A solemn little boy comes out of his house one rainy morning to find the sun shining. His mother practical and nonsense,looks up at the sky and says that foxes hold their wedding processions in such weather."they don"t like to be seen by people".,she says ,and goes about her business.
The causal remark is enough to send the boy into the forest.,where the trees are large and imposing as California redwoods.Even the ferns are taller than he is.The rain glistens within the shafts of sunlight,the boy moves with a certain amount of dread.this is forbidden territory.
In a moment of pure screen enchantment,a strange wedding procession slowly comes into view,the priests in front,followed by bridal pair,their attendants their families,their friends and their retainers.they walk on two feet,like people,but that they are foxes is clear from the orangey whiskers on their otherwise rice-powder-white,mask like faces.
The procession appears to be choreographed.the foxes march in union to the hollow clicking sounds of ancient musical instruments.Every few steps their haughty manner becomes furtive,when,as if one cue,they abruptly pause,cock their heads to the side ,listen and then move on.
This is the sublime beginning of "Sunshine Through the Rain" the first segment of the eight that compose Akira Kurusowas Dreams" the grand new film by the 80 year old Japaneese master who over a 40 year period has given us Rashomon",Throne of Blood and Ran,among other classics.
One might have expected Dreams to be a summing up,a coda.It isn't. Its something altogether new for kurosowas ,a collection of short,sometimes fragmentary films that are less like dreams than fairy tales of past,present and future.The magical and mysterious are mixed with the practical,funny and polemical.
The movie is about many things, including the terrors of childhood,parents who are Olympian as gods, the seductive nature of death,nuclear annihilation, environmental pollution and in a segment titled simply Crows art.Dreams is a willful work,being exactly the kind of film that Kurusowa wanted to make , with no apologise to anyone.
The foxes in Sunshine through the Rain are not especially unruly,but their power Isreal and implacable.when the little boy returns home from the forest ,he is met by his mother,who has run out of patience with him.She hands the boy a dagger,neatly sheathed within a bamboo scabbard,and tells him the foxes have left it for him.
Since the boy has broken the law protecting the privacy of foxes, they expect him as a boy of honour to kill himself. The boy dewildered. His mother sighs and says if he can find the foxes again, he might persuade them to forgive him. In that case, he can come home. In the mean time the door will be locked. The boy looks hopeful, " But", his mother points out, " They dont often forgive".
Dreams is a work by a director who has continued to be vigorous and productive into an age at which most film makers are suppose to go silent. Movies are a young man's game. "Dreams" is a report from one of the lost frontiers of cinema.
