Francis Kenny, ASC
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990)
"It's nearly impossible to selected a 'favorite' film. So many films have influenced my work as a cinematographer, and some have moved my soul to tears. I have learned from these films and tried to emulate them. I often think of the stairway shot in The Cranes Are Flying, the parade sequence in I Am Cuba, the opening of Saving Private Ryan — a dirty hand shaking in fear.
"The one film that stands out as an unpretentious masterpiece is Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. It is indeed a dream. Whenever I read a script or go into a darkened movie theater, I like to think that I'm entering a dream. 'Man is a genius when he is dreaming,' Kurosawa said. Kurosawa believed in dreams as 'the fruit of pure and earnest human desire,' and that people while dreaming become 'fearless and brave, like a genius.'
"Dreams consists of eight short stories. Each story is visually stunning and unfolds in a [non-linear] way — such is the nature of dreams. The cinematography is breathtaking. It is rich, elegant, and most important, unpretentious. It is a celebration of the imagination. The film has a patience, unlike so many American films. It is relentlessly visual, with long stretches containing no dialogue. But there is a reason for it, and the viewer becomes hypnotized. The short stories are based on the filmmaker's own dreams, beginning with a Garden of Eden-like episode called Sunshine Through the Rain, in which a 5-year-old boy sneaks off to the forest to witness a fox wedding that has been forbidden to human eyes. This story is told through the eyes of the boy. The forest, and the adventure, becomes mystical — a metaphor for the journey to manhood. Like Japanese painting, the colors are rich yet desaturated. The camera moves slowly and patiently, and never calls attention to itself; it remains invisible. The spatial design is simple genius. We are constantly reminded of the relationship between man and nature.
"In Mount Fuji in Red and The Weeping Demon, a nuclear power plant meltdown begins in chaos and ends in misery, while in Village of the Watermills, heaven on earth is achieved not by technology but by a return to nature and a denial of human 'progress.' Living in Los Angeles makes us forget that we are also a part of nature and that the lust for convenience has, as Kurosawa said, 'dirtied the hearts of men.' While filming this sequence, Kurosawa told his crew that the theme was nostalgia for Mother Nature and 'the loss of the heart of mankind — therefore, the images of nature in this sequence must be extremely vivid.' The final image of a beautiful river seems to last for days, and you can't take your eyes off it. Once again, we become hypnotized. The image becomes a metaphor for the ethereal and the eternal.
"The other episodes are also impressive. In The Blizzard, a group of climbers succumbs to sleep during a deadly snowstorm; the storm sequence is a great reference for cameramen. The Tunnel is the guilt-ridden tale of a wartime survivor who confronts a platoon of men who died while he escaped. In the strange and wondrous Crows story, the viewer is literally drawn into a Van Gogh painting.
"Dreams is a masterpiece told by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. In a world of chaos and uncertainty, it reminds us of who we are, where we live, and how we live our lives. Sometimes all of us need reminding; I certainly do."
—as told to David Heuring
Francis Kenny's credits as a director of photography include Heathers, New Jack City, Coneheads, Wayne's World 2, Bean, A Night at the Roxbury and She's All That.
© 1999 ASC