Analyzing Auteurship on Akira Kurasawa's Films

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     For the auteurship assignment I decided to reflect upon Akira Kurasawa’s work. I watched some shorts from Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams. They included “Sunshine in the Rain”, the Peach Orchard, and Van Gogh. His style and subject matter is evidently consistent in his work.  His work isn’t mainstream and doesn’t follow a Hollywood narrative.

     Many of his works contains messages portrayed in a symbolic manner.  Initially upon viewing, I thought his works made very little sense in a literal manner.  As my mind started to look for clues on what Kurasawa’s message was, things started to become clearer. Kurasawa seems to enjoy inviting his audience to read deeper into the figurative meaning in the films.

     His main characters in the shorts I watched were characters who had traits of youthfulness and innocence. His works usually involves, but doesn’t  limit itself  to, Asian mythologies or myths. The three shorts I watched contained the concepts of right of passage, death, and personal discovery. They characters often seem to learn a lesson from their incidents they find them selves in.

      He gives the story focus in the film ( whether it be a peach orchard, fox wedding, or a painting) a higher form of supernatural existence. They are treated as Spirits in the movie awing the audience and the characters that interact with them.  I find this similar to the Japanese religious Idea of Shinto. I learned in my Japanese class last semester that It regarded the inanimate objects in nature  each with a revered spiritual force of their own.

     Akira Kurasawa also pays interesting attention to colors palletes and how they compliment the mood. For example In “The rain” The boy’s home is shown as a gray boring place. Everything looks bland and unwelcoming. It launches the boy on an adventure, which ultimately gets him in trouble. In Van Gogh, the colors are hazy and surreal, then blending into a naturalistic world. It’s meaning seems to be describing as how Van Gogh took the real world and translated it into his personal vision. Finally in the “ Peach Orchard”, there are lots of pink peach blossoms flowing in the wind as the Peach tree spirits bloom once again from the dead to please a little boy. The gentle colors seem to portray the love the boy had for the Peach tree orchard when the orchard trees came into full bloom. I admire the strong use of color and how they heighten the mood.

     Out of the three films I watched, I thought “Van Gogh" had had the most solid concept. It was about an aspiring artist who looks at a painting called “The Crow” .He is immersed in the world in which Vangoh has painted. As the character runs through the cornfield world, it seamlessly merges him into live action footage. Towards the end of the film, there are a flock of crows dispersing from the cornfield. At first I was unaware that it blended between a 2d world and live action. I really enjoyed this one the most.