Too much of everything

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is supposedly the dreams of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. It's a series of vignettes of surreal segments. I wouldn't even call them stories. They don't necessarily have a narrative. The most intriguing are the various visual concepts.In Sunshine Through The Rain, a boy disobeys his mother and goes into forest where he sees a procession. The procession is fascinating. It's the first moment where I thought his movie would be so much more compelling animated. It reminded me a bit of Spirited Away. I don't know what to take from the woman telling the boy to commit Seppuku. It points to the surreal non-sensible aspect of these vignettes. Each one of these vignettes provides a visual motif but the story cannot be followed like a regular narrative. This is an interesting visual exercise but not a compelling story-telling film.

This, for me, is one of the most beautiful films ever made. Considered by many to be 2nd rate Kurosawa, that's something I just don't buy. So many of his techniques are on display, infinity shots, close-ups, telephoto manipulations, great storytelling (for the most part) and some of the best color cinematography I've yet to see. I love this film. If critics did not know who the director was, I believe it would be considered a classic but some artists are virtually always held to expectations that are foolish. I have seen almost all of Kurosawa's films and I've never seen one I didn't like. Some are masterpieces, some near masterpieces and even his weaker ones always interesting. I was surprised how much i liked The Quiet Duel and I Live in Fear perhaps because they are not written about constantly like Ran, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo or the wonderful Ikiru.If any of his films deserved a Criterion Blu-ray release, this is it and I think it is only one of perhaps 3 that Criterion has not done. Certainly the only reason must be to do with getting the rights and not that they think it isn't deserving. It is written that Kurosawa came to color late yet he was a painter, therefore his wonderful albeit overly colorful films. Overly colorful for realists but not artists who know how to employ it with genius. It's simple, beautiful, a true piece of film art by one of the greatest directors in film history.

Making small time jump (which will be covered in time) in the study of the films of Kurosawa, we fall into one of his already colored films. Indeed very motley, perhaps one of the first compilations of short films sampled together. Naturally the film has complete effect directed far into the future of humanity, revealed by the last dream that is presented to us.Through dreamy and innocent world of young children, wandering young man, all the way to the wise centenarian; through perpetual motion of life resembling river, the gaze of man encounters with the people around him. He remains defenseless and fragile - what his nature is in fact - but loving enough to think about others, nature and the future generations.Through the black and white mountains, enchanting forests, paintings of van Gogh (my most favorite painter), the village of mills, and to the horrors of past wars and accidents with nuclear energy, the most pressing environmental issues of post-modernity, dreams tell us the story of a man who may have billions of faces, who at some point may become presumptuous and start to live at the expense of others. The wise old man asks us - how smart scientists are when they can not understand the heart of nature? With their discoveries and creations they cloud the thinking of the people, which pollutes not only nature but also their hearts.So dreams have a strong message from the director, and are his call to humility and listening to the harmony of the universe, because it brings us peace, quietness, kindness and love. And the man does not need nothing else. A story told to us by the sensitive father of cinema.http://vihrenmitevmovies.blogspot.com/

Akira Kurosawa was perhaps the single greatest film director in more objective terms (i.e. in terms of influence over other directors plus some other factors) and this is his final film. Showing all his virtuosity in directing, Kurosawa made a film about dreams and is a film of dreamlike quality. It is not as avant-garde and "crazy" as Tarkosvky's Zerkalo or Norstein's Tale of Tales. Instead it shows dreams as narrative in a typical Kurosawa fashion: the rational way (Kurosawa's way) of narrating irrational (i.e. dream like) events. It is a very artistic film and shows Kurosawa's admiration of painting and his expert use of colors is a product of the fact that his artistic career began in painting before turning to film.