DREAMS is the purest thing Kurosawa ever made. My goodness. I'd forgotten how perfect this film is. No story, no characters, perhaps even no point. Just a collection of abstract emotional experiences rapturously presented in vivid, psychedelic glory. Buñuel would've been proud. DREAMS is moving not simply because of what it gorgeously captures on screen (though the imagery alone is truly sublime), but for how it calls forth the viewer's subconscious to fill in the gaps and ruminate on deeply personal thoughts and feelings. And that's the amazing thing, these dreams aren't even our own, they’re Kurosawa's, and yet they're mysterious enough to spark enchantment in the most wistful of ways. 

I've seen it three times now and each viewing gets better, deeper and exquisitely stranger. As I've gotten older these dreams have also become profoundly unsettling, despite the peaceful veneer that floats over each one. Bilge Ebiri calls it "one of the calmest and one of the most terrifying works of Kurosawa's career." He's right. These dreams cooly pass through soft pageants of color, giving off the appearance of hushed serenity, but there's existential dread bubbling beneath each one.

Every dream works for me. Every dream scares me. They all feel like I'm drifting through a museum of ancient fairytales, or folkloric myths, each one imparting something important about the human condition. Whether it's forbidden knowledge (“Sunshine Through the Rain”), imperial devastation (“The Peach Orchard”), clinical entrapment (“The Blizzard”), survivor's guilt (“The Tunnel”), artistic transformation (“Crows”), atomic annihilation (“Mt. Fuji in Red”), environmental pollution (“The Weeping Demon”), or the erasure of nature (“Village of the Watermills”), these dreams cut through all the bullshit and speak in a spiritual language known only to the sensitive soul. DREAMS is an expression of pure art that beckons us to come to it, and not the other way around. It is the kind of cinematic experience people will call "pretentious" and "self-indulgent," and they wouldn't be wrong. I personally can't deny its strange, hypnotic power. 

It is the lucid embodiment of this meme.

"The Blizzard" is my favorite, hands down. It's so frigidly miserable yet weirdly hopeful, though hopeful isn't even the right word to describe it. More like temporarily saved. You rest for a moment, then start the whole process over again trying to muscle your way through the ice. I've been to this place before. It really does move in slow-motion, and goes on for way too long. On happier days, in retrospect, it also feels straight out of Ocarina of Time’s Ice Cavern.

On a side note, what are some of the strangest, jitteriest, or revelatory dreams you've ever had? And what do you think they mean, if anything?

Here are a few of mine…

The earliest dream I recall as a child finds me staring outside my bedroom window at the old, sprucey pine tree in our backyard. It is very dark, but the moon illuminates a wolf climbing the tree, and as it reaches the top, it turns its head to smile at me in the incandescent light. 

Another dream: I'm staring into what looks like a black, bottomless pit, when suddenly I start to make out shapes of impossible architecture. Stairs zig-zagging in all directions appear, while fading and then disappearing into the inky void below. I start to step down. It's utterly frightening. I'm terrified that I'll slip and be eaten by the darkness.

Another dream: I'm sitting in my dad's dental chair waiting to be operated on. No one is around. The place is a graveyard. I turn my head to see a giant-sized cobra coil back and lunge with open fangs towards me.

Another dream: I'm waiting on stage for the play to begin. I'm one of the actors and my part hasn't arrived yet. I can see the audience growing bigger and bigger, and while it keeps getting bigger I grow more nervous. I start to rehearse my lines in my head, only, I can't remember anything. I feel stressed and anxious. The play is about to start. I'm desperately trying to remember my first few lines. The audience is going to laugh at me. I feel so embarrassed. I'm not prepared at all.

Another dream: I'm back in school again. There's a class I know I'm supposed to attend, but I keep avoiding it. Days and weeks go by, but I still procrastinate. I start to worry that I'm going to fail the class, hoping that I went enough times to make the teacher forget. The longer I linger, the more fear and trepidation I feel. 

So…who wants to get Freudian and break me open?

Kurosawa Ranked