We’re spreading our wings a bit. We’re inviting in new contributors and expanding our coverage, programming, and scope. As we steamroll towards 2011, IPaintMyMind is focused on becoming an increasingly relevant public arts and music media resource, and bolstering our game is part of that. In that vein, we welcome Matthew Schuchman, who will write film recommendations for IPMM. He has his own film review website, called “Movie Reviews, From Gene Shalit’s Moustache” – it’s thoughtful, opinionated, and hilarious. Enjoy it, and expect more great film recommendations from said stache, on IPaintMyMind…
– Evan La Ruffa – Founder / Creative Director / Editor-In-Chief
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**Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams**
There are people in the world who will tell you that they are not creative. They’d say that they can’t even draw a simple picture without it looking as if it were drawn by a child. The majority of people would even say they were unimaginative. Regardless of self-perception, the mind and the subconscious provide us with the most brilliant vision of all.
No one only has boring dreams. The worlds our minds create when we’re asleep can never be matched. Since the invention of the motion picture, many have tried to dazzle the public with images that evoke this dream state. Many films have succeeded early on in film history, most notably Georges Melies, “A Trip to The Moon” from 1902. However, in my mind, the perfect maturation of dreams, film and philosophy came in 1990, when Akira Kurosawa released this film “Dreams.”
Dreams in themselves are our subconscious trying to tell us something. It may be based on a horror movie you saw, or it may be from a problem in your past that you have yet to come to terms with. In “Dreams,” Kurosawa not only paints a world based on his own dreams, but the eight vignettes of that comprise the film also work as a cathartic canvas for the director, as well as a point of discovery for the viewer. All of this is done by providing the viewer with some of the most lush, sprawling, rich, and sometimes dark visuals ever to be put on screen. Childhood, fear of the unknown, life and love, war, inspiration and a nuclear winter; Kurosawa’s own dreams deal with the problems we all think about.
Opening with “Sunshine Through The Rain,” Kurosawa invites the viewer in with the tale of a small boy, a mother and a wedding ceremony. With a deeply vibrant green hillside under a rainbow, the wedding dance moves along with precision. Faces painted white clash with colorful robes and the technicolor background becomes a painting in motion. If we didn’t make it clear already, this film will strike your senses with its intense beauty right off the bat.
For me, the most intriguing section of the film is the one entitled, “Crows.” Chasing Vincent Van Gogh through his paintings, our protagonist finally runs into the painter in the middle of a massive wheat field as Van Gogh paints, “Wheat Field with Crows.” When the protagonist wonders why Van Gogh cut off his ear, he states that, he was painting a self portrait and the ear simply was getting in the way (and by the way, Van Gogh is played by Martin Scorsese in the film!) At this point, Kurosawa has already provided amazing visuals and thought provoking ideas, not to mention bringing the Van Gogh painting to life. At that moment, the real question of individual creativity gets some light shown on it. It explores the point that some people will do whatever it takes to create their art. However for some, things are a bit simpler and they just do what comes natural to them. One person’s action, though not really what happened to Van Gogh in real life, answers both sides of one argument brilliantly.
There are plenty of people who still think Akira Kurosawa only made samurai movies. But if you’re looking for a movie that searches for answers of the mind and provides some of the greatest visuals ever committed to screen, then pick up, “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams.”
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