Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe dive into Akira Kurosawa’s gorgeous and surreal 1990 anthology film, "Dreams." (originally published 6/20/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob Lamb. In today's episode, we're going to be airing
an episode that originally came out six twenty five. It
is Akira kurosaw Was Dreams. This is a gorgeous film
and very surreal and unfittingly dreamlike. So this one is
a real pleasure to discuss. I hope you enjoy it

(00:27):
as well.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we're going to be talking about Akira kurosaw was nineteen
ninety anthology film Dreams, which is exactly what it says
on the box. This is a collection of a eight
short vignettes that take the form of dreams and nightmares.

(01:05):
I had never seen this film before this week when
I picked it out for the show, and I love
this movie. But if you watch it, you should know
what you're getting into, especially if you've liked other Corosawa movies.
This is not seven Samurai. That's like, you know, a gripping,
exciting story. This is a movie that really asks for

(01:26):
your patients as an audience member. The pace is moody
and slow. There is no central or overarching plot. There
are some themes and character types that recur, but each
of the eight short stories is essentially self contained, and
they partake of extremely varied tones, settings, and pacings. Some

(01:51):
of the stories are like a weird kind of improvisational
fairy tale. Some are frightening, baffling encounters with mon stress entities,
some are kind of idyllic meetings between a curious protagonist
and a thoughtful character, and some are apocalyptic visions of
a doomed earth. You really get all different kinds of

(02:12):
dreams in this movie.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, Yeah, this is a great film. I'm so glad
you picked this one, Joe. This is not a Krosawa
film I'd ever seen either. Generally, I'd seen just a
handful of his samurai epics, Throne of Blood being my
favorite from years back, but of my favorites too. Yeah,
but I had not. I had not rewatched or watched

(02:34):
any Krosawa recently, so it was great to dive into
this one. And yeah, I absolutely agree. This movie is
true to the title. Just steeped in the texture of
dream in a way that is I think, far far
more sublime than the mere trappings of the cinematic dream sequence.
Currosawa with signature excellence here generates a strong ambience of dreams, often,

(02:57):
or at least it seems to me, with a one
two punch of first intriguing monotony and then this emotional upwelling.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Oh yeah, I think I know what you mean. That
many of these stories have a have a kind of
earlier middle section where something is kind of either slow
and contemplative or frustratingly repetitive and monotonous, and then suddenly
there is a breakthrough. There's some kind of catharsis where
something of powerful emotional significance happens.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah. Yeah, And I found this very very interesting and
very true to my experiences with dreams and my recollection
of my own dreams. Intriguing monotony here is not a
dig at the picture or a Kursawa. I think it's
it's ultimately kind of a revelation that we see dreams
presented in this manner where, like you know, generally our

(03:49):
dream the dreams that we have night to night are
not worthy of cinematic adaptation, but I think people may
recognize this basic form. Like I have this dream and
I was like, I was trying to put together some
Ikia furniture and I couldn't put it together. And this
just kept happening for what seemed like hours, and then
my dad showed up and I had a conversation with

(04:09):
my long deceased father, that sort of thing, you know,
with so like a one two punch of monotony, lost
in some sort of an environment or a situation that
may not have anything that's really driving it forward, and
then there's some sort of emotional upwelling. It's almost like
the dream is this garden of the subconscious, populated seemingly

(04:31):
by weeds of various thoughts, memories, and observations, and then
some powerful emotional resonance emerges through and into this dream garden,
taking on its trapping.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah,
a lot of these stories are like that.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, and that emotional upwelling. It might be love, it
might be fear, it might be regret. So in any way,
what I'm trying to say is yes to all of that.
Dreams is not a fast paced film. If you're more
famili with Krosawa's action and drama films. This is a
different beast. I also want to highlight that I watched
this film with a fever. I'm I just returned from

(05:10):
some extensive travel and something came back with me, and
this is a This is a good fever film. I
have to say. If you find yourself sort of drifting
in and out, this is the perfect film to do it.
There was a time or two where I caught myself
falling asleep a little bit, which sometimes happens when you
become horizontal and you watch films. But it's extra interesting

(05:33):
with this picture because, like Coursawa has already put you
into the monotony of the dream sequence, you know, into
the dream world, and so you find yourself slipping into
that dream world for real.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
I feel like all of them would be good to
fall asleep and then wake up again, to accept Mount
Fuji and Red. That one's got to be real tough
to kind of suddenly realize what's going on.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, that one that we'll get to. That one. That
one was the rougher one for me. But anyway, this
is our first Karrosawa film on weird House cinema. We've
of course mentioned him numerous times in passing on the
show because, of course, a it's impossible to discuss Japanese
cinema without acknowledging a Kira Crosawa, and you know, it's
certainly the case too with something like a Godzilla film,

(06:15):
even because those several of the Godzilla films we've talked
about in the show were filmed by Ishil Honda, Carasawa's
friend and a frequent collaborator under tow Host Studios. And
then on top of all of this, it's ultimately impossible
to discuss cinema at all without eventually referencing Krosawa, as
he's one of the most famed and influential filmmakers of

(06:36):
all time.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, I would say the majority of his films, at
least the ones I've seen, are not really in the
weird house cinema space, and that I absolutely love them.
But they're a little bit more straightforwardly realism bound. You know,
they're often realistic period stories. They don't really get into
the kind of weird genres we talk about, though. There
are some very weird things in Throne of Blood, even

(06:57):
though it is basically a Macbeth adaptation.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Throwing Blood is the one that previously I considered that
to be the the Krosawa film we might get to.
But this, I think was isn't even better fit for this?

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Oh yeah, because obviously this is dreams, and what's weirder
than dreams? I mean, dreams are dreams are the classic
weird house cinema. Before there was cinema, there was the
weird house cinema of the inner space.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
That's true. Oh, by the way, this is a Cura
Crosaw is Dreams, or sometimes just dreams. It's often referenced
to by that title. Not to be confused with nineteen
ninety five's Memories, an excellent animated anthology from Kutserhiro Otamo.
These are two very different films, but I have caught
myself on multiple occasions confusing the two titles in my mind.

(07:43):
So I suspect I'm not alone here. Memories is anime
and it's excellent. It's also an anthology. This is live
action and it's Carosawa, and it's also an anthology.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
So I thought it might be good at the top
here to go ahead and do a brief rundown of
the eight different dreams in this movie, with like a
one or two sentence summary of each, just so that
we can refer back to them more easily as we
go along, talking about the themes and the connections and stuff,
and then we can talk about the plot in more
detail later on. But okay, so the eight segments are.

(08:17):
The first one is called Sunshine through the Rain. In
this one, a young boy wanders into the forest during
a sun shower when it's raining, but the sun is
shining against his mother's advice, and he witnesses the marriage
ceremony of the fox spirits, which is something he should
not have seen. This first segment may be my favorite

(08:38):
segment of all. I'm really excited to talk more about it.
The second segment is the Peach Orchard. This takes place
on a festival day in Japan called the Day of
Hino Matsuri or the Doll's Day festival, sometimes the Girl's
Day Festival. On this day, a boy follows a spectral
girl dressed in pink and white out to the terraces

(08:58):
where a peach orchard used to grow, and the spirits
of the now destroyed peach trees appear in the form
of dolls and perform, They talk to him, and they
perform a traditional dance. The third segment is called the Blizzard.
In this segment, a group of four mountain climbers are
struggling to reach camp in the middle of a terrible snowstorm,
and the climbers they're overwhelmed by the snow. They begin

(09:21):
to succumb to the cold, and their leader has a
blood curdling vision of a snow witch. In the fourth segment,
the Tunnel, while walking home after the end of a war,
presumably World War II, a Japanese military officer has to
pass through a tunnel on a mountain road. There he
meets first an angry dog strapped with explosives, and then

(09:42):
a soldier, and then a company of soldiers who died
under his command. The fifth segment Crows. This one is
more lighthearted. A painter is looking at the works of
How are we going to say his name? In this episode,
I always Vincent the painter Vincent van Goch, Vincent van
Go I'm just gonna say van Go. I know that's

(10:03):
not the correct original pronunciation. I'm sorry, That's how I
always learned it when.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
I was growing up.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
The paintings of Vincent Van Goo. He looks at these paintings,
he admires them, and then he sort of appears within
the artistic world of Van Go and then finally meets
the artist and learns things about his vision and kind
of interfaces with his view of art and the world.
After that, we get a segment called Mount Fuji and Red.

