kira
Kurosawa’
s
Reflect
A
Abstract: In Akira Kurosawa’s Yume
(Dreams), the segment “Crows” depicts the filmmaker as a young artist
on a mythic quest, attempting to obtain the key to genius. He enters one of
Vincent van Gogh’s paintings and
meets the artist. After Van Gogh reveals his secret, the young man returns
through other Van Gogh paintings, ultimately finding his own way.
Key words: dreams; genius; hero; journey; Kurosawa, Akira; van Gogh, Vincent; Yume
Man is a genius when he is dreaming.
—Akira Kurosawa
A
kira Kurosawa’s Yume, or Dreams
(1990), is one of Kurosawa’s last
films, made when the filmmaker
was nearly eighty years old. It is a
retrospective look at his life, conveyed
in representations of eight purported
dreams. The eight episodes are quite
distinct and, taken together, constitute
no obvious narrative, although Zvika
Serper makes an interesting case for
their unity. Unlike Kurosawa’s delightfully chatty memoir, Something
Like an Autobiography, Yume is often
lyrical and reflective. It is quite distinct from the action films for which
the director is famous. Thus, many of
Kurosawa’s fans have expressed disappointment in the film; even some of
the most avid Kurosawa watchers, including Audie Bock, Stephen Prince,
and Donald Richie, have found it selfindulgent and unimpressive (Richie
222; Serper 81).
Yet, several of the episodes are quite
beautiful. The first two, in which Akira
appears as a child, are wonderfully
AK enters the scene of The Langlois Bridge in search of Vincent van Gogh.
photographed and indeed childlike.
But the episode “Crows” is striking in
a different way. It portrays a young
Japanese artist pursuing Vincent van
Gogh in a dream. It is the dream of an
192
artist striving to become a great
artist—a genius—and insert himself
into the heroic pantheon. The pursuit
of Van Gogh is a metaphor for the creative aspiration of the artist.
ion on Becoming a Genius
By CARL PLETSCH
The slender thread of autobiography
that connects the episodes of Yume
also ties it to many self-portraits made
by modern artists in various media,
most of which presume liberally on
their audiences as their makers stake
their claims to genius. No wonder it
seems a bit self-indulgent: This is an
essential part of the genre, which assumes that a genius is, by definition,
193
self-indulgent and should be. The
genre is “the autobiographical life of
the genius” in which the genius represents himself to himself and the world
(Pletsch 4–5, 205–14). Donald Richie
notes that Yume is “the first film that
Kurosawa wrote all by himself” (222).
His point is to explain the deficiencies—and the lack of discipline—that
he finds in the script. But, surely, that
is beside the point. Kurosawa wrote
the film himself because it is an autobiography. What artist with a claim to
genius would hire someone—or admit
that he had hired someone—to share
the authorship of his autobiography?
In “Crows,” as in the other segments of the film, there is a point-ofview character or “I,” as many reviewers denote him, corresponding to a
version of Kurosawa himself. I will
call him AK. (Using “I” inevitably
leads to combining the first person
pronoun with third person verbs and
much grammatical confusion.) In
“Crows,” Akira Terao portrays a
youthful AK as an artist carrying a
paint box, canvasses, and an easel. He
is dressed in the style of the1950s in a
plaid shirt and sweater-vest over
khakis and tennis shoes; he wears
Kurosawa’s trademark soft hat as
well. A 1951 photograph of Kurosawa
looking just like this appears in his
Something Like an Autobiography.
The episode opens with a close-up
of a framed self-portrait of Vincent
van Gogh confronting the viewer from
the wall of a museum. This creates the
analogy: Van Gogh/Kurosawa. One
depicts himself in paint, the other in
film. The self-portrait is one of two
painted in the asylum at Saint-Remy
194
where Vincent was committed in
1889. Once viewers have time to register the self-portrait, AK enters from
the side, with his back to the camera,
looking at the portrait. Thus, viewers
first see the actor from behind, as they
do throughout the scene. The rear
view prepares viewers to follow AK
on his singular pursuit. It also sets the
theme of AK seeking Van Gogh in his
paintings. The camera pans, and viewers realize that AK is in a room where
a number of paintings by Van Gogh
are displayed.
