ambles into an idyllic rural village
Speaker 3: along a river and he meets a wise old man
Speaker 3: and observes the local customs.
Speaker 2: I mean, no surprise, but Christawa really nailed it here
Speaker 2: with the order. It's just it's the perfect There's no
Speaker 2: other order for these sequences that would make sense.
Speaker 3: I think you may have more to say about this
Speaker 3: because you were watching the documentary, But I have read
Speaker 3: that there were originally intended to be more dreams that
Speaker 3: appeared in the film, but the segments got paired back
Speaker 3: as production went along, in some cases, I think at
Speaker 3: the writing stage. In some cases after some things were shot.
Speaker 3: But you know, whatever the original intentions, it does feel
Speaker 3: complete and cohesive to me with this set of aid
Speaker 3: even though I now know there were originally going to
Speaker 3: be more. This just feels right. Somehow it got to
Speaker 3: the right place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And from what I understand of Krisawa's approach to filmmaking,
Speaker 2: this seems to line up with the way he approached
Speaker 2: things like you just sort of fine tune it as
Speaker 2: you go, and then the eventual final form presents itself
Speaker 2: to you, and in that case, these are the segments,
Speaker 2: and this is the ore.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, And this might not actually be a contradiction,
Speaker 3: but I've always read about Kurrasawa as a very meticulously
Speaker 3: planning in advance kind of filmmaker that like he can
Speaker 3: sort of see all the shots in his head ahead
Speaker 3: of time, and he sort of is editing in his
Speaker 3: mind ahead of time. Have you read similar things?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely it was. I had not really consumed
Speaker 2: much about the man or his approach to filmmaking prior
Speaker 2: to checking out a couple of the documentaries on the
Speaker 2: Criterion collection disc for this film, which I'll reference here
Speaker 2: in a bit, But uh, there's a behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: some behind the scenes footage where you could see him
Speaker 2: in action shooting with the picture, and then there's a uh,
Speaker 2: there's a great twenty eleven documentary as well titled Kurrasawa's
Speaker 2: Way that you know, gets into this a bit as well.
Speaker 2: And Yeah, one of the things that I found very
Speaker 2: interesting is that like he's apparently, you know, very much
Speaker 2: kind of a loner, a man of few words. There,
Speaker 2: you know, he would what he would say about his
Speaker 2: process and A and and certainly in his directorial approach
Speaker 2: was often succinct and to the point. But uh, but
Speaker 2: he wasn't. He was admittedly like not somebody that would
Speaker 2: talk about theory a lot like it kind of like
Speaker 2: he sees it in his head, he knows exactly how
Speaker 2: he wants it to work, and then you know, some
Speaker 2: amount of experimentation finding that that form. But he's he's
Speaker 2: not spouting a lot of theory. He's not then doing
Speaker 2: a lot of a film theory analysis of what worked
Speaker 2: and what didn't. And it's kind of left to all
Speaker 2: of the people that he influenced to come back and
Speaker 2: continually rewatch and describe exactly what he was doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was thinking about how, you know, sometimes people
Speaker 3: break down filmmakers into oh, I don't know, I guess
Speaker 3: the rough division would be like technical filmmakers versus humanistic filmmakers,
Speaker 3: those who are more concerned with the technical expression of
Speaker 3: an artistic vision. You know, they're using their techniques and
Speaker 3: their skills to sort of put what they see in
Speaker 3: their head on the screen, versus the humanistic vision that
Speaker 3: is more concerned with themes and characters and film as
Speaker 3: narrative and film as kind of I don't know, an
Speaker 3: abstract product, something that you could explain and talk about
Speaker 3: and interpret the meaning of. And I think you could
Speaker 3: easily make the case that Corrusawa is very much both.
Speaker 3: Like you could make the argument that he is one
Speaker 3: more than the other, but in both directions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like he has he certainly has all those
Speaker 2: technical abilities and those exceptional at them, but they're they're
Speaker 2: kind of they kind of almost seems like they're internalized
Speaker 2: to a degree to where it's like all this is
Speaker 2: going on inside. And again he's not discussing the theory
Speaker 2: of how it's all coming together, but it certainly comes together.
Speaker 3: You know. I had typed up a list of themes
Speaker 3: I saw emerging in multiple segments of the film that
Speaker 3: I was maybe going to talk about here, but actually
Speaker 3: I think we should save that for later in the episode,
Speaker 3: after we talk about the plot in a little more detail,
Speaker 3: or the plots all right, So we would usually say
Speaker 3: an elevator pitch here, I think we've sort of already
Speaker 3: given it. It's Kira Kurosawa takes you on a tour
Speaker 3: of his dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would also submit, oops, I had another dream.
Speaker 3: They they do like there's a transition that often pops
Speaker 3: in to just say I had another dream.
Speaker 2: All right, if you would like to watch Dreams the
Speaker 2: cure Crosawa's Dreams. Fortunately, this one's widely available, various streaming
Speaker 2: options out there. We can watch it digitally. I watched
Speaker 2: it on the Criterion Collection Blu Ray, which I written
Speaker 2: from Atlanta's own videodrome. Some excellent extras on this disc,
Speaker 2: as you'd expect, and I'll be referencing some of those.
Speaker 2: It's must purchase for anyone, or must rent for anyone
Speaker 2: who wants to go for a deeper dive into this movie.
Speaker 2: As of this recording, the film is not on Criterion Channel,
Speaker 2: but as with any streaming service, titles come and go there.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's simply the case, or it
Speaker 2: has something to do with the Warner Brothers aspect of
Speaker 2: this production. I'm not sure, but yeah, you can definitely
Speaker 2: get it on Criterion Collection, Blu ray or DVD, but
Speaker 2: it's not on Criterion Channel right now, all right?
Speaker 3: Should we talk about the connections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into it starting, I guess with Kira Kurosawa,
Speaker 2: the director and writer who lived nineteen ten through nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight, and I really have to preface here and
Speaker 2: say that it feels really challenging to do any sort
Speaker 2: of brief summary of such a cinematic icon. But you know,
Speaker 2: here it goes. This brief summary year based on some
Speaker 2: information that I read at the excellent Akira Kurosawa dot
Speaker 2: info page, which is really good, as well as the
Speaker 2: extras on the disc that I just referenced. So, Krasawa
Speaker 2: was the youngest child and a moderately wealthy Japanese family
Speaker 2: descended from the former samurai class. His initial creative interest
Speaker 2: was painting, which is interesting given one of our segments
Speaker 2: in this film, but he followed his gifted older brother,
Speaker 2: Hego in his passion for cinema. Hago worked as an
Speaker 2: on site silent film narrator or benshi at this time
Speaker 2: and apparently enjoyed some amount of success there, and as
Speaker 2: Akira lived with him at the time, he was able
Speaker 2: to gain entry into an array of films, plays, and
Speaker 2: circus performances, which he would later cite as being very
Speaker 2: influential on his craft. Now, Hago's work dried up with
Speaker 2: the decline of silent films during the nineteen thirties, Akira
Speaker 2: moved back with his parents and two of his sisters,
Speaker 2: and Hago sadly died by suicide in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty five, the Kurra Crosawa answered an advert
Speaker 2: in the newspaper from Photo Chemical Laboratories PCL. This is
Speaker 2: what would go on to become Toho Studios. They were
Speaker 2: seeking new assistant directors to engage in a mentor apprenticeship program,
Speaker 2: and so Akira submitted an essay. I've read that it
Speaker 2: was kind of a cheeky submission where he's like, the
Speaker 2: prompt was something like what would you do to fix
Speaker 2: a Japanese cinema And he's like, it can't be fixed
Speaker 2: or something. I don't know, but at any rate he
Speaker 2: won them over. He received a callback, and he went
Speaker 2: on to work with numerous established and up and coming directors.
Speaker 2: A special note his mentor, Kajiro Yamamoto. Kurosawa also took
Speaker 2: to screenwriting during this time, saw the value of that,
Speaker 2: and he served as a second unit or assistant director
Speaker 2: on numerous films and wrote screenplays for a handful of
Speaker 2: films before co writing and filming his first directorial effort
Speaker 2: with nineteen forty three's Sanshiro Sugata, a serious judo drama.
Speaker 2: I've not seen this one, but I've seen some clips
Speaker 2: from it, and they discussed it in the extras on
Speaker 2: the disc. It would spawn a nineteen forty five sequel,
Speaker 2: which he also co wrote and directed. In the twenty
Speaker 2: eleven documentary Kursawa's Way on the Criterion Collection disc, they
Speaker 2: point out this picture's sublime portrayal of action. So it's
Speaker 2: a judo film. It's a wrestling picture, but like a
Speaker 2: serious one, not like a Santo picture or some of
Speaker 2: the latter, you know, Japanese pro wrestling of pictures and
Speaker 2: so forth. But the action is really interesting because it
Speaker 2: has pointed out in this documentary, there's less of a
Speaker 2: focus on the actual grappling, or certainly the most impactful
Speaker 2: physical moments of the grappling war on audience responses, audio,
Speaker 2: emotional responses to the impact. So we won't actually see
Speaker 2: the impact. We'll see how people respond to it, and
Speaker 2: then we'll see sort of the results of that impact,
Speaker 2: which is very interesting. So Kisawa's wartime work included propaganda films,
Speaker 2: which apparently also included, to varying degrees, the Judo Pictures,
Speaker 2: especially the sequel. His work during this time sometimes was
Speaker 2: seen as too Western by sensors, and his nineteen forty
Speaker 2: five film The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail,
Speaker 2: a period piece, managed to run a foul of both
Speaker 2: imperial Japanese sensors and then subsequently American occupation sensors, for
Speaker 2: being in one case too democratic and then in the
Speaker 2: other case too feudal. I guess this is often the case.
