BY THE ALIMOCHE TEAM
7 DECEMBER 2022
The morally-laden magic of Akira Kurosawa’s film Dreams (1990) bridges the gap between the dreamtime and the screentime through a series of meticulously masterminded storyboards retrieved from the anecdotal nature of the director’s recurring dreams. These Dreams include traditional figures from Japanese mythology, such as foxes and the Yuki-Onna snow maiden, interposed with an underlying message of sustainability and the dangers of human greed. In a similar, but not novel fashion, traditional storytelling is kept alive through traditional Aboriginal Australian artwork, featuring the Dreamtime, the core myth of creationism, and the irreplaceable tenet of Aboriginal Australian folklore and culture.
Where dreamtime meets screentime: The Rainbow Serpent in "Cry of Asia" by Robert Campbell Jnr and the handpainted storyboard behind the opening sequence of Dreams by Kurosawa.
Depictions of cultural figures within the Dreamtime include but are not limited to the Rainbow Serpent, the goanna and the Bunyip, all metaphorical indications of the consequences of human greed and overzealousness, as well as the emphasis on the ephemeral nature of life itself being an eternal gift given by the earth, to return back to the earth, continued intergenerationally via the lessons taught and preserved ancestrally, which can also be seen through the dialogue of the Old Man in the “Village Of The Watermills” sequence, stating “it’s good to be alive… it’s exciting”, as the final line within the film. It is therefore evident the core link binding Kurosawa’s Dreams and the Aboriginal Australian Dreamtime is the use of storytelling through visual art pieces, as a means of warning through thinly-veiled metaphorical signage.
Storyboard from "Village of the watermills" by Kurosawa, a warning against the neglect of the preciousness of life, a common motif echoed and pioneered in Aboriginal Australian art.
It is important to note Aboriginal Australian artwork is not only a decorative cultural structure, but a powerful symbol of protest, having endured and persevered as defining iconography withstanding British and Australian oppression on a federal and institutional level, whilst Kurosawa’s Dreams whilst not having endured such oppression on so massive a scale, can also be regarded as one of the most poignant protest pieces of the 20th Century film industry, due to being intensely overlooked and glossed over for its fierce critique of nuclear power amidst an aggressively capitalistic, nuclearphilic audience. The storytelling of much 20th Century Aboriginal Australian artwork depicting governmental critique via mythology can also be regarded as overlooked within the art world, due to its stance against state-sanctioned genocide and unlawfully forced integration efforts on behalf of the Australian government.
Within Aboriginal Australian culture, it is evident the key warnings are against the greed of European settlers on the land, in addition to environmental concerns such as the excesses of mining and fracking, and combined with the environmental warnings present in Dreams, it is evident in the works of Kurosawa and of Aboriginal Australian artists that visual depiction within the 2-dimensional world surpasses the limits of a flat medium into the 3-dimensional stream of consciousness, or unconsciousness, via metaphor and symbolism. This can be viewed most poignantly through the painting “Stolen Generations” by Rachel Roberts, a protest piece detailing both the systemic oppression of the Aboriginal identity through the interlocked figures, but also the environmental damage incurred through the Australian government’s enabled genocides as highlighted through the goanna representing fire, in addition to the figures falling and the cracks in the red earth. The motif of scorched earth to indicate environmental damage is echoed in storyboards for two of the scenes in Dreams; Mt Fuji In Red and The Weeping Demon, where the transfer of the sanguine hue emphasises human-induced environmental destruction.
Red, the colour of consequence, is symbolic of destruction. Environmentally this is continued in Kurosawa's storyboard for "Mt Fuji in Red" and "Stolen Generations" by Rachel Roberts.
Thus in both Stolen Generations and Dreams, it is evident the intention of both Kurosawa and Roberts is to awaken the audience to its role in enabling, whether actively or passively, in environmental damage through their institutional reliance; whether via a remorseless genocidal government built through the blood of the indigenous, or through further reliance on a commercial entity for its usage of energy; despite lacking a choice in said systems as an individual it imposes a sense of collective guilt triggering a wave of underlying accountability causing discomfort and increasing shock value in lieu of impregnating such an audience with a hearty diet of propaganda.
Use of traditional creatures and settings emerging from the 2-dimensional world to the 3-dimensional world via visual storytelling is further emphasised through the demons, foxes and snow maiden spirit in Dreams, in addition to the Rainbow Serpent, Tasmanian Tiger and Emu within Aboriginal Australian Artwork. The significance of the titular demon in the Weeping Demon sequence in Dreams serves not only as a tenet of a scar film, in that its presence is intended to traumatise the viewer into remembering its words, but also as a representation of the consequences of neglect; when an ecosystem becomes neglected and exploited in the name of human greed, said Demon serves as a visual horror of the currently-invisible yet deep-scarring damage to the natural world, as a byproduct of human greed. This emphasis on consequence can also be seen in Dreams in the Tunnel sequence; in that the ghost of Noguchi the dead yet undead soldier and the entirety of the phantom battalion serve as a consequence of neglect, and whilst the neglect is not to the scale of the nuclear damage in Mt Fuji In Red, its appearance haunting the commander is still a consequence of his personal negligence, almost entitlement in his state of existence.
The consequences of neglect in Dreams are further highlighted by the scope of the undead battallion in "The Tunnel" and the Demon creature in "The Weeping Demon". Deliberate trauma to stress Kurosawa's anti-nuclear and environmental agendas.
The Emu and the Jabiru are further motifs of the consequences of greed within Aboriginal Australian artwork, notably Mabel King’s “Wandjina and Emu”, wherein the mythos of the emu’s creation due to a fight between two brothers-in-law concerning greed over food resulted in one of the brothers becoming the flightless bird; and the motif here of the Wandjina spirits being symbolic of renewal through rain emphasise yet another similarity of the storytelling between Aboriginal Australian artwork and Kurosawan storyboarding; the initial scar of the damage induced through human neglect contributing to shock value and providing a moral compass, in Mabel King’s case the Emu representing destruction of human morality via greed through the fire of the Emu creation myth against the Wandjina spirits’ regeneration, and in Kurosawa’s case the sequence “Village Of The Watermills” immediately after “The Weeping Demon” and “Mt Fuji In Red”, symbolic again of the chance for renewal after neglect if the consequences of human greed are vanquished and due action in reaction is conducted, particularly important as Kurosawa himself is a byproduct of the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings.
Hope and regeneration: Mabel King's "Wandjina and Emu" and Kurosawa's storyboard for "Village of the Watermills". Anthropologically, the human species is consistently dependent on the calm after the storm.
The abject similarities between Kurosawa’s handpainted storyboards for Dreams and the implementation of the Dreamtime within Aboriginal Australian art are uncanny. Despite the differences in heritage and oppression, the key resemblance between the two forms of art are the commentaries on greed and its consequences in addition to showcasing the value of life and the possibility for regeneration on a natural and spiritual level. There is an element of hope within both pieces, anthropologically reminding us of the human nature of natural optimism; where there is a sliver of hope humanity will cling to it. Furthermore, both Kurosawa and the Aboriginal Australian artists mentioned in this article use visual expression as a means for warning, making the viewer uncomfortable as a means of exposing the hidden agendas behind environmental destruction and the consequences it has on the land. The question arises: is it time for humanity itself to transcend its own barriers of inaction and to instead awaken the primal unity instilled as an evolutionary advantage to rise against its own reliance on institutions?
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