(10:29):
This is where the terror really ramps up. Our Corrosawa
surrogate here In many of these segments are probably in
all of them, you can view the protagonist as some
form of Kurusawa himself, either as a child or sort
of alternate life version of himself. In this segment, our
surrogate finds himself in a massive crowd of people fleeing

(10:50):
a disaster. We see Mount Fuji in the distance appear
glowing hot, framed by explosions, and then a man in
a suit appears to explain these explosions are caused by
a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, and the people
are being killed by clouds full of radioactive isotopes and
it just gets worse from there. Next we have the

(11:12):
Weeping Demon. In this segment, a man is climbing across
a craggy, desolate landscape of rocks and gravel, and he
encounters a monstrous man with a horn on his head.
We learn that the man has been mutated by nuclear fallout,
and against a backdrop of giant dandelions, he explains the
cannibalistic hell of the radioactive desert, and then in the

(11:36):
final segment, we get a rapid sort of down shift
back into out of all the horrors, into a more
contemplative mode. This is a segment called the Village of
the Watermills, where our Kurosawa protagonist kind of ambles into
an idyllic rural village along a river and he meets
a wise old man and observes the local customs.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
I mean, no surprise, but Chrisawa really nailed it here
with the order. It's just it's the perfect There's no
other order for these sequences that would make sense.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
I think you may have more to say about this
because you were watching the documentary. But I have read
that there were originally intended to be more dreams that
appeared in the film, but the segments got paired back
as production went along. In some cases, I think at
the writing stage, and in some cases after some things
were shot. But you know, whatever, the original intentions. It

(12:28):
does feel complete and cohesive to me with this set
of aid, even though I now know there were originally
going to be more. This just feels right. Somehow it
got to the right place.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, And from what I understand of Krisawa was approached
to filmmaking, this seems to line up with the way
he approached things, like you just sort of fine tune
it as you go and then the eventual final form
presents itself to you. And in that case is these
are the segments and this is the order.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
That's interesting, And this might not actually be a contradiction,
but I've always read about I saw as a very
a very meticulously planning, in advanced kind of filmmaker that
like he can sort of see all the shots in
his head ahead of time, and he sort of is
editing in his mind ahead of time. Have you read

(13:15):
similar things?

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah, Yeah, absolutely it was. I had not really consumed
much about the man or his approach to filmmaking prior
to checking out a couple of the documentaries on the
Criterion collection disc for this film, which I'll reference here
in a bit, But there's a behind the scenes, some
behind the scenes footage where you could see him in

(13:37):
action shooting with the picture. And then there's a there's
a great twenty eleven documentary as well titled Kisawa's Way
that you know gets into this a bit as well.
And Yeah, one of the things that I found very
interesting is that like he's apparently you know, very much
kind of a loner, a man of few words. He

(14:00):
would what he would say about his process, and certainly
in his directorial approach was often succinct and to the point.
But uh, but he wasn't. He was admittedly like not
somebody that would talk about theory a lot like it
kind of like he sees it in his head, he
knows exactly how he wants it to work, and then
you know, some amount of experimentation finding that that form.

(14:23):
But he's he's not spouting a lot of theory. He's
not then doing a lot of film theory analysis of
what worked and what didn't, And it's kind of left
to all of the people that he influenced to come
back and continually rewatch and describe exactly what he was doing.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yeah, I was thinking about how, you know, sometimes people
break down filmmakers into oh, I don't know, I guess
the rough division would be like technical filmmakers versus humanistic filmmakers,
those who are more concerned with with the technical expression
of an artistic vision. You know, they're using their techniques
and skills to sort of put what they see in

(15:01):
their head on the screen, versus the humanistic vision that
is more concerned with themes and characters and film as
narrative and film as kind of I don't know, an
abstract product, something that you could explain and talk about
and interpret the meaning of. And I think you could
easily make the case that Corrusawa is very much both.

(15:23):
Like you could make the argument that he has won
more than the other but in both directions.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, yeah, like he has. He certainly has all those
technical abilities and those exceptional at them, but they're they're
kind of they kind of almost seems like they're internalized
to a degree to where it's like all this is
going on inside. And again he's not discussing the theory
of how it's all coming together, but it certainly comes together.

Speaker 4 (15:46):
You know.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
I had typed up a list of themes I saw
emerging in multiple segments of the film that I was
maybe going to talk about here, but actually I think
we should save that for later in the episode, after
we talk about.

Speaker 4 (15:57):
The plot in a little more detail, or the.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Plots all right, So we would usually say an elevator
pitch here. I think we've sort of already given it.
It's Kira Kurosawa takes you on a tour of his dreams.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, I would also submit, oops, I had another dream.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
They do like there's a transition that often pops in
to just say I had another dream.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
All right. If you would like to watch dreams, secure
Crosawa's Dreams. Fortunately, this one's widely available, various streaming options
out there. You know, we can watch it digitally. I
watched it on the Criterion collection Blu Ray, which I
run in from Atlanta's own video Drome. Some excellent extras
on this disc, as you'd expect, and I'll be referencing
some of those. It's must purchase for anyone, or must

(16:43):
rent for anyone who wants to go for a deeper
dive into this movie. As of this recording, the film
is not on Criterion Channel, but as with any streaming service,
titles come and go there. I don't know if that's
simply the case or it has something to do with
the Warner Brothers aspect of this production. I'm not sure,
but yeah, you can definitely get it on Criterion Collection,

(17:04):
Blu ray or DVD, but it's not on Criterion Channel
right now.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
All right, should we talk about the connections?

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, let's get into it. Starting, I guess with Kia Kurrasawa,
the director and writer who lived nineteen ten through nineteen
ninety eight. And I really have to preface here and
say that it feels really challenging to do any sort
of brief summary of such a cinematic icon. But you know,
here it goes. This brief summary year based on some

(17:40):
information that I read at the excellent Akira Kurosawa dot
info page, which is really good, as well as the
extras on the disc that I just referenced. So, Krasawa
was the youngest child and a moderately wealthy Japanese family
descended from the former samurai class. His initial creative interest
was painting, which is interesting given one of our segments

(18:02):
in this film, but he followed his gifted older brother
Hago in his passion for cinema. Hago worked as an
on site silent film narrator or benshi at this time
and apparently enjoyed some amount of success there, and as
Akira lived with him at the time, he was able
to gain entry into an array of films, plays, and
circus performances, which he would later cite as being very

(18:24):
influential on his craft. Now, Hago's work dried up with
the decline of silent films during the nineteen thirties. Akira
moved back with his parents and two of his sisters,
and Hago sadly died by suicide in nineteen thirty three.
In nineteen thirty five, A Kura Kursawa answered an advert
in the newspaper from Photo Chemical Laboratories PCL. This is

(18:47):
what would go on to become Toho Studios. They were
seeking new assistant directors to engage in a mentor apprenticeship program,
and so Akira submitted an essay. I've read that it
was kind of a cheeky submit where he's like the
prompt was something like, what would you do to fix
Japanese cinema and he's like, it can't be fixed or

(19:08):
something I don't know. At any rate, he won them over.
He received a call back, and he went on to
work with numerous established and up and coming directors a
special note his mentor, Kajiro Yamamoto. Krasawa also took to
screenwriting during this time, saw the value of that, and

(19:30):
he served as a second unit or assistant director on
numerous films and wrote screenplays for a handful of films
before co writing and filming his first directorial effort with
nineteen forty three's Senshiro Sugata, a serious judo drama. I've
not seen this one, but I've seen some clips from it,
and they discussed it in the extras on the disc.
It would spun in nineteen forty five sequel, which he

(19:52):
also co wrote and directed. In the twenty eleven documentary
Cursawa was way on the Criterion collection disc, they point
out this picture's sublime portrayal of action. So it's a
judo film. It's a wrestling picture, but like a serious one,
not like a Santo picture or some of the latter
you know, Japanese pro wrestling of pictures and so forth.

(20:17):
But the action is really interesting, because it has pointed
out in this documentary, there's less of a focus on
the actual grappling, or certainly the most impactful physical moments
of the grappling and more on audience responses audio emotional
responses to the impact, so we won't actually see the impact,
we'll see how people respond to it, and then we'll

(20:38):
see sort of the results of that impact, which is
very interesting. So Krisawa's wartime work included propaganda films, which
apparently also included, to varying degrees, the Judo Pictures, especially
the sequel. His work during this time sometimes was seen
as too Western by sensors, and his nineteen forty five

(21:01):
film The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, a
period piece, managed to run a foul of both imperial
Japanese sensors and then subsequently American occupation censors, for being
in one case too democratic and then in the other
case too feudal. I guess this is often the case.
If you're managing to piss everyone off, maybe you're doing
something right.

Speaker 4 (21:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
We can't walk through every Kurasawa picture, but we might
reasonably summarize his post war work along the stepping stones
of No Regrets for Our Youth in forty six, the
award winning One Wonderful Sunday from forty six as well,
I believe, and then nineteen forty eight Drunken Angel, considered
by many to be his first major work and his

(21:43):
first picture to feature Toshiro Mafuni, who Kurasawa would famously
utilize in many of his masterpieces to come, including nineteen
fifties Raschaman, which earned him international acclaim, including recognition at
the Academy Awards in nineteen fifty two, and from there,
Krasawa went on to write and direct some of the
best regarded films in cinema history, including but not limited to,

(22:05):
fifty four to seven Samurai, fifty seven's Throwne of Blood,
fifty eight's The Hidden Fortress, sixty one's Yojimbo, sixty threes,
High and Low, nineteen eighties Kji Musha The Shadow Warrior,
and nineteen eighty five's Ron. These decades entailed various ups
and down industry changes, some unsuccessful Hollywood projects, most notably
Runaway Train, which would ultimately be directed by another director

(22:28):
in nineteen eighty five, various setbacks and excursion of the
Soviet Union to shoot nineteen seventy five's Durso Usala, and
a Comeback partially produced by influential American directors who he
had heavily influenced, himself, and this was increasingly important as
Japanese studios were in this time less likely to back him,

(22:51):
and so he was increasingly turning to outside and foreign financers.
And certainly that's the case with Dreams.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Was it the case with his later films that they
were regarded both in Japan and internationally as masterpieces, but
they also didn't make a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, yeah, I've read I was looking at like some
contemporary Ebert reviews talking about like what happens when you
have like a master who you know, keeps doing their
own thing, but you know, doesn't necessarily it is not
necessarily chasing what the audience wants, And maybe some of that.
I was looking at some information about how this film

(23:28):
Dreams was received, and I've seen it described as kind
of like a largely muted response both domestically and internationally.
But at the same time, there was like a lot
of excitement for it, especially among directors who admired his
work so much. And another interesting wrinkle is that apparently,
I mean, this comes as a surprise I think for

(23:50):
many because I know when I started watching Krosawa films
they were airing I think on Turner classic movies and
or American movie classics. Even it seems weird that they
would be on a movie class American movie class and
showed a lot of different films. But at any rate,
I had ready access to them on television on cable,
and nowadays, you know, you have all these excellent criterion

(24:10):
collection editions, but apparently for a while, they weren't all
necessarily available on home video, with the exception of Dreams
because of the Warner Brothers connection.