Speaker 2: If you're managing to piss everyone off, maybe you're doing
Speaker 2: something right.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: We can't walk through every kisaw Will picture, but we
Speaker 2: might reasonably summarize his post post war work along the
Speaker 2: stepping stones of No Regrets for Our Youth in forty six,
Speaker 2: the award winning One Wonderful Sunday from forty six as Well,
Speaker 2: I Believe, and then nineteen forty eight Drunken Angel, considered
Speaker 2: by many to be his first major work and his
Speaker 2: first picture to feature Toshiro Mafuni, who Kurosawa would famously
Speaker 2: utilize in many of his masterpieces to come, including nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties Raschaman, which earned him international acclaim, including recognition at
Speaker 2: the Academy Awards in nineteen fifty two, and from there,
Speaker 2: Kirasawa went on to write and direct some of the
Speaker 2: best regarded films in cinema history, including but not limited to,
Speaker 2: fifty four to seven Samurai, fifty seven's Throwne of Blood,
Speaker 2: fifty eight's The Hidden Fortress, sixty one's Yojimbo, sixty threes,
Speaker 2: High and Low, nineteen eighties Kejimusha, The Shadow Warrior, and
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five's Ron. These decades entailed various ups and
Speaker 2: down industry changes, some unsuccessful Hollywood projects, most notably Runaway Train,
Speaker 2: which would ultimately be directed by another director nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: various setbacks and excursion of the Soviet Union to shoot
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five's durso Uzala, and a comeback partially produced
Speaker 2: by influential American directors who he had heavily influenced himself.
Speaker 2: And this was increasingly important as Japanese studios were in
Speaker 2: this time less likely to back him, and so he
Speaker 2: was increasingly turning to outside and foreign financers. And certainly
Speaker 2: that's the case with Dreams.
Speaker 3: Was it the case with his later films that they
Speaker 3: were regarded both in Japan and internationally as masterpieces, But
Speaker 3: they also didn't make a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've read. I was looking at like some
Speaker 2: contemporary Ebert reviews talking about like what happens when you
Speaker 2: have like a master who you know, keeps doing their
Speaker 2: own thing, but you know, doesn't necessarily it is not
Speaker 2: necessarily chasing what the audience wants. Then maybe some of that.
Speaker 2: I was looking at some information about how this film
Speaker 2: Dreams was received, and I've seen it described as kind
Speaker 2: of like a largely muted response both domestically and internationally.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, there was like a lot
Speaker 2: of excitement for it, especially among directors who admired his
Speaker 2: work so much. And another interesting wrinkle is that apparently,
Speaker 2: I mean, this comes as a surprise I think for
Speaker 2: many because I know when I started watching Krosawa films,
Speaker 2: they were airing i think on Turner Classic Movies and
Speaker 2: or American Movie Classics. Even it seems weird that they
Speaker 2: would be on American movie class American Movie Classic showed
Speaker 2: a lot of different films, but at any rate, I
Speaker 2: had ready access to them on television on cable, and nowadays,
Speaker 2: you know, you have all these excellent criterion collection editions.
Speaker 2: But apparently for a while they weren't all necessarily available
Speaker 2: on home video, with the exception of Dreams because of
Speaker 2: the Warner Brothers connection.
Speaker 3: Oh I see.
Speaker 2: So even if the initial response was kind of muted,
Speaker 2: more and more people had the opportunity to Sea Dreams,
Speaker 2: and of course it gradually earned it more of a following,
Speaker 2: and I think is also seen as this interesting outlier
Speaker 2: in Corosawa's filmography. You know, there's nothing else quite like
Speaker 2: it among his other titles.
Speaker 3: My general impression is that a lot of critics don't
Speaker 3: put it at like his in his top tier list,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not in a lot of people's top
Speaker 3: five Corosawa movies or whatever, but that it is nowadays
Speaker 3: widely respected.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's one of those filmographers though, right
Speaker 2: where it's like, if you're talking about the seventh best
Speaker 2: Carrosawa film, you're still talking about a great motion picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So.
Speaker 2: Krissawa was honored at the sixty second Academy Awards in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety and he went on to complete two more films,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one's Rhapsody in August and nineteen ninety three's Maddeo.
Speaker 2: He was working on The Sea Is Watching in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, when he apparently suffered a fall, leaving him
Speaker 2: unabuilt to direct, and his health rapidly declined in the
Speaker 2: following years, and he passed away in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: The Sea Is Watching would ultimately be made in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two by a different director, among a couple
Speaker 2: of other posthumous screenplay credits. Now, to come back to
Speaker 2: something I was talking about here earlier, one of the
Speaker 2: things driven home by numerous Japanese and international directors in
Speaker 2: Kursaw was way the documentary is that he is really
Speaker 2: the epitome of a director's director. I imagine you could
Speaker 2: take that a step further now and say that he's
Speaker 2: a director's director's director, or to that effect.
Speaker 3: Meaning he is appreciated, especially by other practitioners of the
Speaker 3: art form, not just by audiences, but especially like people
Speaker 3: who make films really admire the way he makes films.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems really difficult to overstress his influence on
Speaker 2: modern cinema and directors around the world, Directors who would
Speaker 2: often and continue to analyze every minute detail of how
Speaker 2: his direction of actors, lighting, framing, use of space and
Speaker 2: everything else came together on the screen and it can
Speaker 2: almost be invisible, I think to many of us, because
Speaker 2: if you're watching a Krosawa film, I mean, its magic
Speaker 2: is going to work on you. You are going to
Speaker 2: You're not going to necessarily unless you're, you know, making
Speaker 2: an effort to You're just it's going to. Its spell
Speaker 2: is going to work. You're not going to be maybe
Speaker 2: thinking about how he's shooting everything. Because in part of it, too,
Speaker 2: I think, is because he was so influential, many of
Speaker 2: the things he did simply became more or less standards
Speaker 2: of filmmaking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's true that a lot of times
Speaker 3: good technical directing does not really call attention to itself.
Speaker 3: It manifests in utter absorption in the narrative and content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you're.
Speaker 3: Watching seven Samurai, you might not be thinking a lot
Speaker 3: about the you know, how every shot is being framed
Speaker 3: and how he captures movement and light and stuff, But
Speaker 3: you know that your attention is held very closely, and
Speaker 3: that's sort of like how it comes through to the
Speaker 3: average viewer.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. All right, let's move on to some other folks
Speaker 2: involved in this picture with with less detail we've covered
Speaker 2: the big one here, of course, is Shuro Honda. Who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety three. Famed director of Godzilla,
Speaker 2: who we've discussed in the show I think three different times,
Speaker 2: most recently in our discussion of nineteen sixty four's matha
Speaker 2: Versus Godzilla. He was a creative consultant on this picture.
Speaker 3: I think I read that especially his experience in the
Speaker 3: military was used to choreograph the sequence called the Tunnel
Speaker 3: where we see military, we see army members marching information.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, I have to say
Speaker 2: that the Mount Fuji segment also feels very Honda like.
Speaker 2: You can imagine him at least standing in the background
Speaker 2: nodding and being like, yep, you've nailed at Krisawa on
Speaker 2: that one, all right. Getting into the actors here, starting
Speaker 2: with the Dreamer, generally credited as I because we keep
Speaker 2: having that dead for us, where we read the words
Speaker 2: I had another dream, and then here's our dreamer, our
Speaker 2: dream walker. I. Our Dreamer is played by Akira Tera
Speaker 2: Hope born nineteen forty seven. Born into successful acting family.
Speaker 2: He's also a musician, having been in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: band The Savage Joe. I included an album cover from
Speaker 2: The Savage They don't look very savage. They look just
Speaker 2: like some very clean cut guys here. Yeah, they look
Speaker 2: like they're they're ready to head down to the sokop. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But he subsequently launched a successful solo career, and I
Speaker 2: think in this he took on a more edgy persona
Speaker 2: and often had kind of like a like a nihilistic
Speaker 2: kind of like dressed in black, wearing sunglasses thing going.
Speaker 3: On, holding a twelve string guitar, looking like nothing matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, successful musician, award winning musician, and then
Speaker 2: as an actor. He debuted in nineteen sixty eight The
Speaker 2: Sands of Krobi and later appeared in Karasawa was Ron.
Speaker 2: He's also in nineteen ninety six's Rebirth of Mathra and
Speaker 2: two thousand and four's cas hern This is one Caserne
Speaker 2: is not. I haven't seen either of these two films, actually,
Speaker 2: but cass Herne is one that I've seen get video
Speaker 2: stores for years because it has some sort of like
Speaker 2: a space ninja on it. I don't know much about it.
Speaker 2: If you out there are fans, write in and tell
Speaker 2: me all about it.
Speaker 3: You know. I was gonna say in talking about the
Speaker 3: themes of the film that one of them is the
Speaker 3: self as both fluid and constant. The protagonist in each
Speaker 3: of these dreams, I think you could say, is the
Speaker 3: same person and yet is also quite different and both
Speaker 3: in terms of apparent life history, some aspects of personality
Speaker 3: seem to change. Sometimes the protagonist is assertive, sometimes the
Speaker 3: protagonist is quite passive. That just varies a lot between
Speaker 3: the segments, and there's no narrative continuity between them, but
Speaker 3: there is a kind of thematic continuity, like the segments
Speaker 3: are strung together by associations and preoccupations rather than causality.
Speaker 3: And so this was making me think. I was trying
Speaker 3: to the performance, like, do the events of one dream
Speaker 3: at all affect the protagonist in a different dream? And
Speaker 3: I think you could see it going both ways, Like
Speaker 3: the events of the movie never seem to be literally additive,
Speaker 3: and yet they may be kind of like the other
Speaker 3: dreams are kind of stirring in the memory of the
Speaker 3: protagonist in the other segments. You know, I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly how you would read that into Tara Oh's performance here,
Speaker 3: but that does feel right. It feels like it's part
Speaker 3: of his story that there is I don't know, somehow,
Speaker 3: like not complete conscious knowledge of what was dreamt in
Speaker 3: the other dreams, but a kind of vague sense of
Speaker 3: I've had a feeling like this before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean that's the way it often feels
Speaker 2: with dreams. You know, you might bring the content of
Speaker 2: one dream into the next. And also, at least in
Speaker 2: my own experience, like, sometimes you're you, and the dreams
Speaker 2: sometimes you're less you. And then so I feel like
Speaker 2: this character is you know sometimes you know. I think
Speaker 2: in general we can think of him as a Krosawa
Speaker 2: stand in. Sometimes he's more of a voyeuristic figure or
Speaker 2: even an avatar by which we experience the dream, though
Speaker 2: his role is more personal and intense in certain segments,
Speaker 2: namely the Tunnel, which we'll get to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, I certainly had the Tunnel in mind for
Speaker 3: his more like assertive and active roles. But almost always,
Speaker 3: and I guess this is often true of dreams, he's
Speaker 3: more reacting than acting on the world, and often reacting
Speaker 3: with a kind of futility. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because again, there's all these or most of these dreams,
Speaker 2: if not all of them, they begin with the sense
Speaker 2: of being trapped in something like we're maybe not trapped
Speaker 2: trapped is too strong a word, too nightmarish, like you know,
Speaker 2: in the texture of dreams, like sometimes you're just there
Speaker 2: and you're a part of it. I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: hard to really state it, but anyway, yeah, I liked
Speaker 2: his performance. It kind of the exact details of it
Speaker 2: change from sequence to sequence, and then to be clear,
Speaker 2: in subsequences. I the Dreamer is played by a child
Speaker 2: a couple of different actors I believe, Mitsunori Issaki born
Speaker 2: seventy seven, and then another actor by the name of
Speaker 2: Toshiko Nakano playing younger versions of the Dreamer.