AK moves first to the left, walking
slowly and studying each painting,
passing The Starry Night (1889) and
Sunflowers (1888) before he reaches
Wheatfield with Crows (1890). He
then returns to the right until he reaches the self-portrait. Silence accompanies him throughout the scene, just as
silence might surround someone alone
in a museum. He picks up his gear, apparently ready to leave, and moves to
the right, past the self-portrait to Van
Gogh’s Chair with Pipe (1888–89),
the Drawbridge near Arles, often
called Le Pont de Langlois or The Langlois Bridge (1888), and finally Van
Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles (1889) (De
la Faille).
Significantly, these are all works
that Van Gogh painted as he neared the
end of his career—from the last two
years of his life, in fact. Wheatfield
with Crows is his very last painting. It
depicts the field in which Van Gogh
shot himself. The crows symbolize
death here and in Japanese culture,
generally, where suicide is not dishonorable for an aging artist. But these are
the great paintings on which Van
Gogh’s status as a genius rests, and
they point directly to his impending
death by suicide. In “Crows,” therefore, the youthful AK is not seeking
the youthful Van Gogh but Van Gogh
at the end of his life when his creativity had reached its apogee.
AK looks at The Langlois Bridge
once again. Then, the museum scene
ends abruptly when AK puts on his hat
and unexpectedly enters the painting,
which suddenly comes to life. The
women in the picture begin to talk and
move around, naturalistic sounds are
JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
heard, and music begins. The music
was composed a generation before Van
Gogh painted: Chopin’s Prelude no.
15 in D flat major. This seems to be
the beginning of a dream within the
dream.
The choice of The Langlois Bridge
as the painting to bring to life might
remind anyone acquainted with Van
Gogh’s work that the Dutch painter
loved Japanese art. He collected
Japanese prints, copied one of Ando
Hiroshige’s images—Bridge in the
Rain—and generally experimented
In “Crows,” the
youthful AK is not
seeking the
youthful Van Gogh
but Van Gogh at the
end of his life when
his creativity had
reached its apogee.
with Japonaiserie in his painting. The
Langlois Bridge is an interesting
choice precisely because, although it
was a real bridge near Arles, Van Gogh
saw that it had a Japanese aura. In the
words of art historian J. Patrice
Marandel,
The shape of the bridge happened to fit
his search for a weightless world, a
world of pure sensations and colors that
he associated with Japan. The composition of the picture still owes much to
Van Gogh’s idea of Japonism: the
bridge itself has the light and fragile
quality of the wooden constructions one
sees in Japanese prints. The contempt
for traditional perspective increases the
oriental feeling of the picture. (30)
Thus, Kurosawa simply may have
chosen a painting congenial to the
Japanese aesthetic for his entry into
the world of Van Gogh. But the motif
of the bridge and AK crossing it directly also symbolize his embarking
on a journey of mythic danger and
discovery.
Kurosawa has, thus, set up AK’s encounter with Van Gogh by first permitting him to look Vincent in the eye of
the self-portrait in the museum scene.
Soon, he will meet Van Gogh in the
painter’s own world. Crossing the
bridge makes this possible. In that
movement, Kurosawa may also be
pointing to the reflexive nature of
mentorship in modern culture. AK
dreams of entering Van Gogh’s world,
but Van Gogh had dreamt of Japan
long before. While the Japanese artist
pursues a European artist for inspiration, this same European had studied
Japanese printmakers for exactly the
same reason. Thus, the bridge serves
several purposes. It justifies Kurosawa’s success and influence in the
West at the same time that it reminds
us that, even in Van Gogh’s day, the
exclusive European definition of genius was giving way to a more inclusive and cosmopolitan era in which influences cross in both directions.
Once the music begins and AK enters The Langlois Bridge scene, things
are so different that the museum scene
comes to seem no more than a visual
prelude. Viewers have been looking at
someone looking. (In the case of AK
in front of the self-portrait, they have
been looking at someone looking
back at someone looking!) They have
seen what the young artist sees, at
least in the purely visual sense, but
they do not know the meaning of what
he is seeing. The viewer who takes
this seriously becomes engaged in
wondering precisely that: What is the
young Japanese man “seeing” as he
scrutinizes these paintings? And the
answer now revealed by the sudden
transition is that he is looking at the
paintings in hopes of entering them
and finding Van Gogh himself. Then
he does just that.
In this magical transition from the
museum into the painting, it may seem
as if AK has gone over the bridge from
the 1960s into the nineteenth century.
