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Dreams
Movie

Dreams

1990 • Unknown

Woke Score
1
out of 10

Plot

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.

Overall Series Review

Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Dreams’ is an anthology of eight visually rich vignettes centered on universal human concerns: the spiritual connection to nature, the toll of war, artistic vision, and the consequences of human greed. The film is deeply rooted in Japanese culture and folklore, presenting a moral fable that champions traditional Japanese village life and harmony with the environment over modern industrialization and technological convenience. The narrative avoids all modern political and ideological framings, focusing instead on timeless moral and existential reflections. Characters are defined by their personal guilt, spiritual awakening, or their relationship to nature's transcendent power, not by a hierarchy of identity. The overall content is a strong defense of ancestral wisdom and natural order against the chaos of unchecked modernity.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics1/10

The film’s focus is on universal human morality, the individual conscience, and collective guilt, not on race or intersectional identity. The cast is entirely Japanese, and the one appearance of a white actor, Martin Scorsese as Vincent van Gogh, is purely an artistic cameo in a dream sequence. Character value is determined by their soul and actions, such as the soldier's guilt or the wise old man’s simple virtue.

Oikophobia3/10

The film does not exhibit self-hatred toward Japanese civilization; rather, it makes a very strong critique of the consequences of modern Japanese industrialization and capitalism, which led to environmental destruction and nuclear hubris. The final segment, 'Village of the Watermills,' idealizes the simple, pre-modern, traditional Japanese life as the true utopia, which is a celebration of heritage over modern folly. This critique of the *modern* state and industry, while intense, is not a condemnation of the *entire civilization* or its ancestors.

Feminism1/10

Gender roles are presented in traditional and symbolic terms. Women appear as the protective Mother in the first segment, a dangerous, alluring nature spirit (*Yuki-onna*) in 'The Blizzard,' or as the accuser of corporate greed while protecting children in 'Mount Fuji in Red.' There are no 'Girl Boss' or 'Mary Sue' tropes, and masculinity is represented as protective and enduring (the mountaineer, the soldier wrestling with guilt, the wise old man).

LGBTQ+1/10

The narrative is entirely free of modern sexual or gender ideology. All character relationships and family structures are presented in a normative context (mother/son, male travelers/soldiers, traditional village life). Sexuality is not a theme of the film, and the focus remains on moral, spiritual, and environmental allegories.

Anti-Theism1/10

The film is heavily spiritual, drawing on Japanese folk religion (kitsune, yuki-onna), Shintoism (Mount Fuji as a sacred kami place), and Buddhism. The apocalyptic nightmares are presented as direct consequences of human sin and greed, with 'demons' being former capitalists and officials trapped in a hellish landscape. Faith and transcendent moral law are central themes, contrasting the simplicity of nature with the moral vacuum of modern men.