Speaker 3: I think you could argue that the segments of the
Speaker 3: film are roughly chronological in terms of the protagonists age.
Speaker 3: I don't know if exactly, but like the first one,
Speaker 3: the protagonist is the youngest, the second one, he's the
Speaker 3: second youngest, and then becomes an adult, and it does
Speaker 3: seem to progress through a kind of maturity arc in
Speaker 3: life from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe so, all right, Rolling through some of
Speaker 2: the other performances here, of note, we have Metsuko Basho
Speaker 2: as the Dreamer's mother in the first sequence born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six, Japanese Academy Award winning actress, whose credits include
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine s Vengeance's Mine, nineteen eighty's Kja Musha,
Speaker 2: and a voice roll in two thousand and six is
Speaker 2: Tales from Earth. See that's a Goro Miyazaki.
Speaker 3: Film adapted from the Ursula of the Win.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, Yeah, Then of course eventually we're gonna get
Speaker 2: our yuki Ono the snow Fairy or the snow Woman
Speaker 2: the snow Witch. More on the details of this character
Speaker 2: in a bit, but this is of course a yokai
Speaker 2: that pops up throughout Japanese media, played here by Miko
Speaker 2: Harada born nineteen fifty eight. She was also coming off
Speaker 2: a major role in Kurosawa's Ron, and her other credits
Speaker 2: include seventy nine's The Inferno, nineteen eighty eight's Tokyo The
Speaker 2: Last Megalopolis. That's one I haven't seen, but that one's
Speaker 2: kind of famous for a couple of different reasons, including
Speaker 2: the fact that hr Giger designed something for it, twenty
Speaker 2: twelve's Helter Skelter, and Oh, I don't know anything about
Speaker 2: this one, but sometimes the title just catches you twenty sixteens.
Speaker 2: If Katz disappeared from the world, I'm enthralled. I need
Speaker 2: to know more about that one, but anyway, she's won
Speaker 2: multiple acting award in her native Japan. All right. In
Speaker 2: the tunnel sequence, we have a ghostly figure from the
Speaker 2: past that shows up, Private Naguchi played by Yoshitaka Sushi
Speaker 2: born nineteen fifty five, another Ron cast member who was
Speaker 2: also in a number of other pictures, including two other
Speaker 2: Kurosawa pictures, sixty five's Red Beard and nineteen seventies Dotsukatton.
Speaker 2: Now late in the picture, we're going to have an
Speaker 2: old man character who is fabulous, played by Chishu Ryu,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh four through nineteen ninety three. Award
Speaker 2: winning and long lasting Japanese actor, his work spans six decades,
Speaker 2: and his other credits include Red Beard, nineteen fifty three's
Speaker 2: Tokyo Story and nineteen eighty five's Mishima, a Life in
Speaker 2: four chapters. He also appeared in Vim Vendors Until the
Speaker 2: End of the World in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: And in many ways, this old man is kind of
Speaker 3: the soul of the movie, especially appearing as he does
Speaker 3: in the last segment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's terrific. I really love this performance. This guy's
Speaker 2: great and.
Speaker 3: He has some opinion. He's of all the segment. He's
Speaker 3: just like saying opinions into the camera.
Speaker 2: Yes, but he's great.
Speaker 3: It's got that quality of like he's old, let him talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I think he may have. I think
Speaker 2: this guy speaks more than anyone else in the picture.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We get a lot as well from
Speaker 2: the Crying Demon. And this character was played by Chosuki Ikaria,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty one through two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: His other credits in Beclue, nineteen ninety one's My Son's
Speaker 2: and nineteen ninety eight's Base Side Shakedown.
Speaker 3: You know, one thing I didn't know about the cast
Speaker 3: when I pictured this movie is that it was going
Speaker 3: to have Martin Scorsese acting in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, playing Vincent van Go. You have legendary
Speaker 2: American director and noted Corosala admire. Yeah, he's definitely in
Speaker 2: that documentary Krosawa's way talking about his experience on the
Speaker 2: film and his admiration for Krosawa's work. And it's interesting because, yeah,
Speaker 2: so Scorsese himself an admire of Corosawa and study or
Speaker 2: of Corosawa's work here playing a master painter admired by
Speaker 2: the dreamer, and so it's kind of a neat inversion there,
Speaker 2: literally following the master into his work here.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, is it true that he interrupted making Goodfellas
Speaker 3: to like fly in to shoot this.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't read that, but that sounds or hear
Speaker 2: that in the doc, but that that sounds likely. Yes,
Speaker 2: I mean that's the kind of respect that all of
Speaker 2: these directors had for him.
Speaker 3: I also found Scorsese's screen presence interesting because he does
Speaker 3: not come in the way sometimes like a well known
Speaker 3: director cameo and acting can feel where it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's like I'm the big important person
Speaker 3: now here. I'm ego crashing into the scene and taking
Speaker 3: it over. He feels very in service of the scene.
Speaker 3: He feels it's one of those performances where it feels
Speaker 3: like he is just trying to do what Corrosawa wants
Speaker 3: of him and is telling him to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Martin Scorsese occasionally does these little acting but sometimes
Speaker 2: playing a fictional version of himself, sometimes playing a fictional
Speaker 2: a different character. But he's generally pretty good. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: certainly a little broader in his performance, but yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a good point is he does seem to be essentially
Speaker 2: trying to play Vincent van Go here, and I was
Speaker 2: also thinking this is also perfect like dream logic, you know,
Speaker 2: like I had a dream last night and I was
Speaker 2: having a conversation with Vincent van Go, but he was
Speaker 2: also somehow Martin Scorsese at the same time. Yes, that's
Speaker 2: kind of the vibe here. Another fun little cameo, I
Speaker 2: guess would say in that particular segment, the woman in
Speaker 2: the fields that the dreamer initially interacts with before being
Speaker 2: sent in the direction of Vincent van Go is played
Speaker 2: by Catherine Cadau. Kursaw was longtime personal translator and director
Speaker 2: of that twenty eleven documentary Charsawa's Way.
Speaker 3: Oh. Interesting, So she's the one washing washing in the
Speaker 3: river who tells him that tells him to stay away
Speaker 3: from van Go because he's a madman.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, I just came out of the asylum. Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 2: And then getting to the music, the music here is
Speaker 2: of course terrific, and the composer credited is Shinichiro Akibi
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty three, Japanese composer whose film work includes
Speaker 2: Chris always Keji Musha Rhapsody in August and Madeo. His
Speaker 2: other scores include TV's Future Boy Conan from nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: eight that was an early directorial effort from Hayo Miyazaki,
Speaker 2: and two thousand and seven's Glory to the Filmmaker. He
Speaker 2: won the Japanese Academy Award for composing multiple times.
Speaker 3: I think in addition to some original compositions, this movie
Speaker 3: does also feature some classical compositions. Like I think there's
Speaker 3: some Chapan in it and stuff. But yes, the music
Speaker 3: is wonderful special. Oh, it's wonderful throughout, especially thinking of
Speaker 3: the mysterious music in the very first segment.
Speaker 2: Also, I love the funeral procession music at the end.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, yes, I'm not sure at different points
Speaker 2: in the film whether we're looking at the composed score
Speaker 2: or needle drop score, but at any rate, it's all
Speaker 2: really good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Finally, I also want to note that if you start
Speaker 2: looking at the special effects credits on this film, you'll
Speaker 2: notice a lot of Western names via those connections that
Speaker 2: Kurosawa had with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Its industrial
Speaker 2: light and magic handling the special effects on this, you know,
Speaker 2: Otherwise Japanese production. Apparently they did this at cost, though
Speaker 2: I have to say watching the picture, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not like you really notice. It's not like ILM came
Speaker 2: in and made all the Fox people look like wookies
Speaker 2: or anything. I don't know. It's like the effects are
Speaker 2: I guess, really good and often invisible.
Speaker 3: They're very organic. Yeah. Yeah, the effects feel almost humble
Speaker 3: in a way. Does that make sense, not flashy, just
Speaker 3: kind of manifesting. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There is some behind the scenes footage on the
Speaker 2: Criterion collection just showing Carosawa directing the scenes where we
Speaker 2: have the makeup effects for the Fox people as well
Speaker 2: as the hornet demons, and you know, he's he seems
Speaker 2: to be like, you know, sort of tweaking things a
Speaker 2: little bit, and in the case of the demons, saying like,
Speaker 2: let's tone it down a little bit, like essentially they
Speaker 2: look too much like monsters. We want we want the
Speaker 2: viewers to understand that these are humans. So I get
Speaker 2: the impression that carasaw will, maybe even's head of them,
Speaker 2: scale back a little bit on things, because you know,
Speaker 2: often I think it's the case in this picture that
Speaker 2: otherworldly beings they do have a kind of like stage presence,
Speaker 2: Like they certainly come off like human beings in makeup,
Speaker 2: and there's not there. There doesn't seem to be an
Speaker 2: overt attempt to portray them as overtly otherworldly beings, Like
Speaker 2: there's a humanity to them that I guess is essential here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Should we jump into the plot.
Speaker 2: Let's do it?
Speaker 3: Okay? So, as I mentioned, there are these eight segments.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about some of them, I think,
Speaker 3: in more detail than others. I wanted to start off
Speaker 3: talking about the first one. I love all the segments
Speaker 3: in this movie, but the very first one is probably
Speaker 3: my favorite. So I want to kind of look at
Speaker 3: it in some detail. And this is the one called
Speaker 3: Sunshine through the Rain. So it begins with a young
Speaker 3: boy coming out the front door of his house looking
Speaker 3: like he wants to go play outside. But just as
Speaker 3: he is heading out, it starts to rain. And I
Speaker 3: don't know, somehow that beginning in itself, even before we
Speaker 3: really are thinking of this as a dream, that's so
Speaker 3: evocative of childchildhood, you know, the feeling of wanting to
Speaker 3: go outside and play and it starts raining, Or at
Speaker 3: least it was for me. I don't know that that
Speaker 3: feels like such a familiar and cutting kind of frustration.