But no, he is still wearing his plaid
Akira Kurosawa’s Reflection on Becoming a Genius
195
Vincent van Gogh imparts some of his wisdom to AK.
shirt, sweater-vest, tennis shoes, and
funny hat. His paint set too is modern.
When he speaks to the French women—who are now doing their laundry
at the river’s edge—it is in French with
a Japanese accent. He asks them
whether Vincent van Gogh lives nearby. They show no surprise at his
clothes, his obviously foreign appearance, or his exotic accent. One bold
woman reports that Vincent had gone
across the bridge a while before; she
then warns AK that he should be careful: Van Gogh has been in an asylum
for lunatics. All the women laugh. The
contrast between AK’s appearance and
language and the scene of French
washerwomen in another century is reinforced by the strange quality of the
film. The scene has obviously been
photographed outdoors and, thus,
might seem naturalistic. But the film
has been colorized, too, undercutting
the viewer’s ability to accept it as naturalistic. Thus, the film works in several ways to prevent the viewer from
willingly suspending disbelief. Clearly, AK is dreaming. The viewer is
watching the dream, aware of its compelling implausibility. Thus, both
Freud, the interpreter of dreams, and
Chopin, the accompanist, hover over
this episode from the moment AK enters the painting.
The presence of Freud and Chopin
is important. Some critics have found
them anomalous, but they are essential to the episode that Kurosawa provides, especially when “Crows” is understood as a reflection on becoming a
genius. It represents a dream, and so
its logic is appropriately Freudian
dream-logic. Furthermore, the narrative does fulfill a wish to find and
query Van Gogh. Of course, Freud
suggested that all dreams represent
fulfillments of wishes; therefore,
Freud fits in quite well. As far as Cho-
196
pin is concerned, it has been suggested that Kurosawa’s limited knowledge
of music history shows here (Richie
223). On the contrary, the insistent,
funereal music of Prelude no. 15 is
just the right music for the pursuit of
the suicidal Van Gogh in his last
paintings. The role of Freud and
Chopin in facilitating AK’s meeting
with Van Gogh is underscored by the
fact that the two geniuses only enter
the episode as AK enters The Langlois
Bridge. Furthermore, in the company
of Chopin and Freud—even before
AK finds Van Gogh—he has entered
the pantheon of Western genius. He
has not yet found Van Gogh, but he is
in dangerous territory where logic dissolves, creativity is unbound, and intimations of death resound.
Under the protective auspices of
Freud and Chopin, however, AK accepts the woman’s directions and
promptly walks across the bridge and
into the French countryside in search
of Vincent van Gogh. He walks
quickly through the colorized landscape, jogging at times, but pausing
to puzzle where Vincent might be.
How will he know? The viewer gets
the sense that AK is searching
through this painted landscape for a
more typically Van Gogh scene! And
then, suddenly, AK does see the master standing painting in a recently
harvested wheatfield in front of
haystacks reminiscent of Field with
Haystacks (1890). AK runs eagerly
toward Vincent and arrives short of
breath. He removes his hat deferentially and asks—in French again—
whether the painter is Vincent van
Gogh. This is the beginning of the
central part of “Crows,” in which
AK’s wish to learn from the master is
at least partially fulfilled.
Here, Vincent too is first presented
with his back to the camera. He responds to AK with a grudging syllable
of assent indicating that, yes, he is
Vincent van Gogh. He is intent on his
work, but when he finally turns to address AK, the viewer may realize that
it is Martin Scorsese portraying Van
Gogh. Dressed in nineteenth-century
attire and using an antique paint kit, he
gruffly asks AK in American English,
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“Why aren’t you painting?” As incongruous as this may seem to viewers—
the witnesses to the dream—Vincent is
impatient with the Japanese visitor.
Neither AK’s exotic appearance and
accent nor his twentieth-century
clothes seem to surprise Van Gogh at
all. Then, amid these incongruities,
Vincent hastily imparts some wisdom
to the young painter.
From the moment AK enters The
Langlois Bridge scene up to this point,
the episode bears many marks of a
dream. But now it becomes an almost
rational dialogue between AK and
Vincent van Gogh. Because it is a
dream conversation, it is not meant to
represent Van Gogh accurately; AK is
“dream-writing” Van Gogh’s lines
here. And in this, he is already a
scriptwriter, as of course he will be
once he finds his own path as a genius.
AK is creating Van Gogh in order to
converse with him. The music stops
and dialogue begins.
