MOVIE REVIEW : Beautiful Dreamer : Movies: ‘Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams’ offers some of the loveliest images ever conceived by Japan’s greatest director.

“Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” (AMC Century 14 and Beverly Center Cineplex) contains some of the most beautiful images ever conceived by the man who is widely regarded as the world’s greatest living director--and it also has a couple of the most ponderous moments of any of his 28 films. Even so, what works far outweighs what doesn’t, and this picture is an event for film lovers. Of all the films that have played Los Angeles this year, only Theo Angelopoulos’s “The Travelling Players” can be mentioned in the same breath in regard to level of aspiration and intensity of vision.

Inspired by actual dreams of the director, Kurosawa’s film is composed of eight episodes that express his abiding anti-war, anti-nuclear and pro-environment sentiments. It is rich in the varied contemplations of a major 80-year-old artist looking back and looking ahead with humor and concern. Kurosawa can envision a hellish nuclear holocaust as well as a flowery meadow framed by a rainbow, a ritualistic dance of life-size dolls performed on a tiered mountainside, and one the most idyllic settings imaginable: a cluster of watermills by a country stream. And when Kurosawa, whose alter ego (Akira Terao) is identified only as “I,” literally enters the world of Van Gogh’s paintings, the audience at the screening this reviewer attended broke into applause.

Not surprisingly, in matters of style and technique, the film is sublime, with Kurosawa working with such longtime associates as creative consultant Inoshiro Honda (best known as the director of “Godzilla”), cinematographer Takao Saito, lighting director Takeji Sano, art director Yoshiro Muraki and composer Shinichiro Ikebe. George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic contributed some spectacular special effects. The most successful portions of the film are marked by a lightness and ease that bring to mind the final films of Luis Bunuel. “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” opens and closes in pure enchantment. The first two episodes are the dreams of childhood; the last, completing the circle, of serene old age. According to ancient Japanese legend, a fox wedding occurs when the sun shines on a rainy day. Such an event occurs in the dream of the 5-year-old Kurosawa (Toshihiko Nakano) with consequences that are amusingly scary but end in an image of awesome beauty.

In the second, little Akira (Mitsunori Isaki), now several years older, dreams that his sisters’ hina dolls, arranged in stately rows, have come alive as the protesting spirits of the peach trees that Kurosawa’s family has cut down in a nearby orchard. The elaborate kimonos that the swaying, keening dolls wear have been designed by Emi Wada, who won an Oscar for her similarly rich costumes for Kurosawa’s “Ran.”

The light tone of these two dreams gives way to an eerie, ambiguous sequence in which a mountain climber, one of four stranded in a snowstorm, is comforted by a beautiful spirit--but is she an angel of mercy or of death? In any event, she is a sensual, seductive creature, alternately a figure of comfort and menace and finally as ethereal as a scarf carried away by a gust of wind. The film’s tone grows much darker in a sequence so imaginative, so stunning in effect, that it cannot be given away. It suffices to say that it has to do with a heart-breaking incident of the supernatural experienced by a weary young soldier who passes through a tunnel on his way home from a World War II battlefield.

If only Kurosawa had been as inspired in remembering the tragedy of war when warning us of nuclear peril. He creates a horrifying image of Mt. Fuji melting in the wake of a nuclear accident, featuring some 2,000 extras, and focusing on several principals who curse their fates in a didactic manner. The image is so powerful the words aren’t really necessary. But Kurosawa compounds the heavy-handedness of his message, first expressed 35 years ago in his feature “I Live in Fear,” by following this nightmare with yet another. In this sequence, his alter ego survives to meet a band of mutants, all of whom had been government officials or financiers responsible for the nuclear folly. Kurosawa might have gotten away with the first sequence, but the two side by side are really heavy going.

Happily, these two sequences are preceded by his glorious homage to Van Gogh and are followed by the warm and charming finale. In the first, Kurosawa’s alter ego enters the world of Van Gogh through one of his most famous paintings, the 1888 “Drawbridge at Arles.” Kurosawa plays with levels of reality by making the actual world of Arles look like a series of Van Gogh paintings and by having his alter ego scamper over the characteristic deep ridges of the artist’s paintings made so large as to make the Kurosawa figure seem like the Incredible Shrinking Man in his final stages of diminution.

In the casting of Van Gogh, Kurosawa has made a truly daring choice: director Martin Scorsese, who in Bertrand Tavernier’s “ ‘Round Midnight” proved that great actors great directors don’t necessarily make. But Scorsese--the entire sequence is in English in deference to him--is surprisingly effective, especially in the dark intensity of his gaze.

For his final dream Kurosawa has cast an enduring icon of the Japanese cinema, Chishu Ryu, as a 103-year-old man--Ryu is actually a mere 86--who tends the watermills in his beautiful village and tells his visitor of the importance of living close to nature and the acceptance of the inevitability of death, which should be a matter of celebration when the life has been lived long and well. This is a warm coda of reconciliation, but it should not be taken as as a farewell to the screen on the part of the director. For as “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” (rated PG; some scenes too intense for the very young) opens its run, the master enters his ninth decade already shooting his next picture.

‘AKIRA KUROSAWA’S DREAMS’

A Warner Bros. presentation of an Akira Kurosawa USA production. Producers Hisao Kurosawa, Mike Y. Inoue. Writer-director Akira Kurosawa. Creative consultant Inoshiro Honda. Camera Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda. Lighting director Takeji Sano. Music Shinichiro Ikebe. Costumes Emi Wada. Visual effects by Industrial Light and Magic. Choreographer Michiyo Hata. Film editor Tome Minami. With Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho, Toshie Negishi, Mieko Harada, Mitsunori Isaki, Toshihiko Nakano, Yoshitaka Zushi, Hisashi Igawa, Chosuke Ikariya, Chishu Ryu, Martin Scorsese. In Japanese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 59 minutes.

MPAA-rated: PG (a few scenes very intense for young children).