Speaker 3: So the boy, he's come out the door of his house,
Speaker 3: but he stands under an archway in the gate that
Speaker 3: goes around the outside of the home, and he's watching
Speaker 3: the rain come down, and it is a sunshower, so
Speaker 3: the sun is shining even though there is precipitation. And
Speaker 3: then from the background, we see the boy's mother emerge
Speaker 3: from the house and she hurries out into the courtyard
Speaker 3: to gather some baskets of something. I think maybe she
Speaker 3: was drying some kind of food items in the sun
Speaker 3: or something. And she's pulling the baskets inside, and she
Speaker 3: calls out to the boy and she says, you're staying home.
Speaker 3: The sun is shining, but it's raining. Foxes hold their
Speaker 3: wedding processions in this weather and they don't like anyone
Speaker 3: to see them. If you do, they'll be very angry.
Speaker 3: And she runs back inside. So actually, maybe here should
Speaker 3: we do a little sidebar on the folklore of the
Speaker 3: Kitsuni no yumeiri. This is the fox's wedding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Katsuni we've discussed on the show before. We're
Speaker 2: talking about fox spirits In Japanese traditions, so yo kai
Speaker 2: with supernatural abilities often depicted as tricksters, though in this
Speaker 2: case not so much tricksters and more in line with
Speaker 2: sort of global traditions of like fairy folk of the
Speaker 2: unseen world who are out there going through their rights
Speaker 2: and observations, and sometimes humans can see into their world,
Speaker 2: but perhaps at their peril.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 3: So he's received this warning, but the young boy, he
Speaker 3: is maybe not deterred. He looks out at the downpour.
Speaker 3: He stands there and stares for a bit, and then
Speaker 3: he wanders off into the forest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean mom's warning here was kind of asking
Speaker 2: for it, like, don't go outside now because there are
Speaker 2: fox spirits out there.
Speaker 3: You might see something amazing. Yeah, And I love the
Speaker 3: scene in the forest here. So the forest is eerie
Speaker 3: and just pulsing with magic. So the trees are enormous.
Speaker 3: We don't see really the tops of the trees. We
Speaker 3: just see these column like trunks, and the ground is
Speaker 3: covered in sprouting plants with long green leaves that come
Speaker 3: up to the boy's waist, and we can see sheets
Speaker 3: of rain and mist are billowing sideways through the gaps
Speaker 3: between the trees, and then you can also see individual
Speaker 3: shafts of sunlight crossing down through holes in the canopy,
Speaker 3: and all this together makes the air appear to have
Speaker 3: a kind of silky, shimmering texture. It's so beautiful and
Speaker 3: it looks like a place absolutely where magic happens. And
Speaker 3: as we watch the scene, there is just this mounting
Speaker 3: sense of the strange and unreal. For example, one thing,
Speaker 3: you see a close up of the boy who is
Speaker 3: he's walking silently through the woods. He's looking around, not
Speaker 3: saying anything, and I noticed he's dry. It's raining, but
Speaker 3: he's not wet. There's no music, no talking, just this
Speaker 3: kind of soft skittering sound of rain on the leaves,
Speaker 3: and the boy just keeps looking around, wide eyed, like
Speaker 3: he is expecting to see something. And then he does
Speaker 3: see something. There's a bank of white mist, and through
Speaker 3: it he sees the outline of a shrine carved in stone.
Speaker 3: And then slowly music begins. We hear drums and a
Speaker 3: wood block and a flute playing a slow, mysterious melody.
Speaker 3: The rhythm on the drums in the woodblocks is also
Speaker 3: kind of slow and stuttering, and over the background of
Speaker 3: this music, the boy watches a procession of figures slowly
Speaker 3: marching out of the fog. They are human dancer in
Speaker 3: fox makeup rob as you were saying there, they're distinctly
Speaker 3: human in forms, so they didn't try to make them
Speaker 3: quadrupedal or anything. They're standing upright basically human, but their
Speaker 3: faces are painted a rosy white color, with red fur
Speaker 3: over their noses and cheeks, and they have whiskers. The
Speaker 3: women are wearing veils over their heads, and the men
Speaker 3: wear a sort of disc shaped hat. The first two
Speaker 3: men in the procession are carrying these cylindrical objects. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure what these are, but they might be some
Speaker 3: form of paper lantern. I know that fox wedding processions
Speaker 3: in folklore are sometimes said to be carrying paper lanterns
Speaker 3: like you can see them as dancing lights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's what this is supposed to be.
Speaker 3: And their style of dancing is so interesting and evocative.
Speaker 3: There are these slow, almost glacial movements as they march along,
Speaker 3: and then sudden moves where they bend and twist and
Speaker 3: assume a pose, all looking in the same direction. I
Speaker 3: think this is supposed to evoke when a wild animal
Speaker 3: senses your presence or gets spooked and then suddenly like
Speaker 3: flinches and freezes looking at you. Did you take the
Speaker 3: same thing from it?
Speaker 2: Rob, That's a good point, you know. I don't think
Speaker 2: I've literally put that together when I was watching it,
Speaker 2: but I think it's a great read. I will note
Speaker 2: that this is definitely one of the many sequences in
Speaker 2: the picture that feels like it could possibly go on
Speaker 2: forever in a good way, in that dream sense where
Speaker 2: it's like this is this is happening, and and you're
Speaker 2: just in it. You know, who knows if the dream
Speaker 2: is going to is going to continue on to some
Speaker 2: point of emotional upwelling, though of course it will in
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 3: Lost time, very little consciousness of past or future. You're
Speaker 3: just you're just stuck in this moment. And the boy
Speaker 3: is watching this procession from behind a tree. He's very cautious.
Speaker 3: He's trying to hide, and the dancers keep stopping and
Speaker 3: suddenly looking in his direction, but at first he stays
Speaker 3: hidden until the last time they stop and sudden he's caught.
Speaker 3: They all turn and look at him, and the boy
Speaker 3: panics and runs away back home.
Speaker 2: This is not played for horror or anything but and
Speaker 2: again the makeup is is subtle, and it's definitely holding back,
Speaker 2: but it is a frightening sequence in its own way,
Speaker 2: Like that, you know, the child has seen into a
Speaker 2: world he should not bear witness too, and they have
Speaker 2: looked back and seen him as well.
Speaker 3: But when he gets home, the danger is not over.
Speaker 3: Actually that you might think, Okay, he's escaped, he's back
Speaker 3: home now. When he gets back to the house, he
Speaker 3: finds his mother waiting for him at the front gate,
Speaker 3: and she's looking very stern, and he approaches her kind
Speaker 3: of bashfully, like he knows he's done something wrong. But
Speaker 3: she does not comfort him. Her face is very stiff
Speaker 3: and her expression is cold, and she says, you saw it,
Speaker 3: didn't you. You saw something you shouldn't have. I can't
Speaker 3: have such a child in my house. And angry fox
Speaker 3: came looking for you. He left this, And then from
Speaker 3: a pouch in her sleeve, the mother produces a tonto knife.
Speaker 3: The boy takes it and he pulls the knife from
Speaker 3: the sheath and the mother says, you're to a tone
Speaker 3: by cutting your belly open. And I was like, WHOA.
Speaker 3: That hits hard because this is a little child. This
Speaker 3: is not like a you know, not even like an
Speaker 3: like the little kid, and it hits hard. But this
Speaker 3: to me felt so real as a child's dream turning
Speaker 3: into a nightmare. It is so much more unacceptably threatening
Speaker 3: and dangerous than adults like to imagine children's dreams are.
Speaker 3: But this is, I mean, this is what I remember
Speaker 3: children's dreams being like that. There's a way that the
Speaker 3: child's mind is sort of uncensored. It is it like
Speaker 3: it goes to much more bold and horrible and frightening place,
Speaker 3: says than adults want a child's mind to go to.
Speaker 3: And this felt like a real dream in multiple ways,
Speaker 3: with like the you know, the threat that you have
Speaker 3: to cut your own belly open, but also in the
Speaker 3: in the way that the mother is not comforting, like
Speaker 3: he's done something bad and the mother has become alien
Speaker 3: and threatening to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But then here in the dream, the mother offers
Speaker 3: an alternative. She says, she says, go quickly and ask
Speaker 3: their forgiveness. Give that back to them, talking about the knife,
Speaker 3: give that back to them, and beg for your life
Speaker 3: on your knees. And then the mother literally turns her
Speaker 3: back on the boy. She turns her back on him
Speaker 3: and goes inside and starts to close the gate in
Speaker 3: her son's face. And as she's closing the doors of
Speaker 3: the gate, she says, they rarely forgive even trivial things.
Speaker 3: You must go prepared to die for your sin. And
Speaker 3: then as the gate is almost nearly shut all the way,
Speaker 3: she says that until they forgive him, she can't let
Speaker 3: him back in. And then finally the boy speaks. He
Speaker 3: pleads that he doesn't know where their home is, but
Speaker 3: the mother says, of course you do. Their home is
Speaker 3: beneath the rainbow. And so now we and the gate shuts,
Speaker 3: and so, now afraid and alone, the boy sets out
Speaker 3: again into the woods with the deadly knife in his hands,
Speaker 3: and eventually he comes to a clearing and it's a
Speaker 3: meadow full of flowers. It's just huge mass of flowers,
Speaker 3: millions of flowers, all in bloom in spring colors yellow, white, pink,
Speaker 3: and violet, and this mysterious music swells and then we
Speaker 3: can see the boy from behind. This is probably the
Speaker 3: most iconic shot from the film. The boy is now
Speaker 3: entering a narrow valley framed by dark mountains, and in
Speaker 3: the middle ground there there's the meadow of the spring flowers,
Speaker 3: and a rainbow bends over the field. And this has
Speaker 3: got to be the most beautiful and certainly the most
Speaker 3: frightening use of a rainbow in a film that I
Speaker 3: can think of, because it's a rainbow that's obviously not
Speaker 3: just a disconnected vision that is pretty to look at,
Speaker 3: as rainbows are often in movies. This is a place,
Speaker 3: and it is the spectral castle of the vengeful Fox Spirits.
