This anthology film is a lyrical trip through the fragments of consciousness, a standout late-career work from legendary director Akira Kurosawa unlike any of his other creations. Told in eight interlinked stories structured like folklore, Dreams follows a Kurosawa stand-in through childhood memories tinged with wonder and menace, the terror of nuclear war, the struggle to bring art into being and the tension between the natural world and technology. Kurosawa has brought his own recurring dreams into vivid life (with a little help from Industrial Light & Magic, along with practical effects), inviting us on a journey through his subconscious as we reflect upon our own.

Dreams was a Japanese/American co-production—because astonishingly the guy who made Seven Samurai and Ikiru had difficulty securing investors for his films—as Kurosawa was assisted by superfans George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in bringing this deeply personal work to screen (Marty even gets a cameo). After his assumed swan song with the epic Shakespearean riff Ran, in which an elderly despot desperately clings to power, this is a far more mysterious meditation on aging and legacy. When Kurosawa accepted the 1990 Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, he said “I'm a little worried because I don't feel that I understand cinema yet,” and the absolute sincerity with which he meant that is what makes him one of the greatest of all time.