VINCENT [with surprise and impatience]:
Why aren’t you painting? To me this
scene is beyond belief!
VINCENT [continuing, Vincent turns to
AK]: A scene that looks like a painting
does not make a painting. If you take
the time and look closely, all of nature
has its own beauty. And when that natural beauty is there, I just lose myself
in it. And then, as if it’s in a dream, the
scene just paints itself for me.
Yes, I consume this natural setting, I
devour it completely and whole. And
then, when I’m through, the picture appears before me complete. . . . But it’s
so difficult to hold it inside.
AK [now in English but still with Japanese
accent]: Then, . . . What do you do?
VINCENT [emphatically]: I work! I slave! I
drive myself like a locomotive!
Music of Chopin’s Prelude no. 15
resumes to accompany close-ups of
Vincent’s head as he works desperately and occasionally looks up at the
sun, intercut with black and white images of a steam engine, its drivers
turning and its stack trailing smoke.
The locomotive is not of the nineteenth century but from a film set in
the 1940s or early ’50s, when Kurosawa turned to making films.
The music stops again as Vincent
packs up and prepares to leave the
field.
VINCENT: I have to hurry. Time is running
out. So little time left for me to paint!
[The last sentence uttered plaintively.]
AK [solicitously]: Are you alright? You appear to be injured.
VINCENT [pointing to his ear]: This? . . .
Yesterday I was trying to complete a
self-portrait. I just couldn’t get the ear
right. So I cut it off and threw it away.1
[Then, suddenly emphatic again]:
The sun! It compels me to paint! I
can’t stand here wasting my time talking to you!
Vincent goes off, leaving AK standing alone in the wheatfield with his hat
still in his hand. AK looks up at a
blinding, burning sun reminiscent of
suns in several of Van Gogh’s paintings. He is stunned by Vincent’s pronouncements and dazed by the sun.
But he comes to himself and looks
around. Vincent has gone. AK starts to
run in the direction Vincent has taken,
out of the wheatfield and into a stark
gray painted landscape with a painted
sun ahead of him, leading him on.
Thus, as their brief conversation ends,
the symbolism of the sun is laid on as
thick as Van Gogh’s paint.
This conjuncture of suns—the natural one and the painted one—refracts a
passage in Kurosawa’s autobiography:
After looking at a monograph of
Cezanne, I would step outside and the
house, streets and trees—everything—
looked like a Cezanne painting. The
same thing would happen when I looked
at a book of Van Gogh’s paintings. . . .
They changed the way the real world
looked to me. It seemed completely different from the world I usually saw with
my own eyes. (88)
This is found in a short chapter in
which he describes how he has begun
to equivocate about his vocation as a
painter and just before his account of
how he enters the film world—precisely the moment that the episode
“Crows” seems to commemorate. It is
also just before he meets his cinematic
mentor, Yamamoto Kajiro.
Now, however, after the conversation and walking into the blinding Van
Gogh sun, AK finds himself wandering through a whole series of Van
Gogh’s drawings and paintings. The
entire pictures are never visible to the
viewer, nor is even a bit of frame. This
gives the impression that, while AK is
Akira Kurosawa’s Reflection on Becoming a Genius
pursuing Vincent, he is lost and may
be also looking for a way out of the
painted landscapes and back into waking reality. The paintings are a bit
harder to identify than the ones on the
museum wall seen earlier, as only bits
and pieces of them are visible in the
film. It is strange enough to see this
apparently three-dimensional Japanese person walking around on painted
surfaces. But his size is greatly reduced as well: In some paintings, he is
proportional to the landscape and
buildings on the canvas, walking along
a lane or past a house as if he belonged
there. In others, he corresponds to the
size of one of Vincent’s vigorous brush
strokes. He seems to be searching aimlessly. The paintings envelop him
threateningly.
Finally, he comes into The Road
Menders (1889). The painting has
been purged of the road menders
themselves, as if to make way for AK.
He goes down the street from left to
right, behind the row of plane trees,
but then he turns and starts to come
back, crossing between the trees as he
walks toward the camera and then
goes behind it. From this point on,
AK moves from right to left through
several more paintings. Interestingly,
the predominant direction of the first
section of the dream sequence, from
the time AK crosses the Langlois
Bridge to the meeting in the wheatfield, is from left to right. But after
the conversation with Vincent, his
movements are predominantly from
right to left. This underscores the fact
that his journey to Vincent is a journey out, and the meanderings of the
later part of the episode constitute an
attempt to return or get back with his
new knowledge. This is the journey
of a hero in quest of special knowledge, conforming in many interesting
ways to the pattern described by
Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a
Thousand Faces. In this case, of
course, AK is an artistic hero in quest
of aesthetic genius.