Speaker 3: And the boy stands there facing the rainbow. He's clutching
Speaker 3: the knife. He is amazed and afraid, and he begins
Speaker 3: again to walk to its center, and the music is
Speaker 3: swelling up with these ominous notes on the woodwinds and
Speaker 3: then fade to black. Yeah, and that's the end, So
Speaker 3: we never see him face the fox Spirits. In the
Speaker 3: true essence of a dream, these vignettes often begin in
Speaker 3: the middle of the action, or begin with a kind
Speaker 3: of unexplained arrival, and they often stop right in the
Speaker 3: middle of the story as well, usually right as the
Speaker 3: tension is kind of rising to its peak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's the way it often is in dreams.
Speaker 2: How how many times have any of you ever had
Speaker 2: a dream that finished had a third act you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes I guess that's the case, but generally it's like
Speaker 2: things kind of peter out or shift. And yeah, I agree,
Speaker 2: very strong opening segment here. I agree on the danger
Speaker 2: and seriousness of children's dreams displayed here, and it seems
Speaker 2: a fitting way too, to look at the way that
Speaker 2: children are you eventually thrust, maybe without warning, into you know,
Speaker 2: out of their lives of protected curiosity and into a
Speaker 2: more serious world of reality. Though of course in this
Speaker 2: case it's it's it's not quite reality. It's a supernatural threat.
Speaker 2: But still it's like his world of just sort of
Speaker 2: play and curiosity has suddenly taken this sharp turn into
Speaker 2: a into threatening confines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with all that, and I just love
Speaker 3: so many things about this opening. The way it captures
Speaker 3: this authentic feeling of a child's imagination and dream world,
Speaker 3: the way that there is a thin line between beauty
Speaker 3: and amazement and absolute horror, and that the way the
Speaker 3: story can just shift back and forth between the or
Speaker 3: kind of capture them both at the same time, especially
Speaker 3: with the image of the rainbow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And again you have such an ominous use
Speaker 2: of the rainbow here, This rainbow gait to a certain
Speaker 2: degree of more adult world.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you want to look at the peach orchard?
Speaker 3: The next one in order. So this one also begins
Speaker 3: with a young boy in a house a little bit
Speaker 3: older than the boy in the previous dream, and it
Speaker 3: starts with him taking a tray of cakes to his
Speaker 3: big sister and her friends. And this episode takes place
Speaker 3: on Hina Matsuri or Doll's Day, also known as Girls' Day.
Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about this beforehand, so I had
Speaker 3: to look it up. But this is a festival celebrated
Speaker 3: at the transition from winter to spring. I think these
Speaker 3: days it's often on March third, where families pray for
Speaker 3: the well being of their daughters. It's sort of a
Speaker 3: health and well being of our Daughter's Day. And the
Speaker 3: festival includes the display of dolls known as Hena Nino
Speaker 3: or Hena doll, which are styled after the imperial court
Speaker 3: of the Hayan period. So the protagonist, the boy, he
Speaker 3: brings a tray of goodies to his older sister who
Speaker 3: is with her friends, and they're in a room with
Speaker 3: a tiered display of Hena dolls in the background, and
Speaker 3: the boy stops to look at the dolls and there's
Speaker 3: kind of a strangeness, a music sting that indicates something
Speaker 3: is a little striking or unusual. And then he realizes
Speaker 3: that he brought more food to his sister and her
Speaker 3: friends than is needed. He thought that she had five
Speaker 3: friends with her, but there are only four friends there now,
Speaker 3: and he insists that he saw another girl with them earlier,
Speaker 3: but the sister tells him no, there are no other
Speaker 3: girls here. He is being strange. But then he sees
Speaker 3: the girl again. The other girl is dressed in pink
Speaker 3: and white, and she's watching him from the hallway, but
Speaker 3: she disappears when he tries to get his sister to
Speaker 3: look and see the.
Speaker 2: Other girl is already a little creepy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yes, So he follows the girl in pink out
Speaker 3: through the back door, out into the bamboo forest, all
Speaker 3: the way to a green hillside with tiered terraces, much
Speaker 3: like the tiered display with the Hena dolls in the house,
Speaker 3: and the hill is covered in soft grass, and when
Speaker 3: he arrives at the hillside, he's sort of ambushed by
Speaker 3: a mass of people. They all come running out on
Speaker 3: the terraces and they are dressed up like the Hena dolls,
Speaker 3: but in life size, and I think there's sort of
Speaker 3: an Emperor doll Man, the leader of them all. He
Speaker 3: addresses the boy sternly, and he says that they will
Speaker 3: never return to his house again because his family cut
Speaker 3: down the peach orchard that used to be on this hill.
Speaker 3: And he explains that they are the spirits of the
Speaker 3: peach trees, which are celebrated on the Dolls Day festival.
Speaker 3: And there seems to be kind of an implication that
Speaker 3: because of the family's treachery, they will also withhold their
Speaker 3: blessings from the family, and the boy begins to cry,
Speaker 3: and the Emperor yells at him. He tells him it's
Speaker 3: too late for tears. But then the Queen Doll remembers something.
Speaker 3: She says, this is the same boy who cried for
Speaker 3: the trees when they were being cut down. They say
Speaker 3: they remember he even pleaded with his family not to
Speaker 3: do it, not to cut down the orchard, and the
Speaker 3: Emperor at first he scoffs at this. He says that
Speaker 3: was only because the boy knew he would stop getting
Speaker 3: peaches to eat, and all of the members of the
Speaker 3: court laugh at him, but the boy protests. He says no,
Speaker 3: He says you can buy peaches at the store, but
Speaker 3: where can you buy a whole orchard of trees in bloom.
Speaker 3: He says he was crying because he loved the trees
Speaker 3: at themselves as living things, and then he starts to
Speaker 3: cry again. And then the doll people seem sort of ashamed.
Speaker 3: You can see them sort of looking at their feet
Speaker 3: and hanging their heads. And the emperor accepts the boy's explanation.
Speaker 3: He says he's a good boy and that he will
Speaker 3: be allowed to see the orchard in bloom one last time.
Speaker 3: And then there's a dance with all of the figures
Speaker 3: taking place on the terraces, and they perform these choreographed
Speaker 3: movements to symbolize the flowering of the trees. And then
Speaker 3: at the end of the dance, the boy sees the
Speaker 3: peach trees blossoming again, and there are petals falling everywhere.
Speaker 3: He also sees the girl in pink, and he tries
Speaker 3: to run after her, but suddenly he's back in the
Speaker 3: real world and all the trees are chopped down. Now
Speaker 3: they're just bare stumps, all except one. There's one tree
Speaker 3: that has a limb covered in flowers, kind of bouncing
Speaker 3: in the wind. And he goes over to it and
Speaker 3: he looks at it, and the end, what was going
Speaker 3: to happen next we don't get to see.
Speaker 2: This is also a strong segment. I mean, like they're
Speaker 2: all strong. It's not like there's a week one in
Speaker 2: the bunch. This one maybe hit me. I think is
Speaker 2: weirder just because I wasn't familiar with the traditions, and
Speaker 2: also I think my fever might have been spiking a
Speaker 2: little bit during the sequence as well. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: also really loved this one. Similar in some ways in
Speaker 2: theme to the first Sega segment.
Speaker 3: I thought this one was interesting because the Peach spirits
Speaker 3: themselves seem to abide by a kind of child's internal logic.
Speaker 3: The way that they think that he's actually a good
Speaker 3: boy because he cried because of the trees themselves and
Speaker 3: not because of just wanting to eat peaches. I don't know.
Speaker 3: That just feels like such a like a kid's way
Speaker 3: of thinking about this thing. Yeah, all right. The next
Speaker 3: segment is the Blizzard. I think we can be a
Speaker 3: little bit more cursory and talking about this one. Basically,
Speaker 3: it is four mountain climbers who are going up this mountain.
Speaker 3: They get hit by this blizzard. They're struggling in the snow.
Speaker 3: We see for a long time just them fighting against
Speaker 3: the wind and the snow, trying to make their way
Speaker 3: up hill but it is and they're trying to make
Speaker 3: the way to camp, but they can't see which way
Speaker 3: they're going. There's disagreement about whether they're on the right track,
Speaker 3: and eventually they begin to sort of get snowed in.
Speaker 3: They succumb to the snow and they're being covered up
Speaker 3: and they're freezing, and they sort of settle down, and
Speaker 3: there's the implication that if they do this and they
Speaker 3: don't reach camp, they're going to die. And then we
Speaker 3: see things from the perspective of the lead climber. It's
Speaker 3: sort of the leader of all of them, who's been
Speaker 3: trying to rally his friends to keep going. We see
Speaker 3: a figure begins to sort of put blankets over him,
Speaker 3: these shimmering blankets and shawls that go over his body
Speaker 3: like layers of snow. And this is from what I've read,
Speaker 3: this is supposed to be a traditional figure from Japanese
Speaker 3: folklore known as the yuki onna, which might be like
Speaker 3: the snow princess or snow fairy, snow witch, something like that,
Speaker 3: the snow spirit, who I think is often threatening in
Speaker 3: nature and here or she's ambiguous at first, but then
Speaker 3: I think by the end we can learn as definitely
Speaker 3: a threatening figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my understanding is that it does kind of vary. So.
Speaker 2: Yuki Ona is a pretty famous yokai, generally regarded as
Speaker 2: a yo kai because she's often more of a personification
Speaker 2: of the snow or of blizzards, though some tellings depict
Speaker 2: her as more of a yuri or a ghost that
Speaker 2: of a woman who died in the snow. As Heroko,
Speaker 2: Yoda and Matt All discussed in the book Yokai Attack.
Speaker 2: There as many different versions of this tale, as there
Speaker 2: are mountains in Japan. The tale of the Yukiyono was
Speaker 2: famously adapted in the nineteen sixty five film Kaitan, which
Speaker 2: we might come back to. The core stories involve her
Speaker 2: sparing a handsome young man during a blizzard like after
Speaker 2: like brutally killing his compatriots with winter powers, but then
Speaker 2: sparing him on the condition that he never tell anyone
Speaker 2: about this, and so the young man survives, and then,
Speaker 2: as luck would have it, he meets a beautiful young
Speaker 2: woman the next day. The two fall in love, they're married,
Speaker 2: they eventually have children, and yet the whole time, this
Speaker 2: need to tell the story of the woman in the
Speaker 2: snow steadily builds up inside him, till one day he
Speaker 2: breaks and he tells his wife about what happened in
Speaker 2: the snow that day. And I don't want to spoil anything,
Speaker 2: because it's pretty pretty amazing, but essentially we see the
Speaker 2: ramifications of him breaking his promise to the YUKIONO.
