kira Kurosawa s Reflect A

Abstract: In Akira Kurosawas 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 Goghs 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

kira Kurosawas Yume, or Dreams (1990), is one of Kurosawas 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 Kurosawas 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 Kurosawas 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
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artist striving to become a great artista geniusand 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
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 45, 20514). Donald Richie notes that Yume is the first film that Kurosawa wrote all by himself (222). His point is to explain the deficienciesand the lack of disciplinethat 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 someoneor admit that he had hired someoneto 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 Kurosawas 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

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,
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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 Goghs Chair with Pipe (188889), the Drawbridge near Arles, often called Le Pont de Langlois or The Langlois Bridge (1888), and finally Van Goghs Bedroom at Arles (1889) (De la Faille). Significantly, these are all works that Van Gogh painted as he neared the end of his careerfrom 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 Goghs 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

heard, and music begins. The music was composed a generation before Van Gogh painted: Chopins 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 Goghs work that the Dutch painter loved Japanese art. He collected Japanese prints, copied one of Ando Hiroshiges imagesBridge in the Rainand 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 Goghs 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 AKs 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 painters 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 Goghs 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 Kurosawas success and influence in the West at the same time that it reminds us that, even in Van Goghs 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

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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 womenwho are now doing their laundry at the rivers edgeit 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 AKs 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 viewers 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-

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pin is concerned, it has been suggested that Kurosawas 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 AKs 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 Freudeven before AK finds Van Goghhe 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 womans 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 asksin French again whether the painter is Vincent van Gogh. This is the beginning of the central part of Crows, in which AKs 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,

Why arent you painting? As incongruous as this may seem to viewers the witnesses to the dreamVincent is impatient with the Japanese visitor. Neither AKs 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 Goghs 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 arent 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 its 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 Im through, the picture appears before me complete. . . . But its 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!

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 couldnt 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 cant 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 Goghs paintings. He is stunned by Vincents 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 Goghs paint. This conjuncture of sunsthe natural one and the painted onerefracts a passage in Kurosawas autobiography:
After looking at a monograph of Cezanne, I would step outside and the house, streets and treeseverything looked like a Cezanne painting. The same thing would happen when I looked at a book of Van Goghs 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)

Music of Chopins Prelude no. 15 resumes to accompany close-ups of Vincents 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.

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 worldprecisely 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 Goghs 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

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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 Vincents 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 Vincents paintings.
ed version of the same, Van Goghs 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 Vincents 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-

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 Vincents 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 Kurosawas account of his reorientation in Something Like an Autobiography (8090). (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 Kurosawas 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

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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. AKs 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 Vincents 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 Vincents wisdom.

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 Kurosawas gestures toward literary geniushis 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 Kurosawas Something Like an Autobiography points most directly to his self-conception as a genius. Stephen Prince writes that the most fascinating thing about Kurosawas 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 Freuds 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 Freuds world as well as Van Goghs. 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. Kurosawas concern with dreams is genuine and focused. The epigram to this articleKurosawas statement that Man is a genius when he is dreamingis echoed in Vincents statement. He says that after he loses himself in the natural beauty, then, as if its 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

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Yume lack. And the unseen supporting castSigmund Freud and Frederic Chopinreinforce 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 viewers conscious mind forward. Chopins 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, Chopins 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 AKs 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 Kurosawas 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. NOTES 1. Of course, this detail hardly fits the description of rational dialogue, but the severed ear is probably the most clichd thing about Van Goghs 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 Vincents 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.

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 Warriors 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. Kurosawas Dreams: A Cinematic Reflection of a Traditional Japanese Context. Cinema Journal 40.4 (2001): 81103.

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.