Speaker 4 (24:21):
Oh I see.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
So even if the initial response was kind of muted,
more and more people had the opportunity to see Dreams,
and of course it gradually earned it more of a following,
and I think is also seen as this interesting outlier
in Corosawa's filmography. You know, there's nothing else quite like
it among his other titles.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
My general impression is that a lot of critics don't
put it at.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
Like his in his top tier list.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
You know, it's not in a lot of people's top
five Corosawa movies or whatever, but that it is nowadays
widely respected.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those filmographers though right
where it's like, if you're talking about the seventh best
Kurrosawa film, you're still talking about a great motion picture. Yeah.
So Krisaw was honored at the sixty second Academy Awards
in nineteen ninety and he went on to complete two
more films, nineteen ninety one's Rhapsody in August and nineteen
ninety three's Maddeo. He was working on The Sea Is

(25:18):
Watching in nineteen ninety five when he apparently suffered a fall,
leaving him unabuilt to direct, and his health rapidly declined
in the following years, and he passed away in nineteen
ninety eight. The Sea Is Watching would ultimately be made
in two thousand and two by a different director, among
a couple of other posthumous screenplay credits. Now to come
back to something I was talking about here earlier. One
of the things driven home by numerous Japanese and international

(25:40):
directors and Kursaw was way the documentary is that he
is really the epitome of a director's director. I imagine you
could take that a step further now and say that
he's a director's director's director, or to that effect.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Meaning he is appreciated especially by other practitioners of the
art form, not just by audiences, especially like people who
make films, really admire the way he makes films.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, it seems really difficult to overstress his influence on
modern cinema and directors around the world, directors who would
often and continue to analyze every minute detail of how
his direction of actors, lighting, framing, use of space and
everything else came together on the screen. And it can
almost be invisible, I think to many of us, because
if you're watching a Krosawa film, I mean, it's magic

(26:27):
is going to work on you. You are going to
You're not going to necessarily unless you're making an effort to.
You're just it's going to its spell is going to work.
You're not going to be maybe thinking about how he's
shooting everything because and part of it, too, I think,
is because he was so influential, many of the things
he did simply became more or less standards of filmmaking.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, I mean, it's true that a lot of times
good technical directing does not really call attention to itself.
It manifests in utter absorption in the narrative and content.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, and so you're.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Watching seven Samurai, you might not be thinking a lot
about the you know, how every shot is being framed
and how he captures movement and light and stuff, but
you know that your attention is held very closely, and
that's sort of like how it comes through to the
average viewer.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Absolutely. All right, let's move on to some other folks
involved in this picture with less detail we've covered. The
big one here, of course, is Sho Honda, who lived
nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety three, famed director of Godzilla,
who we've discussed in the show I think three different times,
most recently in our discussion of nineteen sixty four's mathra

(27:36):
versus Godzilla. He was a creative consultant on this picture.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
I think I read that especially his experience in the
military was used to choreograph the sequence called the Tunnel
where we see military we see army members marching in formation.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, I have to say
that the Mount Fuji segment also feels very Honda, like
you can imagine him at least standing in the background
nodding and being like, yep, you've you nailed at Krosawa
on that one. All right, Getting into the actors here,
starting with the dreamer generally credited as I, because we

(28:14):
keep having that dead us where we read the words
I had another dream, and then here is our dreamer,
Our dream walker. I our Dreamer is played by Akira
Tera Hope born nineteen forty seven. Born into a successful
acting family. He's also a musician, having been in the
nineteen sixties band The Savage Joe. I included an album

(28:36):
cover from The Savage They don't look very savage. They
look just like some very clean cut guys here.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, they look like they're they're ready to head down
to the sokop.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah. But he subsequently launched a successful solo career, and
I think in this he took on a more edgy
persona and often had kind of like a like a
nihilistic kind of like dressed in black, wearing sunglasses thing
going on.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Holding a twelve string guitar, looking like nothing matters.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah. So yeah. Successful musician, award winning musician, and then
as an actor. He debuted in nineteen sixty eight The
Sands of Kurobi and later appeared in Karasawa was Ron.
He's also in nineteen ninety six is Rebirth of Mathra
and two thousand and four's cas Hern. This is one
Caserne is not. I haven't seen either of these two

(29:25):
films actually, but Caserne is one that I've seen in
video stores for years because it has some sort of
like a space ninja on it. I don't know much
about it. If you out there are fans, write in
and tell me all about it.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
I was going to say, in talking about the themes
of the film that one of them is the self
as both fluid and constant. The protagonist in each of
these dreams, I think you could say, is the same
person and yet is also quite different, and both in
terms of apparent life history, some aspects of personality seem

(30:02):
to change. Sometimes the protagonist is assertive, sometimes the protagonist
is quite passive. That just varies a lot between the segments,
and there's no narrative continuity between them, but there is
a kind of thematic continuity, like the segments are strung
together by associations and preoccupations rather than causality. And so

(30:26):
this was making me think, I was trying to watch
in the performance, like do the events of one dream
at all affect the protagonist in a different dream? And
I think you could see it going both ways, Like
the events of the movie never seem to be literally additive,
and yet they may be kind of like the other

(30:47):
dreams are kind of stirring in the memory of the
protagonist in the other segments. You know, I don't know
exactly how you would read that into tara Oh's performance here,
but that does feel right. It feels like it's part
of his story that there is I don't know somehow,
like not complete conscious knowledge of what was dreamt in
the other dreams, but a kind of vague sense of

(31:10):
I've had a feeling like this before.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah, And I mean that's the way it often feels
with dreams. You know, you might bring the content of
one dream into the next. And also, at least in
my own experience, like sometimes you're you, and the dreams
sometimes you're less you. And then so I feel like
this character is you know sometimes you know. I think
in general we can think of him as a Kurosawa
stand in. Sometimes he's more of a voyeuristic figure or

(31:36):
even an avatar by which we experience the dream, though
his role is more personal and intense in certain segments,
namely the Tunnel, which we'll get to.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah, definitely, I certainly had the Tunnel in mind for
his more like assertive and active roles, but almost always,
and I guess this is often true of dreams. He's
more reacting than acting on the world, and often reacting
with a kind of futility.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah. Yeah, because again there's all these or most of
these dreams, if not all of them. They begin with
the sense of being trapped in something like we're maybe
not trapped. Trapped is too strong a word, too nightmarish,
like you know, in the texture of dreams, like sometimes
you're just there and you're a part of it. I
don't know, it's hard to really state it, but anyway, Yeah,

(32:24):
I like his performance. It kind of the exact details
of it change from sequence to sequence, and then to
be clear, in subsequences. I the Dreamer is played by
a child a couple of different actors I believe, Mitsunori
Issaki born seventy seven, and then another actor by the
name of Toshiko Nakano playing younger versions of the Dreamer.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
I think you could argue that the segments of the
film are roughly chronological in terms of the protagonists age.
I don't know if exactly, but like the first one,
the protagonist is the youngest. The second one, he's the
second young and then becomes an adult, and it does
seem to progress through a kind of maturity arc in
life from there.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, I believe so, all right. Rolling through some of
the other performances here, of note, we have Metsuko Basho
as the dreamer's mother in the first sequence. Born nineteen
forty six, Japanese Academy Award winning actress whose credits include
nineteen seventy nine Vengeance's Mine, nineteen eighty's Kija Musha, and
a voice roll in two thousand and six's Tales from Earth.

