Dreams

After watching this film I was a little upset. I think I was expecting something and sadly  never got it. I think I wanted all of the individual mini stories to link together in some way but that never happened. I suppose to each his own because this is definitely not a movie that I would have picked to watch on my own with out requirement. 

However, I will say that for what the movie was the individual stories were creative. Each dream had a different way of attempting to evoke your mind and your senses by the imagery alone. The colors that were used to bring life to the surrounding environments, the locations, the times of day and even the people were  dazzling. In “The Crows”, for example, the traveler imagined himself in a Van Gogh painting. By the end of that story the director and actors made you believe and feel as if you were in the painting with their use of color and texture on film. 

Each dream depicted the traveling man in a  different age or just simply at overall different life phases that the man came in to encounter with. Sunshine Through The Rain; The Peach Orchard; The Blizzard; The Tunnel; Crows; Mount Fuji in Red; The Weeping Demon; and Village of Watermills were either pleasant  dreams or nightmares that our traveler encountered. 

The role of nature played a heavy part in each one of the stories/dreams. There were battles of with the natural elements such as snow storms, mankind connecting with all growing and living things as if all were one and the same, and then there were the elements of nature that were detrimental to the heath of the world’s future but fault of man itself. 

Though the whole movie did not link together  I was given an oz of satisfaction when “The Weeping Demon” immediately followed “Mount Fuji in Red”.  There was not a whole lot of back story given as to why the chaos that was taking place in “Mount Fuji in Red” but it was evident that it was the fault of man. The earth and all of its’ nature gave and gives what is needed for survival. We as mankind often do things to satisfy the here and now and fail to think of the long term consequences. Even if we do think of the long term factors, the negative possibilities are easily pushed aside seeing as how they won’t effect us directly. “The Weeping Demon” showed that there is indeed a collation between the here and now and the there and then. What we do today definitely affects the future whether it’s the immediate future or centuries from now. 

All in all, I feel that if I had started watching the movie with a prepared mindset for the separate stories and themes I would have been able to appreciate it a little more.