Ultimately, AK gets free of the
paintings and their heavy brush
strokes and emerges into a landscape
of not-yet-harvested wheatfields. Jogging along a path, he catches a glimpse
of Vincent as he is going over a hill
with his canvasses, easel, and paints
on his back. It is another scene photographed outdoors, colorized but otherwise naturalistic. At first AK hurries
to catch up, but then he reaches an intersection of paths that looks very
much like the analogous intersection
in Wheatfield with Crows. He stops.
The flapping wings of birds are heard.
Crows rise up from the fields in
droves. And AK just watches as Vincent disappears over the crest of the
hill. The scene dissolves into the paint-
AK has learned
important things
from Vincent, in their
conversation and,
perhaps, also in his
walk through
Vincent’s paintings.
ed version of the same, Van Gogh’s
last painting Wheatfield with Crows. A
loud train whistle is heard as if a train
were leaving a station.
Then, suddenly, the camera retreats
to show AK in the museum again,
looking at that painting hanging on the
wall. He takes off his hat once more.
The train whistle is heard again, more
faintly, as if much farther away. Vincent is gone, out of reach, and the
episode ends.
The final scene of the dream, in
which AK stands in the unharvested
wheatfield watching as Vincent hikes
over the hill out of sight, holds many
possibilities. AK has learned important things from Vincent, in their conversation and, perhaps, also in his
walk through Vincent’s paintings. But
now he can follow Vincent no farther.
The crows, the train whistle, and Vincent hiking over the crest of the hill
with his back to AK all say that Vin-
197
cent has departed definitively and has
nothing more to say to him.
AK is left alone. He will have to
chart his own course now, rather than
follow his mentor. This is a situation
that every genius faces. The very definition of a genius is to reach the point
of learning new things that no one else
could teach. This is what the genius
does after he makes himself independent of his mentor.2 Here, the relationship of disciple and mentor is between
Kurosawa and Van Gogh. A similar relationship developed between Nietzsche and Wagner, in which Nietzsche
was learning the role of the genius
(Pletsch). In each case, separation is
essential. Furthermore, as AK stands
watching Vincent disappear over the
hill in the photographed simulacrum
of Vincent’s last painting, he stands at
the junction of three paths. These several paths are open to him when he can
no longer follow Vincent; he must decide which one to take. One conjecture
on the significance that this may have
had for Kurosawa is as follows. Having obtained the secret from Van
Gogh, he confronted a decision on
what direction to take as an artist. In
the event, he chose to abandon painting and become a filmmaker. This is
only one conjecture, and others are
possible, but it parallels Kurosawa’s
account of his reorientation in Something Like an Autobiography (80–90).
(Incidentally, this is also the moment
when his older brother committed suicide.) Surely, this all points beyond
self-indulgence toward a conclusion
that this episode is intended to represent an important juncture in Kurosawa’s life.
Returning to the painting of the
crows in the wheatfield that AK faces
again on the museum wall as he
emerges from his reverie, Antonin Artaud said of this final painting that
lends its name to the whole episode, “I
hear the crows’ wings beating like
loudly clashing cymbals over an earth
whose torrent Van Gogh seems to have
been no longer able to contain. And
then death” (qtd. in Marandel 102).
That is his interpretation of what Van
Gogh felt at the end. Vincent was in
desperate straits. J. Patrice Marandel
198
writes of the painter at the time,
“Brushes fell out of his hands as he
was executing this picture, but habit
and the overwhelming feelings he endured kept him going” (102). This may
all be true of Van Gogh himself, or it
may be part of the essential myth of
Van Gogh. But what is AK thinking in
“Crows”? And what was Kurosawa
thinking as he made this episode?
Fundamentally, “Crows” represents
a dream about the creative imagination. AK is a hero embarked on his
journey of discovery. Van Gogh has
run his course; he is dead. AK wants
to question Vincent, but he can do so
only in a dream. He enters dangerous
territory when he walks into the painting of the Langlois Bridge and crosses the bridge itself. If this were not a
representation of a dream, it would
seem psychotic. Even considering its
character as dream, the question arises, will he be able to return to reality?