Speaker 3: Oh well, the Yukiona in this segment is is quite scary,
Speaker 3: and eventually though the climber does sort of overcome her influence.
Speaker 3: She's sort of lulling him to sleep in the snow,
Speaker 3: and there's one moment when she is sort of defeated
Speaker 3: or blown away. She turns into some kind of white cloth.
Speaker 3: It's like a white piece of clothing or flag or something,
Speaker 3: and just like blows away in the wind. But then
Speaker 3: the man wakes up after the blizzard is gone, and
Speaker 3: he sort of tries to he revives his compatriots. I
Speaker 3: think they're all still alive, and he sort of shakes them,
Speaker 3: tries to get them to wake up, and then they
Speaker 3: realize their camp is like right there, they're right beside
Speaker 3: it and they didn't know because of the storm. A
Speaker 3: lot of reviewers flag this, I at least from what
Speaker 3: I've seen online, as their least favorite segment. I think
Speaker 3: primarily because of how slow and monotonous parts of it are.
Speaker 3: Like it is very dreamlike in that respect, especially in
Speaker 3: the first half of them just fighting through the snow
Speaker 3: and the wind is blowing. But I don't know. I
Speaker 3: like this segment, and I really like the part where
Speaker 3: the snow witch speaks. You know, when the snow witch
Speaker 3: comes up over him while he's lying down. She's putting
Speaker 3: the shawls over him, and there's some kind of modulation
Speaker 3: on her voice, like it's doubled or something, so it
Speaker 3: sounds very strange. And you hear her saying, the snow
Speaker 3: is warm. It's so frightening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And my understanding is that that this it's
Speaker 2: sort of like the general vibes of the Yukiona. It's
Speaker 2: kind of a take on hypothermia and the idea of
Speaker 2: like giving in to death in the cold snow zihia.
Speaker 2: It's pretty creepy stuff.
Speaker 3: The snow is warm. Okay. Next segment is the tunnel.
Speaker 3: As we explained, this one begins with a military officer
Speaker 3: walking by himself on an empty road that cuts through
Speaker 3: the mountains, we somehow understand I think that he is
Speaker 3: coming home from war. I would guess by his uniform
Speaker 3: that it's World War two, And he seems weary and
Speaker 3: beaten down, but he's still kind of clutching a sense
Speaker 3: of formal dignity, has a kind of headheld high aspect
Speaker 3: that some of the other characters and protagonists here wouldn't
Speaker 3: necessarily have. And as he comes up the road, he
Speaker 3: faces the entrance to a tunnel. It's hard to say
Speaker 3: exactly why, but there is something really just cursed and
Speaker 3: ominous about this tunnel. I don't think it's a set
Speaker 3: made for the film. It looks like it's probably just
Speaker 3: a real concrete tunnel somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what a location. It's amazing, like just again,
Speaker 2: so ominous, and you know, it reads on so many levels,
Speaker 2: like like what is this? Is it a gateway to
Speaker 2: the underworld? It is nothing else, literally a gateway through
Speaker 2: the mountain. Yeah, so many ways to take it apart.
Speaker 3: Don't go in there. But then from inside he hears
Speaker 3: howling and whimpering, the sounds of a dog, and then
Speaker 3: a dog runs out of the tunnel, and this is
Speaker 3: from what I've read, supposed to be an anti tank dog.
Speaker 3: So it is a dog strapped with timed explosives, which
Speaker 3: was explored and then there were many of these trained
Speaker 3: as a weapon by multiple armies in World War Two.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how much they were actually used in combat,
Speaker 3: but they were at least trained. So in this case,
Speaker 3: it is a dog with a kind of saddle on
Speaker 3: its back, covered in pockets, and the pockets are stuffed
Speaker 3: with grenades. It is a bleak and horrifying image.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and certainly fits with some of the themes explored
Speaker 2: in the picture about humanity's relationship to nature. Here a
Speaker 2: great example of nature being twisted beyond mere domestication into
Speaker 2: actual weaponization. Pretty horrific.
Speaker 3: So the dog approaches the officer and snarls at him,
Speaker 3: but does not attack, and then the officer walks on
Speaker 3: into the tunnnnel, which is cavernous and echoing. We see
Speaker 3: these tracking, these moving shots going through the tunnel, just
Speaker 3: looking up at the ceiling of the tunnel as kind
Speaker 3: of light plays on it as he's walking along, and
Speaker 3: we can see the officer's breath, we hear his boots
Speaker 3: kind of clapping and reverberating as he makes his way
Speaker 3: down to the other end, and then we see at
Speaker 3: the emerging side of the tunnel the sky is dark
Speaker 3: blue and illuminated by a red lamp, which I thought
Speaker 3: was interesting. Kind of reminds me of that Charles Dickens
Speaker 3: ghost story we talked about last October, the signalman with
Speaker 3: the ghost or the premonition appearing by the red light
Speaker 3: at the end of the rail tunnel. And so after
Speaker 3: the commander comes out the other end of the passage,
Speaker 3: he stops because he hears steps behind him. Who's that
Speaker 3: He turns around to see and it is a ghost.
Speaker 3: It is a soldier in combat uniform with rifle and
Speaker 3: helmet and his skin painted blue blue fleshed being who
Speaker 3: should not be and the commander recognizes him. This is
Speaker 3: someone known to the protagonist. This is Private Naguchi, but
Speaker 3: Private Naguchi was killed in action and Noguchi is confused.
Speaker 3: He believes maybe he is still alive. He remembers going
Speaker 3: home after the war and being given rice cakes by
Speaker 3: his mother, remembers being comforted by his mother, but the
Speaker 3: commander has to explain to him, no, that was a
Speaker 3: dream you had. This is a dream about you know,
Speaker 3: the dreams of others. That was a dream you had.
Speaker 3: You were shot in battle and you passed out, and
Speaker 3: you woke up, and you told me you had that
Speaker 3: dream where you went home and saw your mother and
Speaker 3: she gave you rice cakes. Then you died in my
Speaker 3: arms a few minutes later, and Noguchi is so confused.
Speaker 3: He's he points out a light in the mountains beyond
Speaker 3: and he says, that's that's my parents' home, that house
Speaker 3: right there where the light is. But the commander argues
Speaker 3: with him. He tells him that he has to act up,
Speaker 3: that he is dead and he has to go to
Speaker 3: his rest, and he eventually the ghost seems to give in.
Speaker 3: He turns about face and he walks back into the tunnel.
Speaker 3: But it's not over because then here comes everyone, the
Speaker 3: entire company who served under this commander, and they come
Speaker 3: marching out of the tunnel. Information they're you know, they're
Speaker 3: like calling out drill instructions. They call him marching and
Speaker 3: they stand in order in front of him. And here
Speaker 3: there's a confrontation where ultimately the commander has to accept
Speaker 3: his responsibility for their death in battle, where he says
Speaker 3: he would like to blame the stupidity of war for
Speaker 3: the deaths of his men, but he knows in his
Speaker 3: heart that he bears personal responsibility for sending them into
Speaker 3: certain doom because it was it was a feudal attempt,
Speaker 3: but he sent them into battle anyway. And I feel
Speaker 3: like this moment highlights a theme that I think appears
Speaker 3: in multiple segments of this movie, which is the theme
Speaker 3: of individual responsibility versus a kind of collective blame or stupidity. Specifically,
Speaker 3: like there's a theme of the inadequacy of placing blame
Speaker 3: for tragedies on abstract, impersonal forces or diffuse collectives. So
Speaker 3: there's the case here, But then the same thing happens
Speaker 3: in the next segment in Mount Fujian Red where or
Speaker 3: actually two segments later, where there's like a bureaucratic man
Speaker 3: in a suit and glasses who kind of contrasts a
Speaker 3: force of impersonal stupidity and arrogance that allowed the nuclear
Speaker 3: meltdown in that segment to occur. But then he acknowledges
Speaker 3: that he is personally to blame somehow, though he doesn't
Speaker 3: explain how. And this seems to be something that's on
Speaker 3: the dreamer's mind. It's one of these themes that comes
Speaker 3: up in multiple cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I want to also flag he hear that
Speaker 2: the makeup for the soldiers the ghosts here is really
Speaker 2: really well done. It is it is again you get
Speaker 2: a sense of Corosawa pulling back from anything too monstrous,
Speaker 2: like these are not like, this is not zombie makeup
Speaker 2: or what you might think of a zombie makeup. It
Speaker 2: really but it's also not like straight up kobuki makeup either.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like somewhere in this perfect place between
Speaker 2: kabuki makeup and like just a corpse like.
Speaker 3: Pallor Yeah, the blueness of their makeup is so interesting.
Speaker 3: Is a color choice. It doesn't exactly suggest rot. It
Speaker 3: suggests a kind of changedness and like become a different
Speaker 3: kind of being. Yeah, but anyway, so the commander accepts
Speaker 3: his responsibility and he orders his men to turn about
Speaker 3: face and to march back into the tunnel, to essentially
Speaker 3: accept their destruction and go into death, go into their rest.
Speaker 3: And then you might think the encounter is over, but
Speaker 3: there is another escalation because we get the return of
Speaker 3: the dog. So the anti tank dog runs back out
Speaker 3: again and begins it starts snarling and menacing the officer,
Speaker 3: and once again it just ends at this moment of
Speaker 3: heightened menace where we don't know how it resolves.
Speaker 2: Great segment though, really everyone in it is stellar, just
Speaker 2: the I mean everything about it, the way it's framed,
Speaker 2: the costuming, the location they use, just everything lines up
Speaker 2: on this one for sure.
Speaker 3: The next segment is Crows. This is the one that
Speaker 3: has the paintings of Vincent veng Go. So it begins
Speaker 3: with the Khorsaur protagonist in a museum looking at Vengo's paintings.
Speaker 3: He's looking at starry Night and one of his self portraits.
Speaker 2: Then he experiences a little Stendel syndrome and just walks
Speaker 2: right into that thing.
