Woman in the Dunes

I watched Woman In The Dunes recently for the reason, I suppose, most nowadays would watch Woman In The Dunes - I was told I'm supposed to. As someone who loves an old, influential movie, I never pass up a chance to see where cinematic tropes began and what modern work has been influenced by a great old movie - if not, simply, to see a great old movie. Woman In The Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara's most famous movie, is visually arresting - its endless fields of sand are the stuff of intense textural specificity, and the shots that are framed around the curves of bodies, naked or clothed, follow that same specificity and exploit for erotic power. I do think, though, that the movie gets impossible to watch in one sitting - a movie that is supposed to make you feel empathy for a person trapped in an endless situation should not, too, make you feel trapped in an endless situation, and Woman In The Dunes does. In an extraordinary essay on the film, Roger Ebert describes it as "a modern version of the myth of Sisyphus," and the points he raised are truly twice as fascinating as the movie (read it sometime in his Great Movies section). Yet it strikes me that movies of similar philosophical ilk do not have to be this deadening - a movie like, say, Roman Polanski's Repulsion used its glacial pace to unnerve you, to deprive you of your ability to tell one second apart from an hour, and it uses that deprivation to address victorian fears of sexuality and changing morals. Each narrative Herzog movie speaks to his larger theme of man shown as quixotic in the face of the nature man claims dominion over, and slow as his movies are, they allow you to engage in the same sense of unnerved dislocation as their central characters. I don't think Woman In The Dunes does that - it creates a true sense of place, and certainly makes you feel stuck there, but does not connect to any sense of philosophical speculation - it makes you, truly, hope for an ending. I'm glad this movie exists, and I'm glad the rerelease features Teshigahari's earlier short works, and I'm truthfully glad I saw it. But I will never never watch it again, and would be shocked to hear someone who felt excited about this movie.

Woman in the Dunes is one of the greatest Japanese films ever, however in the USA we have had only the 127 min version. The uncut version has at least 25 minutes more, and is essential to this film.

Do not buy this, buy the Criterion version.

***THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE 2007 CRITERION COLLECTION DVD AVAILABLE AS PART OF THE "THREE FILMS BY HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA" BOX SET***

Like Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1964 existential allegory can be a challenge to sit through if you are not prepared to be swept away by its elliptical profundities. Written for the screen by Kobo Abe based on his 1962 novel, the surreal, highly symbolic story focuses on an amateur entomologist on what he thinks is a day trip from Tokyo to a seaside area with vast and immense sand dunes. As he looks for a particular beetle that he thinks will bring him fame within scientific circles, he loses track of time and misses the last bus back to the city. Local villagers come upon him and take him to a woman who can provide overnight lodging. As it turns out, she lives in the bottom of a sand pit reachable only by a rope ladder. With the ladder gone the next morning, it dawns on him that he is being held captive by the villagers.

From this revelation, Teshigahara and Abe focus on how the man deals with the situation and his evolving feelings toward the woman. In order to survive, she reveals that she shovels sand all night for the local construction company in exchange for weekly rations that are dropped into the pit by a pulley. Meanwhile, the sand takes a life of its own as it encroaches upon their existence in ways most unexpected. Already well known from Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and starring opposite Marlon Brando in 1963's The Ugly American, Eiji Okada dominates every scene of the movie as the emotionally volatile entomologist evolving from sexist entitlement to humiliating desperation to serene resignation. As a representation of supposedly civilized rational thought amid the primitive surroundings, it's a masterful if sometimes overripe turn where only the sand threatens to upstage him.

As the woman, the offbeat-looking Kyôko Kishida initially seems to be playing Friday to Okada's Robinson Crusoe, but her character starts to reveal layers that startle and fill in necessary plot details. Their relationship becomes highly charged with several scenes that move mercurially between violent and erotic, the capper being a harrowing, Lord of the Flies-type of public act in front of the villagers. Hiroshi Segawa's black-and-white cinematography is nothing short of amazing with memorable vivid images such as the abstract patterns of the dunes, the skin textures flecked with sand granules, and the off-kilter shot compositions that amplify the sheer oddness of the circumstance. The film's overall unnerving tone often makes it feel like an extended episode of a Twilight Zone, and Toru Takemitsu's unsettling music adds to the eerie atmosphere.

Made for less than $100K, Teshigahara's film was such an art-house hit that he received an unexpected Oscar nomination for Best Director alongside the mainstream likes of Robert Wise (The Sound of Music), David Lean (Doctor Zhivago) and William Wyler (The Collector). Currently available only as part of a box set from the Criterion Collection, Three Films By Hiroshi Teshigahara, the 2007 DVD contains the full 148-minute director's cut (twenty minutes were cut when initially released for international audiences) and a helpful video essay by film historian James Quandt. Be forewarned that the film will feel overlong for the uninitiated, especially since most of the action takes place between two people in a sand pit, but this is a worthwhile cinematic achievement by any stretch of the imagination.

I wasn't sure what to expect from "Woman in the Dunes". The information I had seen about it suggested that it was an erotic movie but I got a bit lost in the explanation of the plot. All the reviews I saw said that it is an outstanding movie. I waited until I had time to watch the movie uninterrupted and I must admit, this is a unique movie.

"Woman in the Dunes" tells the story of a innocent young man who stayed too long on a trip to examine life in a sand dune environment. He needs a place to spend the night because he missed the last bus to town. He finds that his one night stay becomes permanent. His landlady is a woman whose job it is to provide the locals with a daily supply of sand. Sand is everywhere in this movie; it's even part of the eroticism. I found myself wondering what the sand symbolizes; the constant demands of life, the instability of life, the overbearing demands of society on the individual, etc. You can make of this movie whatever you want. However, the real impact is in the movie's ending. I won't delve into that ending but I could sense its' coming. I found that it gave me something to really ponder.

Having the book, The Woman In The Dunes, I got the movie. I wanted to see what they did with the book. Would they follow it, word for word, change it, ruin it? I have to say, they did a good job following the book, but for a slight change in the ending.
Also the movie helped me really understand more of what the book was trying to say.
For example, take the house in the pit. Let us say that it is a metaphor for life. We're going along, working, sleeping, eating, wondering if we have any meaning in what we do?
The male character, the Guest, complains about the conditions, the work that never ends, the feeling he is nothing. He refuses to face his problems and tries to escape. Is that suicide?
The woman is always trying to find something to do, something to lighten the load, something to make them happy. Even if it is the little things. Is she optimist? She does not wish to leave the pit but in the end death comes for us all.
In the movie, the ending is slightly more optimist, as it shows the Guest deciding he can stay, a tad longer. He has found out a way to make the lifes of the other people in the other houses easier and wishes to pass it on before leaving.
There is nudity and sex, but done in a manner that is tasteful and purely for the story. 123 minutes long, subtitled, in Black & White.