To Sleep So as to Dream

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william d Strange movie, and not just because it's mostly silent. The images are often so incoherent that at times I thought I was watching an extended version of the Monty Python "Confuse a Cat" sketch. (You might not get my reference but you should get my drift). To the film makers credit, however, they do offer a plausible explanation for all the craziness in the end. Kudos also for recreating what looked like an authentic silent film from the 1920s. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Directed and written by Kaizô Hayashi — who in addition to films like Zipang, The Most Terrible Time In My Life and The Stairway to the Distant Past owns Bar Tantei, a detective themed bar in Kyoto, Japan — To Sleep as to Dream is the story of two private detectives searching for an actress who has been trapped within the reel of a silent ninja film. Private eye Uotsuka (Shiro Sano, Shin Godzilla) and his sidekick Kobayashi (Koji Otake) have been hired by Madame Cherryblossom (Fujiko Fukamizu) to find her missing daughter Bellflower (Moe Kamura, who also composed music for this movie), which leads them to a film studio and a vision of a samurai movie with no ending, a series of actors from Japan's movie past and sets by Takeo Kimura, the art designer of movies like Tokyo: The Last War, A Killer Without a Grave and many more, as well as being the oldest person to ever direct a movie, 2008's Dreaming Awake at the age of 90. A near-silent film with often only music and commentary by a benshi performer, someone who would narrate silent films for the audience, all to tell the story of a world where detectives and magicians attempt to rescue or restrain Bellflower. The M. Pathé and Company villains are obsessed with film — and aren't we, too? — through a film that I was certain did come from Japan's past long before 1986. Madame Cherryblossom keeps watching a movie with no ending, either in her memory or reality and like much of Japan's silent film past, it may have been lost to age or warfare. The film that emerges casts her missing daughter as the goal for our hero, but can real life be a love story? I'd never heard of this film and it just hit me perfectly. Be sure to seek it out and do the same for yourself. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Read all reviews

To Sleep So as to Dream

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