Thoughts on Dreams (1990)

A scene that looks like a painting doesn't make a painting. If you look closely, all of nature has its beauty.

dreams are said to be born of the subconscious echoes of the psyche: they are said to be reflections, an indication or an unveiling of the deepest parts of you. their true meaning is elusive, steeped in cryptic ambiguity... you drift through a false-truth reality made of the basest parts of yourself, barely lucid as a captive audience to the murkiness of parts unknown to you

Kurosawa presents a chronology of his own dreams, revealing his innermost vulnerabilities and sentiments as they change over time, sculpted by worldly calamity and experience: the vague silhouette of the unsurmountable vastness of the unknown sharpens with the specificity of life's tragedies, we hop from the innocence of a child's fear to the weariness of post-war regret, to the abject horror of man's destruction, to the peacefulness of retrospective wisdom.

Kurosawa presents them as they are, showing us a man's journey in the reflections of the reprieve; a life through the shadows it casts, a score through its rests, a noise through its silences and its echoes

Originally posted on Letterboxd on 30th July 2024