It is a frightening thought. But AK
does not turn back; he presses on until
he finds the object of his quest and
speaks with the dead artist. Audaciously, he interrupts Vincent as he
paints, and when necessary he prods
the painter. Vincent says in a trancelike voice that it is hard to hold the
world inside himself. So AK asks,
“What do you do?” Vincent tells him
in effect that to be a genius you must
devour the world, hold it inside, and
then drive yourself like a locomotive
to get it down on the canvas. The work
is urgent. You must be obsessed with
your work and ruthless with yourself.
It is a severe message that leaves no
room for equivocation.
AK’s journey does not end there,
however. Once he has obtained this
wisdom from Vincent, he can only return to himself by going on yet farther,
pursuing Vincent off screen in the direction the painter has gone. He travels
through a vast terra incognita of drawings and paintings, seeking Vincent’s
way until he finally comes into the fatal
wheatfield only to see Vincent disappear over the hill. The crows fly up. The
train whistle blows. The dream journey
ends. The separation seems quite as important as the meeting with Van Gogh
and even Vincent’s wisdom.
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Then, AK is back in the museum
looking at the painting as a spectator.
He has risked his sanity to enter the
aesthetic world of another mind, hoping to learn the key to becoming a genius. He has attained the prize. Now
he knows. He will be a genius. He has
successfully returned from the dangerous journey of initiation that lays the
basis for his life as an artist/hero and
filmmaker.
For those who can get beyond their
disappointment that Yume is devoid of
the action and epic battle scenes that
drive Ran and The Seven Samurai, interesting ideas offer themselves for exploration. The episode called “Crows,”
which several reviewers have panned
as especially trivial and self-indulgent,
offers a perspective on how an aspiring
artist learns to be a great artist. Countless people with little talent and no
paints dream of painting like a master.
And many psychoanalysts have written
papers trying to explain what creativity
is about by analyzing the dreams of
their quotidian patients. But when a
manifest master such as Kurosawa
shares a dream about pursuing a great
master, we might well pay attention.
His visual meditation says a few things
about such questions as to whether a
genius is born or made and where a
genius finds the power to create.
Several types of external evidence
support the idea that “Crows” may be
about becoming a genius. For one,
consider Kurosawa’s gestures toward
literary genius—his films based on
great works of Western literature, The
Idiot (Dostoevsky) and Throne of
Blood and Ran (Shakespeare). For another, there is the mutual admiration of
Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray, each of
whom supported the other in statements indicating that he was a genius
(Goodwin 35). But Kurosawa’s Something Like an Autobiography points
most directly to his self-conception as
a genius. Stephen Prince writes that
“the most fascinating thing about
Kurosawa’s autobiography is the extent to which it, too, can be viewed as
one of his film narratives. Its chronicle
presents Kurosawa as a Kurosawa
character and the story of his life as
the kind of spiritual odyssey witnessed
so often in his films” (xviii). In
“Crows,” we have a crucial episode in
this spiritual odyssey returned to film.
“Crows” is not a dream. It is a work
of art purporting to represent a dream.
But “Crows” is governed by logic similar to the dream-logic described in
Freud’s great work The Interpretation
of Dreams. What the dream-logic of
the episode suggests is that the tradition of dream analysis anchored in the
work of the Viennese genius is one intended frame for this work. “Crows”
portrays AK as having entered Freud’s
world as well as Van Gogh’s. Freud
may not have been quite the scientist
he thought he was, but he was certainly a creative artist whose reconceptualization of the human psyche inspired
countless twentieth-century artists to
use dreams in their art. In “Crows,”
Kurosawa too lays claim to that
Freudian inheritance.
Kurosawa’s concern with dreams is
genuine and focused. The epigram to
this article—Kurosawa’s statement
that “Man is a genius when he is
dreaming”—is echoed in Vincent’s
statement. He says that after he loses
himself in the natural beauty, “then, as
if it’s in a dream, the scene just paints
itself for me.” This highlights the importance that Kurosawa ascribes to unconscious processes in creativity. But
it also provides one more link in the
chain of analogies and correspondences that “Crows” draws between
Van Gogh and Kurosawa. The painter
saw his subjects in a dreamlike way
before he painted them, and here
Kurosawa experiences Van Gogh in a
dream.
