Monday, November 12, 2018

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

A bittersweet ending to it all.



Akira Kurosawa's Dreams in my mind could be viewed as a perfect movie to some. It contains 8 vignettes, each story having a different style and message and that's why I can see someone saying it's a perfect movie. At the end of the day you will have your absolute favorite story, and mine personally would be Village Of The Watermills. It's sort of difficult to explain why, I love the conversation between the young man and the elder talking about life and the way they live and the ending to the whole film is very life affirming and did choke me up a bit. Whether the film is talking about life, death, childhood wonder, or facing the demons of your past and future it does it beautifully, with enough time in each story to not only appreciate the message but the visuals. The story Crows was a very close first pick for me, and mainly due to the ending. Now I need to talk about the time period this was made, the film was released in 1990 and though the effects in the ending of Crows could just be brushed off as a green screen but I don't care it looks great! The whole film just feels like it was made in the 90s, not by the dated fashion trends or terminology but just how the film was shot. Now I may be going out on a severely thin limb here, but I think once a very, very long time ago I saw this movie. Not the whole thing but maybe one or two of the stories. I might have watched it on one of the premium movie channels like HBO or Starz back in the day, and it really made me feel like I was that young again. I have such good memories of seeing different kinds of movies from different parts of the world at that age, whether it be a Heisei Godzilla movie, a piece of French cinema like Amelie, or just a movie good or bad made here in the States, this film took me back to that and I loved it. It's such a good movie, I mean unfairly good like I can't say one bad thing about it kind of good. It reinforces the fact that film is made for the amazing and the beautiful and this particular movie does it in flying colors.

So concludes my initial journey into Kurosawa's works. It was greatly interesting and even touching, and no doubt I'll come to own and watch these movies time and again. But our work is not finished this week, for there is much to return to and to explore.

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