Speaker 3: He goes into the paintings. I think the first one
Speaker 3: he enters is so Vengo did a number of paintings
Speaker 3: of the bridge at Arla ar l e s if
Speaker 3: I'm saying that right, Arla's or Arla, And I think
Speaker 3: the specific one that he appears in is the Langlowy
Speaker 3: Bridge at Arla with women washing. So that's a painting
Speaker 3: you can look up if you want. It shows like
Speaker 3: a bridge with a sort of you know, drawbridge characteristic
Speaker 3: that can be raised so boats can pass underneath. But
Speaker 3: there's a carriage, a horse drawn carriage on the wooden
Speaker 3: part of the bridge, and then down in the foreground
Speaker 3: there are women washing clothes in the river. And our
Speaker 3: protagonist just sort of wanders into this scene and it's
Speaker 3: reproduced in a spectacular way. I love the way that
Speaker 3: the color qualities of the van Go paintings are recreated
Speaker 3: in the sets and the lighting that Kusawa puts together here.
Speaker 2: Yes, agreed, And I also like this is a nice
Speaker 2: pivot from the more serious, or at least the more
Speaker 2: dramatic vibes of the last segment. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the protagonist here wants to meet ven Go and
Speaker 3: he wanders around looking for him. He asks the locals
Speaker 3: where he is. They say he's a madman. But he
Speaker 3: finds van Go in a wheat field painting or observing
Speaker 3: the wheat field and talking about painting. This a major
Speaker 3: visual theme here is van Go's painting wheat field with crows,
Speaker 3: which shows like, you know, these the tall staves of
Speaker 3: wheed and then the crows flying up out of them
Speaker 3: into a blue sky. The version we see a van
Speaker 3: Go portrayed by Martin Scorsese, and this vignette seems to
Speaker 3: resemble the figure, at least as I found in a
Speaker 3: Vango painting called Painter on the Road to Tarasan or Terrascon. Again,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how to say that, but he's got
Speaker 3: a you know, a wide straw hat and just a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff with him. You know, he's got all
Speaker 3: his gear and his painting and a satchel and all that.
Speaker 3: The VANGOI meet is very distracted, you know, he's never
Speaker 3: really giving the protagonist his full attention. His attention is
Speaker 3: on the scene and the landscape. And there's a lot
Speaker 3: of idea of like, you know, what's really valuable here
Speaker 3: is this scene and its beauty, and I must consume
Speaker 3: it and process it and turn it into something and
Speaker 3: that's what that's what matters. And I'm sort of halfway
Speaker 3: giving you enough attention to talk to you, but only
Speaker 3: about what I I'm.
Speaker 2: Doing, doesn't he This is the part we have a
Speaker 2: line where old Marty van Go says, well, why aren't
Speaker 2: you painting? Like you got your stuff? Like what are
Speaker 2: you doing out here? Like this is this is why
Speaker 2: we're here, This is the reason we exist. Get to paint?
Speaker 3: Why are you talking to me? Why aren't you painting? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think that's a nice little, uh, gentle self criticism
Speaker 3: here from Corsawa. You know that apparently Corsawa was personally
Speaker 3: very interested in Vango, like he had read a lot
Speaker 3: of his letters and stuff and was interested in the
Speaker 3: man's life as well as to his work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again makes sense given Chrisau was an early
Speaker 2: interest and in a career as a painter before pivoting
Speaker 2: to a film.
Speaker 3: Next couple of segments, Mount Fujian Read and The Weeping Demon,
Speaker 3: or sort of the nuclear horror segments. So Mount Fujian Read.
Speaker 3: As I said, the protagonist just finds himself in the
Speaker 3: middle of a disaster scene. I think when we first
Speaker 3: see him, everybody else is running in one direction and
Speaker 3: he's walking in the opposite direction. He's like the only one.
Speaker 3: He's going against the flow of the crowd, and he
Speaker 3: sees Mount Fuji just it looks like hot lava. It's
Speaker 3: just you know, glowing hot, and there are these explosions,
Speaker 3: and he learns that it's due to a nuclear meltdown.
Speaker 3: And as we talked about, they have these discussions. A
Speaker 3: man in a suit appears and he kind of explains things.
Speaker 3: There's this long digression about the different colored like the
Speaker 3: different colors of fog and what radioactive isotopes they represent,
Speaker 3: and how each one kills you in different ways, and
Speaker 3: they're like, well, we color coded them so you can
Speaker 3: know which type of fog is killing you, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't help you survive. It seems to be some kind
Speaker 3: of commentary on like the absurdity of like false senses
Speaker 3: of security provided by technology and that there are these,
Speaker 3: you know, threats that people just kind of rush into
Speaker 3: and we're given false assurance that it's going to be okay,
Speaker 3: but in fact that that was all you know, that
Speaker 3: was all just rosy talk, and in fact this is
Speaker 3: real stupidity and people are really to blame for this disaster.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot to unpack here with just
Speaker 2: the symbolism of all of this. Because Mount Fuji, of
Speaker 2: course is a dormant volcano. It's the tallest peak in Japan.
Speaker 2: I believes the last eruption was seventeen oh seven, But
Speaker 2: at the same time it is very much a symbol
Speaker 2: of Japan. And then on top of that we have
Speaker 2: the like the dream logic here as well of the
Speaker 2: mountain we learn is not actually erupting. It is nuclear
Speaker 2: meltdowns happening like behind the mountain. But at the same
Speaker 2: time everything has like the flavor of volcanic eruptions, so
Speaker 2: it's like both things at once without being either.
Speaker 3: This one also has that horrifying sense of futility because
Speaker 3: it ends with a really just gut wrenching scene with
Speaker 3: there's like a woman with two children who have joined him,
Speaker 3: and the protagonist is trying to protect them as like
Speaker 3: the fog clouds billow toward them, and he's in this
Speaker 3: utterly feudal gesture. He's like waving at the fog clouds
Speaker 3: with his jacket, trying to fan them away. But there's
Speaker 3: a sense that everyone is just doomed and there's nothing
Speaker 3: anyone can do. Again, ends right at the height of
Speaker 3: the action, and then goes on to the next segment,
Speaker 3: another nuclear horror segment called The Weeping Demon, where our
Speaker 3: protagonist is wandering in this volcanic landscape very much it's
Speaker 3: almost like the slopes of Mount Fuji maybe, where there's
Speaker 3: a kind of dark volcanic soil and all these rocks
Speaker 3: and mist and fog billowing everywhere, and he encounters this
Speaker 3: monstrous looking figure with a horn on his head, which
Speaker 3: I think is initially styled to be some sort of
Speaker 3: some kind of onny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely some onny vibes to this creature. I also
Speaker 2: have to flag that I again am sick and I
Speaker 2: had a few while watching this film. I think my
Speaker 2: eyes shut for a second at the very end of
Speaker 2: the Mount Fuji segment and then reopened during the Weeping Demon,
Speaker 2: and I thought it was one segment, but there is
Speaker 2: kind of like a similar vibe, like he's heading off
Speaker 2: into the nuclear waste at the end of Mount Fuji
Speaker 2: and now here we are in a different atomic wasteland.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then after this we get a long discourse
Speaker 3: from the demon as he explains this hell they have created.
Speaker 3: He sort of explains himself as a mutated product of radiation.
Speaker 3: And then they sit under these tree sized dandelions that
Speaker 3: are twisted and mutated by the radioactive fallout. And then
Speaker 3: he talks about these different kinds of demons, these like
Speaker 3: grades of demons. The demon with one horn is scary,
Speaker 3: but the demons with one horn get eaten by the
Speaker 3: demons who have two or three horns. And they're also hungry,
Speaker 3: and then we see there's like a scene where the
Speaker 3: demon is like, come, I'll show you, and he leads
Speaker 3: the protagonists to this overlook where they look down at
Speaker 3: these gross like pools of pink and red water, where
Speaker 3: all of these demons are like running around them in
Speaker 3: circles in a way that suggests representations from Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 3: where you know, in hell you will have the damned
Speaker 3: sort of like running in pointless circles around something.
Speaker 2: Uh and it uh.
Speaker 3: And it's like they're they're calling out, they're you know,
Speaker 3: they're ready, they're gonna come eat them soon. But they're
Speaker 3: in pain themselves. They're suffering. Their their horns cause them pain.
Speaker 3: And we learned so many things. The demon explains he
Speaker 3: was again there's this thing of like eyebear individual responsibility.
Speaker 3: He explains, I was a farmer who destroyed my harvest
Speaker 3: as part of a scheme to keep prices high. And
Speaker 3: and but they talk about other people who did other
Speaker 3: things who may have become even worse kinds of demons themselves.
Speaker 3: And so another just bleak, horrifying segment that also ends
Speaker 3: with the demon just menacing the Krusauur protagonist and the
Speaker 3: protagonist is running away down the side of the mountain,
Speaker 3: looking constantly like he's about to go headlong and tumble away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like he's berating him right, like, get out
Speaker 2: of here. Do you want to become a demon too?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So this one was at once like as bleak as
Speaker 2: the previous segment, but also since we had these monster
Speaker 2: like beings, it also felt like a little more escapist.
Speaker 2: So I was again, all of these segments are excellently
Speaker 2: put together, but in a way, this one felt like
Speaker 2: a nice turn away from the seriousness of the previous
Speaker 2: Mount Fuji sequence.
Speaker 3: And then we get a very sharp turn into different
Speaker 3: territory for the last sequence, which is the Village of
Speaker 3: the Watermills. So our protagonist here the Dreamer, arrives by
Speaker 3: foot in a small rural village beside a river. There
Speaker 3: are these old wooden water wheels turning in the current,
Speaker 3: and I guess they're running mills, and they're flowers blooming everywhere,
Speaker 3: and kursaw, what really takes time to show us the
Speaker 3: nature around there, to show us like green water plants
Speaker 3: waving in the stream, kind of like hair blowing in
Speaker 3: the wind. And the dreamer comes in and he watches
Speaker 3: the children as they sort of gather on a little
Speaker 3: island in the stream that's bridged, you know that they
Speaker 3: reach by bridge and they pick flowers there, and they
Speaker 3: take the flowers and they lay them all on a stone.
