Dreams

Japan Release: 1990
Running Time:
119 minutes

Dreams


Japanese Title


[Yume]

Distributor: Production:

Warner Bros.
Kurosawa Productions / Warner Bros. / Toho*

An anthology film that is broken up into eight different segments, or dreams, each with its own title. These dreams drift from those told from a child's perspective all the way to adulthood. While sometimes thoughtful, the dreams are often filled with regrets, doubt and frightening scenarios. They are also sometimes hopeful for the gentile nature of life...

Live ActionScience Fiction

Box Office - Stock Footage - DVDs - CDs - Pictures - Background - Concept Art - Cut Scenes - Reviews

Titles

International Title

Dreams

Initial US Title

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
US Distributor: Warner Bros. (1990) / Time: 119 minutes

Alternate Titles

Dreams
[Literal Translation]

 


Aliens, SDF & Misc.


Staff

Cast

Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Writing credits Akira Kurosawa, Ishiro Honda
Produced by Mike Y. Inoue, Hisao Kurosawa, Seikichi Iizumi, Allan H. Liebert
Music by Shinichiro Ikebe
Cinematography by Kazutami Hara, Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda
Film Editing by Tome Minami
Production Design by Akira Sakuragi, Yoshiro Muraki
Assistant Directors Ishiro Honda, Kiyoharu Hayano, Vittorio Dare Ole, Takashi Koizumi, Naohito Sakai, Tsuyoshi Sugino, Okihiro Yoneda
Director of Special Effects Mark Sullivan
I Akira Terao/Mitsunori Isaki (As a boy)/Toshihiko Nakano (As a small child)
Mother of I (Sunshine Through the Rain) Mitsuko Baisho
I's Sister (The Peach Orchard) Mieko Suzuki
Snow Fairy (The Blizzard) Mieko Harada
Members of Climbing Team (The Blizzard) Masayuki Yui, Shu Nakajima, Sakae Kimura
Noguchi, Private (The Tunnel) Yoshitaka Zushi
Ensign (The Tunnel) Tessho Yamashita
Vincent Van Gogh (Crows) Martin Scorsese
Mother Carrying Child (Mount Fuji in Red) Toshie Negishi
Nuclear Plant Worker (Mount Fuji in Red) Hisashi Igawa
Crying Demon (The Weeping Demon) Chosuke Ikariya
Old Man (Village of the Watermills) Chishu Ryu
- Misato Tate
- Catherine Cadou
- Mugita Endo
- Ryojiro Oki
- Masaru Sakurai
- Masaaki Sasaki
- Keiki Takenouchi
- Kento Toriki
- Tokuju Masuda
- Masuo Amada
- Shogo Tomomori
- Ryo Nagasawa
- Akisato Yamada
- Tetsu Watanabe
- Ken Takemura
- Tetsuya Ito

Posters


Box Office

Release Date: May 25th, 1990 (Japan)
Budget: $12,000,000 (Rough Figure)

Release Date: August 24th, 1990 (US)
Total: $1,963,207 (US)

DVDs and Blu-rays

United States Region 1 Akira Kurosawa's Dreams Warner Bros. (2003) Order
United States Region 1 Dreams Criterion (2016) Order
United States Blu-Ray Dreams Criterion (2016) Order
United States Blu-Ray Dreams 4K Criterion (2023) Order

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Background and Trivia

  • Warner Bros. submitted the film to the US copyright office on October 15th, 1990 with the registration number of PA0000487978. The movie was submitted with its international title, Dreams, its US title, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams.
  • Toho's general involvement on the movie is somewhat of an anomaly. Toho actually rejected the screenplay for Dreams when director Akira Kurosawa showed it to them. According to Bilge Ebiri's essay on the movie, Kurosawa mused the sticking point was around the script's negative portrayal of Japan's nuclear power program. Thanks to Steven Spielberg, though, the movie found financing at Warner Bros. studios instead. However, Warner Bros.'s involvement on actually producing the movie was mostly hands off and, as mentioned in the Japanese theatrical pamphlet, Dreams started filming at Toho Studios on January 10th, 1989. The first material filmed was for "The Peach Orchard" segment. Despite being filmed at Toho Studios, though, Toho doesn't appear to have provided any financial backing for the production. As a result, citing Toho as a production company for the movie is not fully accurate despite it being created there and why it has an asterisk above. As a side note, when the movie was originally submitted to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences it listed Toho as a production company, which appeared this way on the wwwdb.oscars.org database before it was revamped to remove all films un-nominated for Oscars.
  • Financing for the movie was complicated. While Warner Bros. agreed to pay $12 million, that was on the grounds of receiving a completed film. This means the budget had to be acquired in other ways to actually make the movie before getting the promised money from Warner Bros. for the finished film. This resulted in taking out loans, which took shape of a fixed-rate European loan from a California bank. Noted in the Los Angeles Times.
  • George Lucas arranged for his company, Industrial Light & Magic, to create the special effects for Dreams at cost without additional charges. This saved the production considerable money. Mentioned in Bilge Ebiri's essay on the movie.
  • As noted, finding financial backing for the project was tricky. Director Akira Kurosawa was quoted that he and his son tried to pitch the project to "four or five" different Japanese companies for financing, but without luck. While Kurosawa didn't want to mention what companies they were, it's overt that Toho was one of them. Of the experience, Kurosawa called the executives at Toho "childish". He also recounts how he ran into employees of Toho after financing was secured elsewhere. They mentioned they heard he was making a new movie, to which he replied "I'm making a film from the script we showed you". This story is presumably before the movie was shot at Toho Studios. Mentioned in the Los Angeles Times.
  • The Japanese release of Dreams focused a lot more on Steven Spielberg's involvement, who was an executive producer on the movie. This includes featuring an image of Spielberg during the trailer and also on some versions of the poster. It also includes a title card that says "S. スピルバーグ [Spielberg] presents" before that movie starts, with the same title card also appearing in the trailer. Furthermore, Japanese posters in English also mention the movie as "Steven Spielberg presents Akira Kurosawa's Dreams".
  • Although uncredited for it, Ishiro Honda wrote and directed "The Tunnel" segment of the movie. Noted in Age of the Gods (self-published).
  • After learning that director Ishiro Honda was involved in the film, actor (and usually a film director) Martin Scorsese requested to meet with him. Brought up in Age of the Gods (self-published).
  • The original script featured 11 dreams compared to the 8 dreams that appear in the final product. One of the scrapped dreams was about Buddhist priests protesting a temple tax, which was removed due to concerns it wouldn't resonate with overseas audiences. Another of the scrapped dreams was removed for budget reasons, as much of it would feature humans flying about. Talked about in the Los Angeles Times.

Reviews

Miles Imhoff Star Rating
January 13, 2006