I have had many dreams about Star Wars, particularly about Episode 3. Often I am watching it in a theater on the day of release. Usually, the films are filled with cryptic, dream-like imagery that I (subjectively) find fascinating. Often bizarre, inexplicable alien landscapes are shown. One favorite of mine had a world that was nothing but blue skies and clouds, with a single building floating in it, Darth Vader's house. The house was shaped as a large rectangle with no floor in its center, as if the whole of the house were the concrete patches bordering a swimming pool. Instead of being filled with water, there was no pool, only a drop into an infinite expanse of blue and white.
The notion of endlessly falling into the sky is a fear that I've had ever since I was young and would freak myself out by staring at the sky and feeling overwhelmed by its vastness, all the while wondering what would happen if gravity were to suddenly stop working for me and I began to leave the ground. For this reason, helium balloons that were let go to fly off into the sky filled me with a prepubescent sense of existential dread, and I took great comfort in knowing that they'd eventually pop and land somewhere on earth. Truly, Darth Vader is a bad ass to live in a house as scary as the bottomless swimming pool.
I recently watched Kwaidan, a 60's Japanese anthology of four stories. The stories deal with the supernatural and feel like nothing so much as Twilight Zone stories. They are all shot on elaborate, vividly painted and lighted sets with minimal sound, including dialogue. There was, apparently, a political point to the film. It was meant to be more Japanese than Western in style, a reaction to people like Kurosawa. The trailer to the film declares Kwaidan to be a bold protest against modernity which features "state of the art set design." The film's a bit trying on the patience, but fun.
Three of the stories have explicit "meta" elements, dealing thematically with storytelling in the stories' content. The final story, presented with narration like the other three, explains that the presented tale exists only as a fragment in early 1900's literature. A fellow of high status, some sort of lord or samurai, sees the reflection of a smiling man in drinking bowls filled with water. This smiling man eventually appears in front of him in a ghostly form which the samurai manages to wound. After the smiling man disappears into a wall, his retainers come calling on the samurai, and another fight ensues. The retainers, though, are similarly ghostly and difficult to kill. After an extended battle, the samurai leans upon his spear to rest, surrounded by the retainers. Sweating, he begins to laugh maniacally. At this point, the narration tells us that the written fragment ends, and the film then depicts a publisher checking on his writer, who has just mysteriously disappeared. The film then ends on a Twilight Zone note as the writer's fate is explained. It's curiously satisfying story made of a beginning with no end and an end with no beginning.
I dreamt last night that, following a wedding at which my father and I did bumps of cocaine together and I tried to nail Mandy Moore, I downloaded and watched the newly released Episode 3. I saved the movie to the latest digital format, a twenty by ten inch lidless tupperware container halfway filled with oatmeal. In the movie, an evil fellow, the true Phantom Menace, encouraged Anakin to undergo cybernetic enhancement. Anakin sat on a production line as car factory robots tore off bits of his body and replaced them with mechanical parts. At the end of the line, he was ready to go off to fight whoever the Phantom Menace asked, but only with Obi Wan Kenobi at his side because, in Anakin's words, "Obi Wan is my boy. We're tight." Eventually, this Phantom Menace is revealed in the movie to be George Lucas himself, whom Anakin and Obi Wan fought in vain. After all, it is George's world and you just can't beat the fellow who's writing it.
In my dream I found this to be an interesting meta direction for the film to take. When I woke up, I realized it was just that my subconscious had a nasty sense of humor regarding George Lucas and the prequels.
Posted by mattb at January 23, 2004 06:43 PM