Yesterday I watched Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, a film of 8 short segments each based on Kurosawa's dreams. Can't confess that I like the film after the first 2 dreams which involve children, cos it became too preachy about nuclear destruction et al.

The first dream is my favourite though. Little boy stands at the doorway of his home compound looking out in the rain. His mum warns him not to go into the forest as the foxes like to hold their wedding in the rain, and will be angry if spied upon. But he slips into the forest and sees them anyway, in a slow surreal wedding procession. They see him and he runs home, but his mum refuses to let him in. She shoves a wooden sheathed knife at him and tells him that an irate fox came looking for him, and left the knife for the boy to kill himself in atonement. The little boy's mother tells him the only way out is to find the foxes to apologise and ask for their forgiveness. And so the little boy sets out to find them, cos they are rumoured to live at the bottom of rainbows after the rain.

What struck me most was that the boy's mum wouldn't let him into the house, and would give him the knife from the fox. How could there be such callousness in a mother?