Dreams

Movie: Dreams, 1990; 119 min

Director: Akira Kurosowa

Actors: Akira Terao, Martin Scorsese, Mitsunori Isaki, Chisho Ryu, Mieko Harada

Summary: The film is comprised of eight different, imaginative dreams that are shown in this order: Sunshine Through The Rain, The Peach Orchard, The Blizzard, The Tunnel, Crows, Mount Fuji in Red, The Weeping Demon, Village of the Watermills.

Question 1: What is the purpose for the absence of music during a majority of the blizzard dream?

Although the blizzard has multiple dream-like qualities—for example, the random woman in the middle of the blizzard—the absence of music causes the dream to seem very real. The director and composer accomplish this by only including the white noise of the blizzard, without any accompaniment of a musical score. This absence of sound makes the dream feel like more of a reality because in a real blizzard, the sound is so intense that all anyone would be able to hear is a loud white noise. Without including a musical score for the majority of the scene, the director and composer succeed in making the audience question if this dream is different from the others and if this blizzard is not a dream, but reality. Another approach can be that the blizzard is reality, and when the score comes in towards the middle of the scene, this is when the dream occurs. In other words, the entire story is not a dream, but the dream occurs within the blizzard.

Question 2: How does the director bring the man into VanGough’s world during the painting/museum scene?

The dream starts with a man admiring VanGough’s paintings at a museum. All of a sudden, the man is within one of the painting’s settings. The director makes it obvious that the new place is VanGough’s world because all of the colors are vibrant and the places are recognizable in some of VanGough’s famous works of art. For example, the man walks to the haystacks and past colorful houses and bridges. Also, the director uses an interesting technique to bring the man into a new world by using green screen technology to make the man look as if he walks through pathways in some of VanGough’s paintings. This interesting cinematic technique brings the audience into the paintings and as well, it intensifies the dream to make it more extreme yet also magical at the same time