Of course, the belief in genius was
gradually hollowed out in the twentieth century and is used more often
now than not in trivializing contexts
like television advertisements for consumer commodities. The social discourse about genius has lost much of
its power to depict creative individuals
among our contemporaries in popular
discourse. But the aura of well-recognized geniuses from the past remains
strong. The intense psychological interaction between two great artists
gives this film meditation an intensity
that some of the other episodes of
Akira Kurosawa’s Reflection on Becoming a Genius
Yume lack. And the unseen supporting
cast—Sigmund Freud and Frederic
Chopin—reinforce that intensity.
In all, this “dream” follows a rather
direct and constant narrative line, even
if the unities of time, space, color, costume, and even language are violated
in ways that dreams often do. This is
certainly understandable in an exploration of the pursuit of genius. The
viewers are not dreaming, presumably,
and they do expect a degree of coherence in the narrative. The journey of
the mythic hero is nothing if not a narrative. And Kurosawa is nothing if not
a master narrator. The violated unities
that give the episode its dream quality
do not undermine the dominant narrative. And it is the narrative that carries
the viewer’s conscious mind forward.
Chopin’s Prelude no. 15 in D flat
major contributes its own musical logic
to the narrative of the “dream”
(Palmer). What better accompaniment
for an aspiring artist in search of a
mentor for his future than a prelude?
Chopin only enters the episode after an
extended period of silence during
which AK examines the pictures in the
museum. But then, as he enters the
painting The Langlois Bridge, the
music begins. In other words, Chopin’s
music begins just as both the journey
and the dream-logic begin. The Prelude no. 15 itself begins as an idyllic
stroll full of anticipation and becomes
more emphatic as the bass line takes
over the melody and the treble assumes
the role of harmony. Then, the music
asserts a somber tone that persists until
the end. Furthermore, it seems that the
driving tempo of the more somber portion of the prelude drives the narrative
forward in a kind of compensation for
the dream-logic of AK’s meanderings
in the world of Van Gogh after he enters the picture. The dream-logic and
the music are complementary. A question will further underscore the appropriateness of Kurosawa’s choice here:
How many preludes have a funereal
tone? But how appropriate that is here,
where the birth of one genius is so intimately entwined with the death of his
mentor!
“Crows” is not just the depiction of
a dream; it is a depiction of a dreamer
in his dream, dreaming of becoming a
genius.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author thanks the Walter Rosenberry Fund in the Department of History,
University of Colorado at Denver, for assistance with the film stills.
199
WORKS CITED
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Bollingen, 1949.
De la Faille, J.-B. The Works of Vincent van
Gogh: His Paintings and Drawings.
New York: Reynal (William Morrow),
1970.
Goodwin, James, ed. Perspectives on Akira
Kurosawa. New York: G. K. Hall
(Macmillan), 1994.
Kurosawa, Akira. Something Like an Autobiography. Trans. Audie Bock. New
York: Knopf, 1982.
Marandel, J. Patrice. Great Masterpieces
by Vincent van Gogh. New York: Crown,
1966.
Palmer, Willard A. Chopin, Preludes for
the Piano. New York: Alfred, 1992.
Pletsch, Carl. Young Nietzsche, Becoming
a Genius. New York: Free Press, 1991.
Prince, Stephen. The Warrior’s Camera:
The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. 1991.
Rev. ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP,
1999.
Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. 3rd ed. Berkeley: U of California
P, 1996.
Serper, Zvika. “Kurosawa’s Dreams: A
Cinematic Reflection of a Traditional
Japanese Context.” Cinema Journal
40.4 (2001): 81–103.
NOTES
1. Of course, this detail hardly fits the
description of “rational dialogue,” but the
severed ear is probably the most clichéd
thing about Van Gogh’s image in popular
culture. Does Kurosawa want to dismiss it
as unimportant? Does he use this comical
remark to deflect the whole theme of genius and insanity? Perhaps he intends to reinforce Vincent’s dramatization of the urgent, obsessional character of genius.
2. The use of the masculine pronouns,
here as there, is intended to reflect the ideology of genius that, until recently, assumed that geniuses must be men.
CARL PLETSCH has written widely on
the topic of genius, including the book
Young Nietzsche, Becoming a Genius (Free
Press). He is currently working on a book
on the justification of popular sovereignty.
Pletsch teaches modern intellectual history. He has taught at the University of North
Carolina in Chapel Hill, Miami University
(Ohio), the United States Air Force Academy, and the University of Colorado. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago.