Dreams (1990)

Dreams is a film that that essentially contains eight different small story lines, however there are some which extends over in conditions of characters and material themes-mainly with mankind 's relations to the environment. The first dream 'Sunshine Through The Rain' : I (played by Mitsunori Isaki) is a little boy who was told by his mother (played by Mitsuko Baisho) never go outside when the weather is both sunny and cloudy. For that's the time when the foxes come out and have their wedding. And if anyone was around to witness the event, it could have consequences that are rather fatal. The second dream 'The Peach Orchird' : I, as a young child, (played by Toshihiko Nakano) meets the ghosts of the peach trees, which was cut down by insensitive human beings. The three dream 'The Blizzard' : spiritual intervention rescues a team of mountaineers from a terrible blizzard. The fourth dream 'The Tunnel' Akira Terao plays a man who comes face to face with the spirits of a army platoon, in which he is responsible for their death. The fifth dream 'Crow' : Terao plays an art student who has an encounter with 'Vincent Van Gogh (played by Martin Scorsese) and walks into Van Gogh's paintings. The sixth dream 'Mount Fuji in Red' : a nuclear meltdown occurs and intimidates the devastation of Japan. The seventh dream 'The Weeping Demon' : contains a picture of a post-nuclear world, which was made popular by human mutations. And the final dream 'Village of the Water mill' : contains a beautiful sunny picture of a village has a population of people who are completely one with nature.
In the first dream, I is just a little village boy who lives with his mother. Like all children his age, all he wants to do is play outside, but his mother told him to stay indoors. For it was the day that the foxes were getting married and all the villagers were prohibited to go outside when both weather conditions occurred because if they did, the consequences were extremely fatal. On that particular day, I stepped outside for a while as a result of his curiosity. But when tried to go back inside the house, his own mother would not come back in. When he was inside before, she warned him on what might happened if he did go outside. She said that he could not come back into the house until he asks the spirits to forgive him for whatever he did. That left him no choice but to walk away from his home, leave his mother behind and vacate the premises.
In the second dream 'The Peach Orchard' : I walks into a forrest where he sees a celebration happening. Unfortunately for him, it was the wedding of the foxes. So he hid behind a tree so that they wouldn't discover him there. And he was frightened. Each time they would move and pass by the tree, he would move to the opposite direction that they were going. After the wedding party passes the tree, I turns around and sees this young girl collecting orchards in the forest. So he ran after her to see where she was going. When she got to a hill with steps, she disappeared and I could not go any further because the spirits of the peach trees were standing over him. They were performing a ritual and telling him all that the humans did to them and their land. They also explained to him how they became spirits.
In the dream 'The Tunnel' : at this point, I was a full-grown man. In fact, he was a commander of a army platoon. As he walking along the streets, he came upon a tunnel. So he proceeded walking through the tunnel with only the sound of his feet moving along the ground. He looked left and right to see if everything was o.k. When he got out of the tunnel, he heard a dog growling from inside the tunnel. So he stopped, turned around and out came the dog that was doing all of the growling. The dog was circling around I and growling at the same time. After a while, the dog went back into the tunnel. However, it wasn't long until he heard the footsteps coming from the tunnel. All of a sudden, out came the ghosts of his former army platoon. The ghost of Pvt. Noguchi (played by Yoshitaka Zushi) spoke on behalf of the squad. I told them that he was the reason why they were died.
The 'Crows' dream is the one where I is an art student. He was in an art museum admiring each exhibit. And he came along one of Van Gogh's paintings. So he sat down on a bench to study it. Next thing he knew, he was in a field. So he walked and walked until he saw Vincent Van Gogh painting a portrait of the sky and land. Van Gogh didn't want to waste his time talking to I. That's when packed up his belongings and left. So I followed him into a corn field where there was a huge flock of crows flying all over the place. When he got to the edge of corn field, I found himself in the same painting that he was studying.
The 'Mount Fuji in Red' dream was where I walked into this city in Japan, that was experiencing a nuclear meltdown do to Mt. Fuji erupting with lava, poison and other dangerous chemicals. The people were running for their lives. Among them were a Nuclear Plant Worker (played by Hisashi Igawa) and a woman with her two children. During the entire disaster, the man explained to I what was happening and what will become every living thing. There was only one place to go and that was in the sea. At some point, the man jumped into the sea and committed suicide.
My least favorite s dream in the film was 'The Weeping Demon.' This was when I had an encounter with The crying demon (played by Chosuke Ikariya). When I saw the demon, he didn't know what to think. After a while, the demon told him everything that happened to him, the rest of the people and the world. Then the demon brought I to a pit full of demons. He even asked him if he would like to become one of them. I ran out of there as fast as he could.
And my most favorite dream in the film was 'Village of the Water mill.' I comes across a village that has no name. After he crosses the stream where the children were playing, he encountered an old man (played by Chishu Ryu) sitting with his back facing the water mill. It looked like he preparing a blanket of some kind. So I approached the old man and asks him a few questions about. He answered each one of them. As the two of them were talking, the old man said something that he had get ready to celebrate a funeral. He said when a person dies, the whole village celebrates his/her life. Therefore the entire population will always be at one with nature.
All in all, this was a great film to watch. I can see it took a lot of work and planning to make this film happened. The director and the entire crew did a incredible job on this project.