(33:29):
See that's a Gorol Miyazaki.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Film adapted from the Ursula of the Win.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yes, yes, yeah. Then of course, eventually we're going to
get our yuki Ono, the snow Fairy or the snow Woman,
the snow Witch. More on the details of this character
in a bit, but this is of course a yokai
that pops up throughout Japanese media, played here by Miko
Harada born nineteen fifty eight. She was also coming off

(33:55):
a major role in Kurosawa's Ron, and her other credits
include seventy nine The Inferno, nineteen eighty eight's Tokyo the
Last Megalopolis. That's one I haven't seen, but that one's
kind of famous for a couple of different reasons, including
the fact that hr Giger designed something for it. Twenty
twelves Helter Skelter, and Oh, I don't know anything about

(34:15):
this one, but sometimes the title just catches you. Twenty sixteens.
If Katz disappeared from the world, I'm enthralled. I need
to know more about that one. But anyway, she's won
multiple acting awards in her native Japan, all right. In
the tunnel sequence, we have a ghostly figure from the
past that shows up. Private Naguchi played by Yoshitaka Sushi

(34:40):
born nineteen fifty five, another Ron cast member who was
also in a number of other pictures, including two other
Kurosawa pictures, sixty five's Red Beard and nineteen seventies Dotsukata
Now Laid In the picture, We're gonna have an old
man character who is fabulous, played by Chishu Ryu, who
lived nineteen oh four through nineteen ninety three. Award winning

(35:00):
and long lasting Japanese actor. His workspan six decades, and
his other credits include Redbeard, nineteen fifty three's Tokyo Story
and nineteen eighty five's Mashima A Life in four chapters.
He also appeared in Vim Vendors Until the End of
the World in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
And in many ways, this old man is kind of
the soul of the movie, especially appearing as he does
in the last segment.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yeah, he's terrific. I really love this performance. This guy's great, and.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
He has some opinions.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
He's of all the segment. He's just like saying opinions
into the camera.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yes, but he's great.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
It's got that quality of like he's old, let him talk.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, yeah, and I think he may have. I think
this guy speaks more than anyone else in the picture.
I don't know. We get a lot as well from
the Crying Demon. And this character was played by Chosuki Ikaria,
who lived nineteen thirty one through two thousand and four.
His other credits include nineteen ninety one's My Son's and
nineteen ninety eight's Base Side Shakedown.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
You know, one thing I didn't know about the cast
when I pictured this movie is that it was going
to have Martin Scorsese acting in it.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, playing Vincent van go H, legendary American
director and noted Corosawa admire. Yeah, he's definitely in that
documentary Crosawa's way talking about his experience on the film
and his admiration for Crosawa's work. And it's interesting because, Yeah,
so Scorsese himself an admirer of Corossawa and studier of

(36:32):
Kurisolwa's work here playing a master painter admired by the dreamer,
and so it's kind of a neat inversion there, literally
following the master into his work here.

Speaker 4 (36:44):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
Yeah, is it true that he interrupted making Goodfellas to
like fly in to shoot this.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oh I didn't read that, but that sounds or hear
that in the doc but that that sounds likely. Yes,
I mean that's the kind of respect that that all
of these directors had for him.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
I also found Scorsese's screen presence interesting because he does
not come in the way sometimes like a well known
director cameo in acting can feel where it's like, oh,
I don't know, it's like I'm the big important person
now here, I'm ego crashing into the scene and taking
it over. He feels very in service of the scene.

(37:23):
It's one of those performances where it feels like he
is just trying to do what Corsawa wants of him
and is telling him to do.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, Martins Scorsese occasionally does these little acting bets, sometimes
playing a fictional version of himself, sometimes playing a fictional
a different character. But he's generally pretty good. Yeah, sometimes
it's certainly a little broader in his performance. But yeah,
that's a good point is he does seem to be

(37:51):
essentially trying to play Vincent van Goh here. And I
was also thinking this is also perfect like dream logic,
you know, like I had a dream last night and
I was having a conversation with Vincent van Go, but
he was also somehow Martin Scorcesei at the same time. Yes,
that's kind of the vibe here, another fun little cameo,
I guess you would say. In that particular segment, the

(38:14):
woman in the fields that the dreamer initially interacts with
before being sent in the direction of Vincent van Goh
is played by Catherine cadau Kurisaw was longtime personal translator
and director of that twenty eleven documentary.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
Curisaw was way oh interesting. So she's the one washing
washing in the river who tells him that tells him
to stay away from Van Go because he's a Madman.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I just came out of the asylum. Yeah. Oh.
And then getting to the music. The music here is
of course terrific, and the composer credited is Shinichiro Akibi
born nineteen forty three, Japanese composer whose film work includes
chrisaw Was, Kju Musha, Rhapsody in August and Madeo. His

(38:58):
other scores include T's Future Boy Conan from nineteen seventy
eight that was an early directorial effort from Hayo Miyazaki
and two thousand and seven's Glory to the filmmaker. He
won the Japanese Academy Award for composing multiple times.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
I think in addition to some original compositions, this movie
does also feature some classical compositions, like I think there's
some Chapan in it and stuff. But yes, the music
is wonderful, especially oh, it's wonderful throughout. I'm especially thinking
of the mysterious music in the very first segment.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Also, I love the funeral procession music at the end.
I'm not sure, yes, I'm not sure at different points
in the film whether we're looking at the composed score
or needle drop.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
Score.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
But at any rate, it's all really good. Yeah. Finally,
I also want to note that if you start looking
at the special effects credits on this film, you'll notice
a lot of Western names via those connections that Krosawa
had with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Its industrial light
and magic handling the special effects on this, you know,
Otherwise Japanese production. Apparently they did this at cost. Though,

(40:10):
I have to say watching the picture, I mean, it's
not like you really notice. It's not like I LM.
Came in and made all the Fox people look like
wookies or anything. I don't know. It's like the effects
are I guess, really good and often invisible.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
They're very organic.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah, the effects feel almost humble in a way. Does
that make sense, Not flashy, just kind of manifesting.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Yeah. There is some behind the scenes footage on the
Criterion collection just showing Carosawa directing the scenes where we
have the makeup effects for the Fox people as well
as the Hornet demons, and you know, he's he seems
to be like, you know, sort of tweaking things a
little bit, and in the case of the demons, saying like,
let's tone it down a little bit, like essentially they

(40:58):
look too much like monsters. We want, we want the
viewers to understand that these are humans. So I get
the impression that Krisa will maybe even sead of them
scale back a little bit on things, because you know,
often I think it's the case in this picture that
other worldly beings they do have a kind of like
stage presence, Like they certainly come off like human beings

(41:23):
in makeup, and there's not there doesn't seem to be
an overt attempt to portray them as overtly other worldly beings,
Like there's a humanity to them that I guess is
essential here.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Should we jump into the plot,
let's do it, Okay. So, as I mentioned, there are
these eight segments. We're going to talk about some of them,
I think in more detail than others. I wanted to

(41:54):
start off talking about the first one. I love all
the segments in this movie, but the very first one
is probably my favorite. So I want to kind of
look at it in some detail. And this is the
one called Sunshine through the Rain. So it begins with
a young boy coming out the front door of his
house looking like he wants to go play outside, but

(42:16):
just as he is heading out, it starts to rain.
And I don't know somehow that beginning in itself, even
before we really are thinking of this as a dream,
that's so evocative of childhood, you know, the feeling of
wanting to go outside and play and it starts raining,
Or at least it was for me. I don't know
that that feels like such a familiar and cutting kind

(42:38):
of frustration. So the boy, he's come out the door
of his house, but he stands under an archway in
the gate that goes around the outside of the home,
and he's watching the rain come down. And it is
a sunshower, so the sun is shining even though there
is precipitation. And then from the background, we see the

(42:58):
boy's mother emerge from the house and she hurries out
into the courtyard to gather some baskets of something. I
think maybe she was drying some kind of food items
in the sun or something. And she's pulling the baskets
inside and she calls out to the boy and she says,
you're staying home. The sun is shining, but it's raining.
Foxes hold their wedding processions in this weather and they

(43:19):
don't like anyone to see them. If you do, they'll
be very angry, and she runs back inside. So actually,
maybe here should we do a little sidebar on the
folklore of the Kitsuni no yumeiri. This is the fox's wedding.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, yeah, Katsuni we've discussed on the show before. We're
talking about fox spirits and Japanese traditions so yo kai
with supernatural abilities often depicted as tricksters, though in this
case not so much tricksters and more in line with
sort of global traditions of like fairy folk of the
unseen world who are out there going through their rights

(43:59):
and observation, and sometimes humans can see into their world,
but perhaps at they're peril.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
So he's received this warning, but the young boy, he
is maybe not deterred. He looks out at the downpour.
He stands there and stares for a bit, and then
he wanders off into the forest.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yeah. I mean mom's warning here was kind of asking
for it, like, don't go outside now, because there are
fox spirits out there.

Speaker 4 (44:28):
You might see something amazing.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Yeah, And I love the scene in the forest here.
So the forest is eerie and just pulsing with magic.
So the trees are enormous. We don't see really the
tops of the trees. We just see these column like trunks,
and the ground is covered in sprouting plants with long

(44:52):
green leaves that come up to the boy's waist. And
we can see sheets of rain and mist are billowing
sideways through the gaps between the trees, and then you
can also see individual shafts of sunlight crossing down through
holes in the canopy, and all this together makes the
air appear to have a kind of silky shimmering texture.

(45:16):
It's so beautiful and it looks like a place absolutely
where magic happens. And as we watch the scene, there
is just this mounting sense of the strange and unreal.
For example, one thing is you see a close up
of the boy who is He's walking silently through the woods.
He's looking around, not saying anything, and I noticed he's dry.
It's raining, but he's not wet. There's no music, no talking,

(45:42):
just this kind of soft skittering sound of rain on
the leaves, and the boy just keeps looking around, wide
eyed like he is expecting to see something. And then
he does see something. There's a bank of white mist,
and through it he sees the outline of a shrine
carved in stone. And then slowly music begins. We hear

(46:05):
drums and a wood block and a flute playing a slow,
mysterious melody. The rhythm on the drums in the woodblocks
is also kind of slow and stuttering. And over the
background of this music, the boy watches a procession of
figures slowly marching out of the fog. They are human

(46:28):
dancers in fox makeup rob as you were saying they are.
They're distinctly human in forms, so they didn't try to
make them quadrupedal or anything. They're standing upright basically human,
but their faces are painted a rosy white color, with
red fur over their noses and cheeks, and they have whiskers.
The women are wearing veils over their heads, and the

(46:50):
men wear a sort of disc shaped hat. The first
two men in the procession are carrying these cylindrical objects.
I'm not sure what these are, but they might be
some form of paper lantern. I know that fox wedding
processions in folklore are sometimes said to be carrying paper
lanterns like you can see them as dancing lights.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, I think that's what this is supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
And their style of dancing is so interesting and evocative.
There are these slow, almost glacial movements as they march along,
and then sudden moves where they bend and twist and
assume a pose, all looking in the same direction. I
think this is supposed to evoke when a wild animal
senses your presence or gets spooked and then suddenly like

(47:34):
flinches and freezes looking at you. Did you take the
same thing from it, Rob?

