Yume jû-ya - Ten Variations on Sōseki's Dreams/ III

(image from the movie: The Third Dream)

The Third Dream is a horror story (a man is carrying his baby on the shoulders while gradually realizing that the child is the same person he had killed long time ago). A horror icon was chosen to make this segment: Takashi Shimizu, the director of the Grudge series (for those who haven't watched it - me included - it's about an American nurse that has moved to Tokyo and encountered a supernatural spirit who was finding pleasure in possessing its victims - not very funny, hm - however, look what Takashi Shimizu once said, I do really like making horror movies because it's interesting, because you have all these tricks to play on, it's very much fun - so, horror stories are funny after all, even very funny).

Takashi Shimizu took the last sentence of the text (the child on my back suddenly grew as heavy as a stone Jizō statue) to extend the story; while the book was speaking about father and son only, in the movie the wife appears to carry a long forgotten sin by herself: as a child she had broken a small Jizō statue; there is an aura of somehow unclear collective guilt, embracing now the whole family, parents, and children, and even the expected child who would die at birth: again a suggestion toward Sōseki (whose wife also got through the drama of a miscarriage).

(image from the movie: The Fourth Dream)

For The Fourth Dream Atsushi Shimizu came with an unexpected solution.

This Shimizu (not to be confounded with the other one, Takashi) is known in US for his Umezu Kazuo: Kyôfu gekijô- Negai (Kazuo Umezu's Horror Theatre:The Wish: an introverted boy finds one day a head-shape block of wood and is building from it a huge doll, wishing to bring it to life; when he gives up and burries the thing somewhere, the toy becomes animated and seeks revenge; it is the cinematic version of a macabre manga by Kazuo Umezu, considered the godfather of the genre).

(image from the movie: The Fourth Dream)

But let's come back to The Fourth Dream of Sōseki. The text is very cryptic: an ageless man is traveling from nowhere toward nowhere, and he's attracting with a silly play some kids who'd wish to follow him. Atsushi Shimizu wrapped this in a small mysterious whole: a man (presumably a young Sōseki?) visits his childhood places and is gradually enveloped by long forgotten events. As memories come back, present and past are no more distinct. The air seems saturated with the expectancy of horror.

(image from the movie: The Fourth Dream)

It was the fifth segment (made by Keisuke Toyoshima, another horror artisan, the same brand as the two Shimizu) that gave me suddenly some clue on all the segments that I had seen so far.

Toyoshima got rid of the whole story from Sōseki's Fifth Dream and kept only the ride of the girl. But, while in the text the girl was riding to see her lover (who had fallen in the hands of the enemy), here in the movie the ride was left totally unexplained - and it was so on purpose: dreams are full of incongruent occurrences!

(image from the movie: The Fifth Dream)

Actually the segment in the movie has other two personages, husband and wife: it is the description of a dream of the wife, and the girl riding the horse is just an element of the dream. The husband has also his dream, but it's up to us to decide whether it's not just another occurrence in her nightmare.

A nightmare where all ambiguities of the husband-wife relation get free voice, the whole complex of obsessions, fears, frustrations, egoism, unfulfilled desires and untold reproaches.

The ending of this segment is marvelous: husband and wife sit at the table, joined by each one's little monster.

(image from the movie: The Fifth Dream)

And here suddenly came for me the question: weren't the dreams of Sōseki (among other things) about the complex of love/hate/guilt within the close, caged universe of the family, between husband and wife, between parents and children? About the hidden desire for free open spaces, for riding at large?

(Sōseki)