Speaker 3: It's a very just beautiful, kind of gentle scene. And
Speaker 3: the dreamer meets an old man who's working on a
Speaker 3: water wheel mechanism of some kind, and they have a
Speaker 3: long conversation where the old man just kind of explains
Speaker 3: his philosophy. They talk about all kinds of things. He
Speaker 3: A big part of it is him talking about how
Speaker 3: they don't need technology in this village. The man's like,
Speaker 3: don't you have electricity here? And the man's like, we
Speaker 3: don't need it and he's like, yeah, but what about
Speaker 3: at night when it gets dark? And the guy's like,
Speaker 3: night is supposed to be dark. And so the main
Speaker 3: thrust of the old Man's philosophy is that people and
Speaker 3: people in the cities think that labor saving technology will
Speaker 3: make them happy, but secretly it just makes them more miserable,
Speaker 3: and they don't realize it until they have already destroyed
Speaker 3: the natural world and they can't get it back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this segment is great in so many ways, like
Speaker 2: it's it's definitely another rumination on this idea of the
Speaker 2: idyllic rural Japan versus modern urban Japan, something that you
Speaker 2: see in multiple studio ghibli pictures. So if any of
Speaker 2: you are certainly more familiar with the works of Miyazaki,
Speaker 2: you've seen this kind of vibe. And I believe and
Speaker 2: I would go as far as to say, like this
Speaker 2: the sequence too, like it feels very much in line
Speaker 2: with like a Miyazaki film too, and that we have
Speaker 2: just such vibrant colors, like this is the world in
Speaker 2: full bloom. This is like it is almost like an
Speaker 2: Eden to some extent. And oh and by the way,
Speaker 2: I should mention that that documentary Cursaw Was Way also
Speaker 2: features interview segments with me asz Aki. He's one of
Speaker 2: the many directors who talks about his admiration for Cursawa's work.
Speaker 3: This segment absolutely has strong me az Aki vibes, yeah,
Speaker 3: in that love for verdant nature and the environmentalist outlook
Speaker 3: and all that sort of thing. And then also I
Speaker 3: think in this next moment, because after this, the protagonist
Speaker 3: hears what sounds like a celebration, He hears laughter and
Speaker 3: shouting and happy music, and the old man explains to him, actually,
Speaker 3: what he's hearing is a funeral. It's a good, happy funeral,
Speaker 3: and this is another part of his philosophy. He says, well,
Speaker 3: when someone dies young, it's sad, but when someone dies
Speaker 3: in old age, it's a joyous occasion because they lived
Speaker 3: a full life. So the people march and they sing
Speaker 3: happy songs. And the woman who died in the funeral
Speaker 3: that's being celebrated today was almost one hundred years old.
Speaker 3: In fact, she was this old man's first love when
Speaker 3: they were both very young. She broke his heart she
Speaker 3: married another, and then he just laughs about it.
Speaker 2: I love his laugh here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also The protagonist asks the old man about
Speaker 3: the stone where the children laid the flowers, and the
Speaker 3: man tells the story. He says that long ago a
Speaker 3: traveler came to the village, much like our dreamer here,
Speaker 3: but he arrived sick like he brought the sickness of
Speaker 3: the modern world with him, and he collapsed and died
Speaker 3: beside the river, and the people took pity on him
Speaker 3: and they buried him right where he fell, and the
Speaker 3: stone is his grave marker, and the children place flowers
Speaker 3: on it. It's hard not to think about the man
Speaker 3: who died as being kind of suggested as another version
Speaker 3: of the visitor of the dreamer here and then from here,
Speaker 3: the old man goes off to celebrate the death of
Speaker 3: his first love, and the traveler watches the funeral march
Speaker 3: and listens to the happy music, and he feels kind
Speaker 3: of infused with the goodness and the happiness of this place,
Speaker 3: and we hear the music as well. That's the end.
Speaker 2: The music is so terrific here, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: like I don't know exactly what you call this type
Speaker 2: of song, like how this factors into traditional Japanese music,
Speaker 2: But it's very joyous, like the old man explains it,
Speaker 2: like this is a celebration of life, and you totally
Speaker 2: feel it. You see it on the faces of all
Speaker 2: of the villagers in this procession. It's just such a
Speaker 2: great vibe.
Speaker 3: I want to come back to that joy in just
Speaker 3: a minute, but I guess before we wrap up, I
Speaker 3: just wanted to mention a couple of the other interesting
Speaker 3: themes and threads I saw tying together these very different narratives.
Speaker 3: One thing that I noticed, Rob, did you notice this
Speaker 3: theme of the dilemma of being destroyed versus being transformed.
Speaker 3: That like, in several of the more nightmarish scenes, especially,
Speaker 3: there is a dilemma faced by the characters in which
Speaker 3: they can either be annihilated, they can cease to exist
Speaker 3: or live on transformed into something tortured and unnatural. This
Speaker 3: is a major theme of the Weeping Demon. It comes
Speaker 3: up in Mount Fuji and Red, where they talk about
Speaker 3: the idea of immediate death versus a slow death from
Speaker 3: the effects of radiation. It comes up in the Tunnel
Speaker 3: because the dead soldiers can't acknowledge that they are dead
Speaker 3: and they must cease to exist. Thus they go on
Speaker 3: in this baffled, twisted state of blue undeath. This clearly
Speaker 3: seems to be something that is on Krosova's mind. Another
Speaker 3: thing is across multiple scenes, I noticed a repeated theme
Speaker 3: of people getting no help from authorities and in fact
Speaker 3: authority figures suggesting that you must die like. There are
Speaker 3: multiple scenes where someone is denied aid by someone who
Speaker 3: should help them, or by an authority figure like a
Speaker 3: parent the mother in the first sequence, or a government
Speaker 3: official or a military commander.
Speaker 2: And a corporate world.
Speaker 3: Yes. In all these cases, the authority figure suggests there
Speaker 3: is nothing I can do to help you, and you
Speaker 3: must die. But then finally, and I think this brings
Speaker 3: us back to the last segment. There is a more
Speaker 3: theme that you get in both negative and positive visions,
Speaker 3: and it's something about the holiness of nature, something about
Speaker 3: how the holiness of nature is not appreciated, but that
Speaker 3: there is promise in coming to see it. And so
Speaker 3: I think the clear statement of the idea is that
Speaker 3: the natural world is absolutely vital to us, but that
Speaker 3: we remain blind to how important it is until we
Speaker 3: have already destroyed it. This theme is made very plain
Speaker 3: in the speech given by the old Man and the
Speaker 3: final Dream, where he's talking about the virtues of living
Speaker 3: simply and being in harmony with nature. He talks about
Speaker 3: the false promise of happiness through technology and convenience and materialism.
Speaker 3: But you see this theme occur at different levels through
Speaker 3: I think most of the segments, like the boy in
Speaker 3: the peach orchard is redeemed by proving that he hated
Speaker 3: the idea of cutting down the peach trees, and that
Speaker 3: he loved the orchard for the living beauty of the plants,
Speaker 3: not just for the produce. Not just for the material,
Speaker 3: you know, the peaches they grew.
Speaker 2: And in that segment we see that some level of
Speaker 2: regeneration is possible, like the we see that one plant
Speaker 2: that is growing back the promise of the future. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And in the crows segment also this is part of
Speaker 3: what van Go like, he discusses this kind of almost
Speaker 3: life or death drive to find purpose and positive meaning
Speaker 3: in life by like seeking out what's beautiful and valuable
Speaker 3: in nature and kind of processing it through, you know,
Speaker 3: to take that scene of nature and to make it
Speaker 3: part of himself and to make himself part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then of course that brings us back to the
Speaker 3: funeral at the end. There's something relieving and gorgeous and
Speaker 3: cathartic about the funeral because it suggests a kind of
Speaker 3: a way of happiness, happiness and purpose and goodness even
Speaker 3: in death, by finding your life in the kind of
Speaker 3: state that these villagers find it that you know that
Speaker 3: they live in harmony with nature, and they realize they
Speaker 3: see beauty around them and they take part of it.
Speaker 3: They don't, you know, they don't remain blind to it.
Speaker 3: They become part of it and they work with it,
Speaker 3: and it makes even death a happy thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, return to nature or return to traditional values.
Speaker 2: This is you see this as a recurring theme in
Speaker 2: Japanese media of this time period especially, but also I
Speaker 2: think globally as well. I mean, this idea of of
Speaker 2: returning to nature, returning to the garden, you know, you
Speaker 2: see that certainly throughout the later half of the twentieth
Speaker 2: century and on through storytelling today. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: a revelation that thankfully we've completely abandoned.
Speaker 3: Or could hope to put into a kind of happy synthesis,
Speaker 3: because I also don't think it's quite fair to fully embrace,
Speaker 3: like the the philosophy that all labor saving conveniences are
Speaker 3: bad or something, you know, that happiness is necessarily through
Speaker 3: like destroying all machines and not having electricity. I mean,
Speaker 3: maybe it is, but I'm not sure that's the case.
Speaker 3: But certainly there is a lot of wisdom in the
Speaker 3: movies plea to be more conscious and protective of nature
Speaker 3: and to see ourselves as being in an absolutely vital
Speaker 3: kind of personal relationship with it, each one of us,
Speaker 3: and also together as a community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, that's the dream. Anyway, in this case, Kurosawa's Dreams.
Speaker 3: All right, well, I guess that's what I've got on Dreams.
Speaker 3: Rob is the is the cold medicine flagging? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Probably so, I believe. I believe I'm running out of
Speaker 2: energy here, but this is a great one. I'm so
Speaker 2: glad you picked Dreams for us to watch here for
Speaker 2: this episode of Weird House Cinema. Again, it's widely available,
Speaker 2: It's well worth watching, and again it's really hard to
Speaker 2: think of. I love dream sequences in films and television,
Speaker 2: but I find it rare that a filmmaker actually captures
Speaker 2: some true essence of dream and a character of Saul
Speaker 2: absolutely nails it here. Yeah, yeah, all right, we're gonna
Speaker 2: gohe and close it up. But hey, we'll be back
Speaker 2: next week with another cinematic masterpiece. Stay tuned for that one.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Weird House Cinema this is the
Speaker 2: episode that publishes on Fridays and the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind podcast feed. We're also experimenting with a standalone
Speaker 2: playlist of Weird House Cinema, so you can find Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema listed separately on whatever platform it is you
Speaker 2: having to get your podcasts at. So check that out
Speaker 2: and if you are on a letterbox dot com. You
Speaker 2: can find us there. We are Weird House. That's our username,
Speaker 2: and there's a list of all the films we've covered
Speaker 2: thus far, and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming
Speaker 2: up next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you were like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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