Speaker 1 (47:39):
That's a good point, you know. I don't think I've
totally put that together when I was watching it, but
I think that's a great read. I will note that
this is definitely one of the many sequences in the
picture that feels like it could possibly go on forever
in a good way, in that dream sense where it's
like this is happening and and you're just in it.
You know, who knows if the dream is going to

(48:01):
is going to continue on to some point of emotional upwelling,
though of course it will.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
In this case lost time, very little consciousness of past
or future. You're just stuck in this moment, and the
boy is watching this procession from behind a tree. He's
very cautious. He's trying to hide, and the dancers keep
stopping and suddenly looking in his direction. But at first
he stays hidden until the last time they stop, and

(48:28):
suddenly he's caught. They all turn and look at him,
and the boy panics and runs away back home.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
This is not played for horror or anything, but and again,
the makeup is subtle, and it's definitely holding back, but
it is a frightening sequence in its own way, Like
you know, the child has seen into a world he
should not bear witness to, and they have looked back
and seen him as well.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
But when he gets home, the danger is not over.
Actually that you might think, Okay, he's escaped, he's back now.
When he gets back to the house, he finds his
mother waiting for him at the front gate, and she's
looking very stern, and he approaches her kind of bashfully,
like he knows he's done something wrong, but she does
not comfort him. Her face is very stiff and her

(49:17):
expression is cold, and she says, you saw it, didn't you.
You saw something you shouldn't have. I can't have such
a child in my house. An angry fox came looking
for you. He left this, and then from a pouch
in her sleeve, the mother produces a tonto knife. The

(49:39):
boy takes it and he pulls the knife from the sheath,
and the mother says, you're to a tone by cutting
your belly open. And I was like, WHOA, that hits hard,
because this is a little child. This is not like
a you know, not even like an like the little kid,
And it hits hard. But this, to me, he felt

(50:01):
so real as a child's dream turning into a nightmare.
It is so much more unacceptably threatening and dangerous than
adults like to imagine children's dreams are. But this is
I mean, this is what I remember children's dreams being
like that. There's a way that the child's mind is

(50:22):
sort of uncensored. It is it like it goes to
much more bold and horrible and frightening places than adults
want a child's mind to go to. And this felt
like a real dream in multiple ways, with like the
you know, the threat that you have to cut your
own belly open, but also in the in the way
that the mother is not comforting, like he's done something

(50:44):
bad and the mother has become alien and threatening to him.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
Yeah, but then here in the dream, the mother offers
an alternative. She says, she says, go quickly and ask
their forgiveness. Give that back to them, talking about the knife,
give back to them, and beg for your life on
your knees.

Speaker 4 (51:04):
And then the mother.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Literally turns her back on the boy. She turns her
back on him and goes inside and starts to close
the gate in her son's face. And as she's closing
the doors of the gate, she says, they rarely forgive
even trivial things. You must go prepared to die for
your sin. And then as the gate is almost nearly
shut all the way, she says that until they forgive him,

(51:26):
she can't let him back in. And then finally the
boy speaks. He pleads that he doesn't know where their
home is, but the mother says, of course you do.
Their home is beneath the rainbow. And so now the
gate shuts, and so, now afraid and alone, the boy
sets out again into the woods with the deadly knife
in his hands, and eventually he comes to a clearing

(51:49):
and it's a meadow full of flowers. It's just huge
mass of flowers, millions of flowers, all in bloom in
spring colors, yellow, white, pink and violet, and this mysterious
music swells and then we can see the boy from behind.
This is probably the most iconic shot from the film.

(52:09):
The boy is now entering a narrow valley framed by
dark mountains, and in the middle ground there's the meadow
of the spring flowers, and a rainbow bends over the field.
And this has got to be the most beautiful and
certainly the most frightening use of a rainbow in a
film that I can think of, because it's a rainbow

(52:30):
that's obviously not just a disconnected vision that is pretty
to look at, as rainbows are often in movies. This
is a place, and it is the spectral castle of
the vengeful Fox Spirits, and the boy stands there facing
the rainbow. He's clutching the knife. He is amazed and afraid,
and he begins again to walk to its center, and

(52:52):
the music is swelling up with these ominous notes on
the woodwinds and then fade to black yeah the end,
so we never see him face the Fox Spirits. In
the true essence of a dream, These vignettes often begin
in the middle of the action or begin with a
kind of unexplained arrival, and they often stop right in

(53:13):
the middle of the story as well, usually right as
the tension is kind of rising to its peak.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Yeah, I mean, that's the way it often is in dreams.
How how many times have any of you ever had
a dream that finished had a third act? You know?
Sometimes I guess that's the case, but generally it's like
things kind of peter out or shift. And yeah, I agree,
very strong opening segment here. I agree on the danger
and seriousness of children's dreams displayed here, and it seems

(53:39):
a fitting way too, to look at the way that
children are eventually thrust, maybe without warning, into you know,
out of their lives of protected curiosity, and into a
more serious world of reality. Though of course in this
case it's not quite reality. It's a supernatural threat. But
still it's like his world of just sort of play

(54:01):
and curiosity has suddenly taken this sharp turn into a
into threatening confines. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
I agree with all that, and I just love so
many things about this opening, the way it captures this
authentic feeling of a child's imagination and dream world, the
way that there is a thin line between beauty and
amazement and absolute horror, and that the way the story
can just shift back and forth between the two or
kind of capture them both at the same time, especially

(54:31):
with the image of the rainbow.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yeah. Absolutely, and again you have such an ominous use
of the rainbow here. This rainbow gait into and into
to a certain degree of more adult world.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Okay, do you want to look at the peach orchard
the next one in order?

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (54:48):
So this one also begins with a young boy in
a house a little bit older than the boy in
the previous dream, and it starts with him taking a
tray of cakes to his big sister and her friends.
And this episode takes place on Hina Matsuri or Dolls Day,
also known as Girls' Day. I didn't know anything about
this beforehand, so I had to look it up. But

(55:09):
this is a festival celebrated at the transition from winter
to spring. I think these days it's often on March third,
where families pray for the well being of their daughters.
It's sort of a health and well being of our
daughter's day. And the festival includes the display of dolls
known as Hena Nino or Hena dolls, which are styled

(55:29):
after the Imperial Court of the Hayan period. So the protagonist,
the boy, he brings a tray of goodies to his
older sister who is with her friends, and they're in
a room with a tiered display of Heena dolls in
the background, and the boy stops to look at the
dolls and there's kind of a strangeness music sting that
indicates something is a little striking or unusual, and then

(55:53):
he realizes that he brought more food to his sister
and her friends than is needed. He thought that she
had five friends with her, but there are only four
friends there now, and he insists that he saw another
girl with them earlier, but the sister tells him no,
there were no other girls here. He is being strange,
But then he sees the girl again. The other girl

(56:14):
is dressed in pink and white and she's watching him
from the hallway, but she disappears when he tries to
get his sister to look and see the other girl.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
This is already a little creepy.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
Yeah, yes, So he follows the girl in pink out
through the back door, out into the bamboo forest all
the way to a green hillside with tiered terraces much
like the tiered display with the Hena dolls in the house,
and the hill is covered in soft grass, and when
he arrives at the hillside, he's sort of ambushed by

(56:44):
a mass of people. They all come running out on
the terraces, and they are dressed up like the Hena dolls,
but in life size, and I think there's sort of
an Emperor doll man the leader of them all. He
addresses the boy sternly, and he says that they will
never returned to his house again because his family cut
down the peach orchard that used to be on this hill.

(57:06):
And he explains that they are the spirits of the
peach trees, which are celebrated on the Dolls Day festival.
And there seems to be kind of an implication that
because of the family's treachery, they will also withhold their.

Speaker 4 (57:20):
Blessings from the family.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
And the boy begins to cry, and the Emperor yells
at him. He tells him it's too late for tears.
But then the Queen Doll remembers something. She says, this
is the same boy who cried for the trees when
they were being cut down. They say they remember he
even pleaded with his family not to do it, not
to cut down the orchard, and the emperor at first
he scoffs at this. He says that was only because

(57:45):
the boy knew he would stop getting peaches to eat,
and all of the members of the court laugh at him,
but the boy protests.

Speaker 4 (57:52):
He says no.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
He says, you can buy peaches at the store, but
where can you buy a whole orchard of trees in bloom.
He says he was crying because he loves the trees
at themselves as living things, and then he starts to
cry again, and then the dull people seem sort of ashamed.
You can see them sort of looking at their feet
and hanging their heads. And the emperor accepts the boy's explanation.

