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Enter a world of dreams…
Natsume Soseki’s Ten Nights of Dreams, based on the well-read novel of the same name, is a collection of stories of dreams. The movie takes an artistic and adventurous view of these stories. At times touching, others disturbing, and often perplexing, the short films make you feel like you are dreaming.

The film opens wonderfully with a very serene feeling… it gives the feel of drifting off to sleep. The First Night of Dreams, directed by Akio Jissoji, has a very stylistic feel, with several shots of only the feet or the mouth of the subject. This first dream is centered on the writer, and the time moves quickly, sometimes forward and sometimes backward. At intervals, you hear a soft chiming of a bell- a sound that seems to appear a in a lot of the dreams.

There is also always a view of a Ferris wheel in the background, with big numbers written on the baskets. When the lady of the house suddenly dies, she asks Soseki “The sun rises and it sets, will you now wait for me a hundred years?” As she is dieing, the colors in the scene change from bright blue to red- and back again. Near the end, you see the actual set- the framework and the lights, giving it a very real- but still not real- feeling. This film uses color, theme, and camera angles to intensify the feel.

The Second Night of Dreams, directed by Kon Ichikawa, is one of my favorites. It is filmed in black and white, and is completely silent. It is shot in the style of seeing people act and speak, and then it cuts to a screen showing in typeface what they just said.

A young man finds himself kneeling in a room with an older man in front of him. The older man declares, “you are a Samurai”, and the younger man finds his hair and clothes have changed. Then the old man tells him “You are here to sit in meditation, but since you have not achieved enlightenment, you can not be Samurai” and leaves him. The young man becomes determined to obtain enlightenment, and meditates until he finds emptiness. At the chime of a bell- the only sound in the film so far- he pulls out a red-sheathed sword- also the only color in the film- and he decides to kill himself since he has not found enlightenment. But he can’t. The old man enters again and tells him “I can not even pierce my own flesh- you have achieved enlightenment.” I thought this film was a nice representation of someone’s struggle to find their inner strength.

The Third Night of Dreams, written and directed by Takashi Shimizu, is perhaps one of the most disturbing films in the collection. In this one, Soseki cannot remember his childhood, and finds himself walking through the woods with what he believes is his sixth child on his back. The child has folds of skin over his eyes, and therefore blind. They come upon a ser of seven statues, and the child tells him “There will be seven but one of them will be broken” and the last statue’s head falls, and you hear a baby crying. As they continue walking, he “remembers” killing a child, who was also blind, when he was younger. After the film has ended, the movie states that “Soseki’s sixth child was born in 1908 and lived a healthy life, and his seventh child died suddenly at age one, and no one knows why.” Prophetic dream? Strange coincidence? I don’t know, but it was still creepy.

The rest of the films on the disk are equally strange and wonderful. There are some that are confusing, but all of them unique. The watercolor explosion that is the animated segment by Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D) is the only one in English. Probably because it would be hard to read amidst the flowing bright colors describing the story. He is one of my favorite artists of all time, and although the short film does not make a lot of sense- just like dreams often do not- it is still a wonderful addition to the collection.

The final film is a comedic romp by cult director Yudai Yamaguchi that features a young man who has to battle a demon pig, in a very anime type of live action fight scene. This DVD was a delightful film to watch. I laughed a lot, even in the “scary” scenes, and enjoyed the nonsense throughout. I honestly want to go read the book now. There were not a lot of bonus features, consisting of stills from the movie and advertisements for other films produced by the same company.

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