(58:14):
He says he's a good boy and that he will
be allowed to see the orchard in bloom one last time.
And then there's a dance with all of the figures
taking place on the terraces, and they perform these choreographed
movements to symbolize the flowering of the trees. And then
at the end of the dance, the boy sees the
peach trees blossoming again, and there are petals falling everywhere.

(58:36):
He also sees the girl in pink and he tries
to run after her, but suddenly he's back in the
real world and all the trees are chopped down. Now
they're just bare stumps, all except one. There's one tree
that has a limb covered in flowers, kind of bouncing
in the wind, and he goes over to it and
he looks at it, and the end, what was going

(58:59):
to happen next we don't get to see.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
This is also a strong segment. I mean, like they're
all strong. It's not like there's a weak one in
the bunch. This one maybe hit me, I think is
weirder just because I wasn't familiar with the traditions, and
also I think my fever might have been spiking a
little bit during the sequence as well. But yeah, I
also really loved this one. Similar in some ways in

(59:24):
theme to the first Sega segment.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
I thought this one was interesting because the Peach spirits
themselves seem to abide by a kind of child's internal logic,
the way that they they think that he's actually a
good boy because he cried because of the trees themselves
and not because of just wanting to eat peaches. I
don't know that just feels like such a like a

(59:47):
kid's way of thinking about this thing.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
The next segment is the Blizzard. I think we can
be a little bit more cursory and talking about this one. Basically,
it is four mountain climbers who are going up this mountain.
They get hit by this blizzard. They're struggling in the snow.
We see for a long time just them fighting against
the wind and the snow, trying to make their way uphill,
but it is and they're trying to make the way
to camp, but they can't see which way they're going.

(01:00:19):
There's disagreement about whether they're on the right track, and
eventually they begin to sort of get snowed in. They
succumb to the snow and they're being covered up and
they're freezing, and they sort of settle down, and there's
the implication that if they do this and they don't
reach camp, they're going to die. And then we see
things from the perspective of the lead climber. It's sort

(01:00:40):
of the leader of all of them, who's been trying
to rally his friends to keep going. We see a
figure begins to sort of put blankets over him. These
shimmering blankets and shawls that go over his body like
layers of snow. And this is from what I've read,
this is supposed to be a traditional figure from Jack
and He's folklore known as the yuki onna, which might

(01:01:02):
be like the snow princess or snow fairy, snow witch,
something like that, the snow spirit, who I think is
often threatening in nature, and here she's ambiguous at first,
but then I think by the end we can learn
as definitely a threatening figure.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Yeah, my understanding is that it does kind of vary.
So Yukiona is a pretty famous yokai, generally regarded as
a yokai because she's often more of a personification of
the snow or of blizzards, though some tellings depict her
as more of a yuri or a ghost that of

(01:01:39):
a woman who died in the snow, as Heroko, Yoda
and Matt All discussed in the book Yokai Attack. There
is many different versions of this tale, as there are
mountains in Japan. The tale of the Yukiyona was famously
adapted in the nineteen sixty five film Kaitan, which we
might come back to the core stories involve her sparing

(01:01:59):
a handsome young man during a blizzard like after like
brutally killing his compatriots with winter powers, but then sparing
him on the condition that he never tell anyone about this,
and so the young man survives, and then, as luck
would have it, he meets a beautiful young woman the
next day. The two fall in love, they're married, they

(01:02:20):
eventually have children. And yet the whole time, this need
to tell the story of the woman in the snow
steadily builds up inside him, until one day he breaks
and he tells his wife about what happened in the
snow that day. And I don't want to spoil anything
because it's pretty pretty amazing, but essentially we see the

(01:02:41):
ramifications of him breaking his promise to the Yukiono.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Well, the yukiona in this segment is is quite scary,
and eventually though the climber does sort of overcome her influence.
She's sort of lulling him to sleep in the snow,
and there's one moment when she is sort of defeated
or blown away. She like turns into some kind of
white cloth, It's like a white piece of clothing or

(01:03:07):
flag or something, and just like blows away in the wind.
But then the man wakes up after the blizzard is gone,
and he sort of tries to he revives his compatriots.
I think they're all still alive, and he sort of
shakes them, tries to get them to wake up, and
then they realize their camp is like right there, they're
right beside it, and they didn't know because of the storm.

(01:03:28):
A lot of reviewers flag this, I at least from
what I've seen online, as their least favorite segment. I
think primarily because of how slow and monotonous parts of
it are. Like it is very dreamlike in that respect,
especially in the first half of them just fighting through
the snow and the wind is blowing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:46):
But I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
I like this segment, and I really like the part
where the snow witch speaks. You know, when the snow
witch comes up over him while he's lying down. She's
putting the shawls over him, and there's some kind of
modulation on her voice, like it's doubled or something, so
it sounds very strange. And you hear her saying the
snow is warm is so frightening.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Yeah, yeah, And my understanding is that that this it's
sort of like the general vibes of the Yukiona. It's
kind of a take on hypothermia and the idea of
like giving in to death in the cold snow Zaiah,
it's pretty creepy stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
The snow is warm, okay. Next segment is the Tunnel.
As we explained, this one begins with a military officer
walking by himself on an empty road that cuts through
the mountains. We somehow understand I think that he is
coming home from war. I would guess by his uniform
that it's World War two, and he seems weary and

(01:04:44):
beaten down, but he's still kind of clutching a sense
of formal dignity, has a kind of headheld high aspect
that some of the other characters and protagonists here wouldn't
necessarily have. And as he comes up the road, he
faces the entrance to a tunnel. It's hard to say
exactly why, but there is something really just cursed and

(01:05:04):
ominous about this tunnel. I don't think it's a set
made for the film. It looks like it's probably just
a real concrete tunnel somewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Yeah, but what a location. It's amazing, like just against
so ominous, and you know it reads on so many levels,
like like, what is this? Is it a gateway to
the underworld? It is nothing else, literally a gateway through
the mountain. Yeah, so many ways to take it apart.

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
Don't go in there.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
But then from inside he hears howling and whimpering, the
sounds of a dog, and then a dog runs out
of the tunnel. And this is, from what I've read,
supposed to be an anti tank dog. So it is
a dog strapped with timed explosives, which was explored.

Speaker 4 (01:05:47):
And there were many of.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
These trained as a weapon by multiple armies in World
War Two. I'm not sure how much they were actually
used in combat, but they were at least trained. So
in this case, it is a dog with a kind
of saddle on its back, covered in pockets, and the
pockets are stuffed with grenades. It is a bleak and
horrifying image.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Yeah, and certainly fits with some of the themes explored
in the picture about humanity's relationship to nature. Here a
great example of nature being twisted beyond mere domestication into
actual weaponization. Pretty horrific.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
So the dog approaches the officer and snarls at him,
but does not attack, and then the officer walks on
into the tunnel, which is cavernous and echoing. We see
these tracking, these moving shots going through the tunnel, just
looking up at the ceiling of the tunnel as kind
of light plays on it as he's walking along, and
we can see the officer's breath, We hear his boots

(01:06:44):
kind of clapping and reverberating as he makes his way
down to the other end. And then we see at
the emerging side of the tunnel the sky is dark
blue and illuminated by a red lamp, which I thought
was interesting. Kind of reminds me of that Charles Dickens
Gohes story he talked about last October, the signalman with
the ghost or the premonition appearing by the red light

(01:07:05):
at the end of the rail tunnel. And so after
the commander comes out the other end of the passage,
he stops because he hears steps behind him. Who's that
He turns around to see and it is a ghost.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
It is a.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
Soldier in combat uniform with rifle and helmet and his
skin painted blue, the blue fleshed being who should not
be and the commander recognizes him. This is someone known
to the protagonist. This is Private Noguchi but Private Noguchi
was killed in action, and Noguchi is confused. He believes

(01:07:44):
maybe he is still alive. He remembers going home after
the war and being given rice cakes by his mother,
remembers being comforted by his mother, but the commander has
to explain to him, No, that was a dream you had.
This is a dream about you know, the dreams of others.
That was a dream you had. You were shot in
battle and you passed out, and you woke up, and

(01:08:07):
you told me you had that dream where you went
home and saw your mother and she gave you rice cakes.
Then you died in my arms a few minutes later,
and Nogucci is so confused. He's he points out a
light in the mountains beyond and he says, that's that's
my parents' home, that house right there where the light is.

Speaker 4 (01:08:25):
But the commander argues with him.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
He tells him that he hass to accept that he
is dead, uh, and he has to go to his
rest and he eventually the ghost seems to give in.
He turns about face and he walks back into the tunnel.
But it's not over because then here comes everyone the
entire company who served under this commander. And they come

(01:08:47):
marching out of the tunnel information they're you know, they're
like calling out drill instructions. They call him marching, and
they stand in order in front of him. And here
there's a confrontation where all the commander has to accept
his responsibility for their death in battle, where he says
he would like to blame the stupidity of war for

(01:09:10):
the deaths of his men, but he knows in his
heart that he bears personal responsibility for sending them into
certain doom because it was a feudal attempt, but he
sent them into battle anyway. And I feel like this
moment highlights a theme that I think appears in multiple
segments of this movie, which is the theme of individual

(01:09:31):
responsibility versus a kind of collective blame or stupidity. Specifically,
like there's a theme of the inadequacy of placing blame
for tragedies on abstract, impersonal forces or diffuse collectives. So
there's the case here, But then the same thing happens
in the next segment in Mount Fujian Red where or

(01:09:52):
actually two segments later, where there's like a bureaucratic man
in a suit and glasses who kind of contrast a
force of impersonal stupidity and arrogance that allowed the nuclear
meltdown in that segment to occur. But then he acknowledges
that he is personally to blame somehow, though he doesn't
explain how. And this seems to be something that's on

(01:10:13):
the Dreamer's mind. It's one of these themes that comes
up in multiple cases.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Yeah, yeah, I want to also flag he hear that
the makeup for the soldiers the ghosts here is really
really well done, is it is? Again, you get a
sense of Corosawa pulling back from anything too monstrous, Like
these are not like, this is not zombie makeup or

(01:10:39):
what you might think of a zombie makeup. It really
but it's also not like straight up kobuki makeup either.
It's kind of like somewhere in this perfect place between
kabuki makeup and like just a corpse like.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
Pallor Yeah, the blueness of their makeup is so interesting
as a color choice. It doesn't exactly suggest rot. It
suggests a kind of changedness and like become a different
kind of being.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
But anyway, so the commander accepts his responsibility and he
orders his men to turn about face and to march
back into the tunnel to essentially accept their destruction and
go into death, go into their rest. And then you
might think the encounter is over, but there is another
escalation because we get the return of the dog. So

(01:11:25):
the anti tank dog runs back out again and begins
it starts snarling and menacing the officer, and once again
it just ends at this moment of heightened menace where
we don't know how it resolves.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Great segment though, really everyone in it is stellar, just
the I mean everything about it, the way it's framed,
the costuming, the location they use, just everything lines up
on this one for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
The next segment is Crows. This is the one that
has the paintings of Vincent vng Go. So it begins
with the Khorsauer protagonist in a museum looking at Vengo's paintings.
He's looking at starry night and one of his self portraits.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Then he experiences a little Stendel syndrome and just walks
right into that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
He goes into the paintings. I think the first one
he enters is so Vano did a number of paintings
of the bridge at arla ar l E. S if
I'm saying that right, Arlas or Arlau And I think
the specific one that he appears in is the Langlowy
Bridge at Arla with women washing. So that's a painting

(01:12:30):
you can look up if you want. It shows like
a bridge with a sort of you know, drawbridge characteristic
that can be raised so boats can pass underneath. But
there's a carriage, a horse drawn carriage on the wooden
part of the bridge, and then down in the foreground
there are women washing clothes in the river, and our
protagonist just sort of wanders into this scene and it's

(01:12:50):
reproduced in a spectacular way.

Speaker 4 (01:12:53):
I love the way that the color qualities.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
Of the van Go paintings are recreated in the sets
and the lighting that that Kusawa puts together here.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Yes, agreed, And I also like this is a nice
pivot from the more serious, or at least the more
dramatic vibes of the last segment.

Speaker 4 (01:13:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
So the protagonist here wants to meet ven Go and
he wanders around looking for him. He asks the locals
where he is. They say he's a madman. But he
finds vn Go in a wheat field painting or observing
the wheat field and talking about painting. This A major
visual theme here is Vengo's painting Wheat Field with Crows,

(01:13:32):
which shows like, you know, these the tall staves of
wheed and then the crows flying up out of them
into a blue sky. The version we see a van
Go portrayed by Martin Scorsese, and this vignette seems to
resemble the figure at least as I found in a
Vengo painting called Painter on the Road to Tarasan or Terraskn. Again,
I'm not sure how to say that, but he's got,

(01:13:54):
you know, a wide straw hat and just a lot
of stuff with him. You know, he's got all his
gear and his painting and a satchel and all that.
The Vango we meet is very distracted, you know, he's
never really giving the protagonist his full attention. His attention
is on the scene in the landscape, and there's a
lot of idea of like, you know, what's really valuable

(01:14:15):
here is this scene and its beauty, and I must
consume it and and process it and turn it into
something and that's what that's what matters. And I'm sort
of halfway giving you enough attention to talk to you,
but only about what I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Doing, doesn't he This is the part we have a
line where old Marty van Go says, why aren't you painting?
Like ye got your stud Like what are you doing
out here? Like this is this is why we're here,
This is the reason we exist. Get to paint.

Speaker 4 (01:14:43):
Why are you talking to me? Why aren't you painting?

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Yeah? Well, I think that's a nice little, uh gentle
self criticism here from Corusawa. You know that apparently Corsawa
was personally very interested in Ango, like he'd read a
lot of his letters and stuff and was inter in
the man's life as well as his work.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
Yeah, and again makes sense given Chrisau was an early
interest in a career as a painter before pivoting to
a film.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Next couple of segments, Mount Fujian Red and The Weeping
Demon or sort of the nuclear horror segments. So Mount
Fujian Red, as I said, the protagonist just finds himself
in the middle of a disaster scene. I think when
we first see him, everybody else is running in one
direction and he's walking in the opposite direction. He's like
the only one and he's going against the flow of
the crowd, and he sees Mount Fuji.

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
It looks like hot lava.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
It's just you know, glowing hot, and there are these
explosions and he learns that it's due to a nuclear meltdown,
and as we talked about, they have these discussions, a
man in a suit appears and he kind of explains things.
There's this long digression and about the different colored like
the different colors of fog and what radioactive isotopes they represent,

(01:16:07):
and how each one kills you in different ways. And
they're like, well, we color coded them so you can
know which type of fog is killing you, but it
doesn't help you survive. It seems to be some kind
of commentary on like the absurdity of like false senses
of security provided by technology and that there are these,

(01:16:27):
you know, threats that people just kind of rush into
and we're given false assurance that it's going to be okay,
but in fact that that was all you know, that
was all just rosy talk, and in fact this is
real stupidity and people are really to blame for this disaster.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
I mean, there's a lot to unpack here with just
the symbolism of all of this. Because Mount Fuji, of
course is a is a dormant volcano, so the tallest
peak in Japan i at least the last eruption was
seventeen oh seven. But at the same time it is
very much a symbol of Japan. And then on top
of that we have the like the dream logic here

(01:17:04):
as well, of the mountain we learn is not actually erupting,
it is nuclear meltdowns happening like behind the mountain. But
at the same time everything has like the flavor of
volcanic eruptions, so it's like both things at once without
being either.

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
This one also has that horrifying sense of futility because
it ends with a really just gut wrenching scene where
there's like a woman with two children who have joined him,
and the protagonist is trying to protect them as like
the fog clouds billow toward them, and he's in this
utterly feudal gesture. He's like waving at the fog clouds

(01:17:42):
with his jacket, trying to fan them away. But there's
a sense that everyone is just doomed and there's nothing
anyone can do. Again, ends right at the height of
the action and then goes on to the next segment,
another nuclear horror segment. Called The Weeping Demon, where our
protagonist is wandering in this volcan a landscape very much.
It's almost like the slopes of Mount Fuji maybe, where

(01:18:04):
there's a kind of dark volcanic soil and all these
rocks and mist and fog billowing everywhere, and he encounters
this monstrous looking figure with a horn on his head,
which I think is initially styled to be some sort
of some kind of ony.

Speaker 1 (01:18:18):
Yeah, definitely some ony vibes to this creature. I also
have to flag that I again am sick and I
had a fever while watching this film. I think my
eyes shut for a second at the very end of
the Mount Fuji segment and then reopened during The Weeping Demon,
and I thought it was one segment, but there is

(01:18:39):
kind of like a similar vibe, like he's heading off
into the nuclear waste at the end of Mount Fuji
and now here we are in a different atomic wasteland.

Speaker 4 (01:18:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
And then after this we get a long discourse from
the Demon as he explains this hell they have created.
He sort of explains himself as a mutated product of radiation,
and then he they sit under these tree sized dandelions
that are twisted and mutated by the radioactive fallout, and
then he talks about these different kinds of demons, these

(01:19:13):
like grades of demons. The demon with one horn is scary,
but the demons with one horn get eaten by the
demons who have two or three horns, and they're also hungry.
And then we see there's like a scene where the
demon is like, come, I'll show you, and he leads
the protagonists to this overlook where they look down at
these gross like pools of pink and red water, where

(01:19:34):
all of these demons are like running around them in
circles in a way that suggests representations from Dante's Inferno,
where you know, in hell you will have the damned
sort of like running in pointless circles around something. Uh
and it and it's like they're they're calling out, they're
you know, they're ready, they're gonna come eat them soon.

(01:19:55):
But they're in pain themselves. They're suffering. Their horns cause
them pain. And we learned so many things. The demon
explains he was again there's this thing of like eyebear
individual responsibility. He explains, I was a farmer who destroyed
my harvest as part of a scheme to keep prices high,

(01:20:17):
but they talk about other people who did other things
who may have become even worse kinds of demons themselves.
And so another just bleak, horrifying segment that also ends
with the demon just menacing the Krusauer protagonist, and the
protagonist is running away down the side of the mountain,
looking constantly like he's about to go headlong and tumble away.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Yeah, he's like he's berating him right, like, get out
of here. Do you want to become a demon too?

Speaker 4 (01:20:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:20:41):
So this one was at once like as bleak as
the previous segment, but also since we had these monster
like beings, it also felt like a little more escapist.
So I was again, all of these segments are excellently
put together, but in a way this one felt like

(01:21:03):
a nice turn away from the seriousness of the previous
Mount Fuji sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):
And then we get a very sharp turn into different
territory for the last sequence, which is the Village of
the Water Mills. So our protagonist here, the Dreamer, arrives
by foot in a small rural village beside a river.
There are these old wooden water wheels turning in the current.
I guess they're running mills and there are flowers blooming everywhere,

(01:21:32):
and karsaw what really takes time to show us the
nature around there, to show us like green water plants
waving in the stream, kind of like hair blowing in
the wind. And the Dreamer comes in and he watches
the children as they sort of gather on a little
island in the stream that's bridged, you know that they
reach by bridge and they pick flowers there, and they

(01:21:53):
take the flowers and they lay them all on a stone.
It's a very just beautiful, kind of gentle scene. And
the dreamer meets an old man who's working on a
water wheel mechanism of some kind, and they have a
long conversation where the old man just kind of explains
his philosophy. They talk about all kinds of things. A
big part of it is him talking about how they

(01:22:13):
don't need technology in this village. The man's like, don't
you have electricity here? And the man's like, we don't
need it, and he's like, yeah, but what about at
night when it gets dark? And the guy's like, night
is supposed to be dark. And so the main thrust
of the old man's philosophy is that people in people

(01:22:35):
in the cities think that labor saving technology will make
them happy, but secretly it just makes them more miserable,
and they don't realize it until they have already destroyed
the natural world and they can't get it back.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
Yeah, this segment is great in so many ways. Like
it's definitely another rumination on this idea of the idyllic
rural Han versus modern urban Japan, something that you see
in multiple studio ghibli pictures. So if any of you
are certainly more familiar with the works of Miyazaki, you've

(01:23:11):
seen this kind of vibe. And I believe and I
would go as far as to say, like this the
sequence too, Like it feels very much in line with
like a Miyazaki film too, and that we have just
such vibrant colors, like this is the world in full bloom.
This is like it is almost like an Eden to
some extent. And oh and by the way, I should

(01:23:31):
mention that that documentary Curisawa was Way also features interview
segments with Miyazaki. He's one of the many directors who
talks about his admiration for Cursawa's work.

Speaker 3 (01:23:42):
This segment absolutely has strong Miyazaki vibes. Yeah, in that
love for verdant nature and the environmentalist outlook.

Speaker 4 (01:23:51):
And all that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:23:52):
And then also, I think in this next moment, because
after this the protagonist here is what sounds like a celebration.
He hears laugh her and shouting and happy music, and
the old man explains to him, actually, what he's hearing
is a funeral. It's a good, happy funeral, And this
is another part of his philosophy. He says, well, when
someone dies young, it's sad, but when someone dies in

(01:24:15):
old age, it's a joyous occasion because they lived a
full life. So the people march and they sing happy songs.
And the woman who died in the funeral that's being
celebrated today was almost one hundred years old. In fact,
she was this old man's first love when they were
both very young. She broke his heart she married another,
and then he just laughs about it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
I love his laugh here.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
Yeah, there's also the protagonist asks the old man about
the stone where the children laid the flowers, and the
man tells the story. He says that long ago a
traveler came to the village, much like our dreamer here,
but he arrived sick like he brought the sickness of
the modern world with him, and he collapsed and died
beside the river, and the people took pity on him,

(01:24:59):
and they buried him right where he fell, and the
stone is his grave marker, and the children place flowers
on it. It's hard not to think about the man
who died as being kind of suggested as another version
of the visitor of the Dreamer here. And then from here,
the old man goes off to celebrate the death of
his first love, and the traveler watches the funeral march

(01:25:19):
and listens to the happy music, and he feels kind
of infused with the goodness and the happiness of this place.
And we hear the music as well, and that's the end.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
The music is so terrific here, as I mentioned earlier,
like I don't know exactly what you call this type
of song, like how this factors into traditional Japanese music,
but it's very joyous, like the old man explains it,
like this is a celebration of life, and you totally
feel it. You see it on the faces of all
of the villagers in this procession. It's just such a

(01:25:52):
great vibe.

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
I want to come back to that joy in just
a minute. But I guess before we wrap up, I
just wanted to mention a couple of the other interesting
themes and threads I saw tying together these very different narratives.
One thing that I noticed, Rob, did you notice this
theme of the dilemma of being destroyed versus being transformed?
That like in several of the more nightmarish scenes, especially,

(01:26:16):
there is a dilemma faced by the characters in which
they can either be annihilated, they can cease to exist
or live on transformed into something tortured and unnatural. This
is a major theme of the Weeping Demon. It comes
up in Mount Fuji and Red, where they talk about
the idea of immediate death versus a slow death from
the effects of radiation. It comes up in the Tunnel

(01:26:38):
because the dead soldiers can't acknowledge that they are dead
and they must cease to exist. Thus they go on
in this baffled, twisted state of blue undeath. This clearly
seems to be something that is on Koorrosova's mind. Another
thing is across multiple scenes, I noticed a repeated theme
of people getting no help from authorities and in fact

(01:27:02):
authority figures, suggesting that you must die. Like there are
multiple scenes where someone is denied aid by someone who
should help them, or by an authority figure like a
parent the mother in the first sequence, or a government
official or a military commander.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
And a corporate world.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
Yes, in all these cases the authority figure suggests there
is nothing I can do to help you, and you
must die. But then, finally, and I think this brings
us back to the last segment, there is a more
theme that you get in both negative and positive visions,
and it's something about the holiness of nature, something about

(01:27:41):
how the holiness of nature is not appreciated, but that
there is promise in coming to see it. And so
I think the clear statement of the idea is that
the natural world is absolutely vital to us, but that
we remain blind to how important it is until we
have already destroyed it. This theme is made very plain

(01:28:03):
in the speech given by the old Man and the
final Dream, where he you know, he's talking about the
virtues of living simply and being in harmony with nature.
He talks about the false promise of happiness through technology
and convenience and materialism. But you see this theme occur
at different levels through I think most of the segments,
like the boy in the peach orchard is redeemed by

(01:28:25):
proving that he hated the idea of cutting down the
peach trees and that he loved the orchard for the
living beauty of the plants, not just for the produce,
not just for the material, you know, the peaches they grew.

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
And in that segment we see that some level of
regeneration is possible, like the we see that one plant
that is growing back the promise of the future.

Speaker 4 (01:28:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:46):
And in the crows segment also this is part of
what van go like, he discusses this kind of almost
life or death drive to find purpose and positive meaning
in life by like seeking out what's beautiful and valuable
in nature and kind of processing it through, you know,
to take that scene of nature and to make it

(01:29:08):
part of himself and to make himself part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:29:12):
And then of course that brings us back to the
funeral at the end. There's something relieving and gorgeous and
cathartic about the funeral because it suggests a kind of
a way of happiness, happiness and purpose and goodness even
in death, by finding your life in the kind of
state that these villagers find it that, you know, that

(01:29:34):
they live in harmony with nature, and they realize they
see beauty around them and they take part of it.
They don't, you know, they don't remain blind to it.
They become part of it, and they work with it,
and it makes even death a happy thing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
Yeah. Yeah, return to nature or return to traditional values.
This is you see this as a recurring theme in
Japanese media of this time period especially, but also I
think globally as well. I mean, this idea of returning
to nature, returning to the garden, you know, you see
that certainly throughout the later half of the twentieth century

(01:30:12):
and on through storytelling today. I don't think it's a
revelation that thankfully we've completely abandoned.

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):
Or could hope to put into a kind of happy synthesis,
because I also don't think it's quite fair to fully embrace,
like the philosophy that all labor saving conveniences are bad
or something, you know, that happiness is necessarily through like
destroying all machines and not having electricity. I mean, maybe
it is, but I'm not sure that's the case. But
certainly there is a lot of wisdom in the movies

(01:30:43):
plea to be more conscious and protective of nature, and
to see ourselves as being in an absolutely vital kind
of personal relationship with it, each one of us, and
also together as a community.

Speaker 1 (01:30:58):
Yeah, absolutely, that's the dream. Anyway, in this case, Curasawa
is Dreams.

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
All right, well, I guess that's what I've got on Dreams.
Rob is the is the cold medicine flagging?

Speaker 1 (01:31:11):
Yeah? Probably so, I believe. I believe I'm running out
of energy here, but this is a great one. I'm
so glad you picked Dreams for us to watch here
for this episode of Weird House Cinema. Again, it's widely available,
It's well worth watching, and again it's really hard to
think of. I love dream sequences in films and television,

(01:31:34):
but I find it rare that a filmmaker actually captures
some true essence of dream and a Cura Curasawa absolutely
nails it here. Yeah, yeah, all right, we're gonna gohe
and close it up. But hey, we'll be back next
week with another cinematic masterpiece. Stay tuned for that one.
Just a reminder that Weird House Cinema this is the

(01:31:57):
episode that publishes on Fridays, and the stuff to Blow
Your Mind podcast feed. We're also experimenting with a standalone
playlist of Weird House Cinema, so you can find Weird
House Cinema listed separately on whatever platform it is you
having to get your podcasts at, so check that out.
And if you are on a letterbox dot com you
can find us there. We are weird House. That's our username,

(01:32:19):
and there's a list of all the films we've covered
thus far and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming
up next.

Speaker 3 (01:32:24):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:32:44):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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