Woman in the Dunes (1964) User Reviews

Spellbinding and creepy

[jonr-3 · 9/10 · 9 March 2004]

I'd wanted to see this movie for years, and finally got around to it, on DVD. What a treat! I was glad to discover that the erotic element, though important, is not the predominant draw here; typically, some references to the film make it sound as though it were some forbidden erotic romp, or full of perverse sexuality. Instead I found myself wrapped up in a creepy suspense-thriller sci-fi-fantasy carried off with wit, style, and extraordinarily interesting photography (including one scene that, at least on my set, was completely black for a couple of minutes).

I voted "nine" for this wonderful film, in part because it left me with a lot to think about, in part just for how well it was made. The music by Toru Takemitsu is absolutely perfect for the task, too.

This is just about my favorite kind of film: one that raises important questions about human life, but not at the expense of entertainment. It's as close as I'll probably ever come to having my cake and eating it, too.

Update, January 2007: I finally obtained my own DVD of this film, one with much higher quality photographic reproduction. I now marvel even more at the extraordinarily creative photography. Be sure, if you view this on DVD, not to boost your set's brightness: I can assure you the film is very, very dark on purpose. If possible, see it on a high-definition monitor. Today, I'd vote "ten."

Existential, raw, and brilliant

[gbill-74877 · 9/10 · 1 April 2017]

If it's at all possible to know nothing about this movie before you watch it, then do so. The predicament a Japanese entomologist finds himself in will become apparent soon enough. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara and cinematographer Hiroshi Segawa do a phenomenal job of creating unforgettable images of sand through tight shots and unique camera angles, and it may make you feel hot, sticky, and somewhat claustrophobic just watching it. Eiji Okada turns in a solid performance as the entomologist, and Kyōko Kishida is brilliant as the 'woman in the dunes' who he meets. She has accepted her fate, difficult as it is, and tries to get Okada to accept it as well.

The film reflects existential, not Zen, themes, and belongs with Camus and Beckett. Life is meaningless in this pit, there is no escape, and the day to day toil is not only a struggle, but absurd and nonsensical. There is clearly a parallel being drawn to the bugs being buried in the sand as well as struggling futilely in test tubes earlier in the movie. It also reflects man's cruelty in the bugs pinned on boards to the forced labor. The scene towards the end, where the villagers look impassively down through masks and glasses with the taiko drums pounding, demanding a lewd display, is chilling.

There are a couple of very raw erotic scenes between Okada and Kishida, heightened by the conditions they find themselves in, and notably occurring as one wipes the other down. In trying to free ourselves of this painful world and the grime it coats us with, if even for only moments, we turn to the embrace of another, and take comfort in carnal moments. It's beautiful and somewhat pathetic at the same time. Okada also experiences a moment of transcendence when he invents a water pump, and sees it as a higher achievement than his original goal of discovering a new species of beetle and having it named after him. There is humanity again, displaying intelligence in improving his lot, and vanity. It's a somewhat grim film, but there is solace in these things. Definitely worth watching.

Haunting Parable of Survival Among the Rational and the Primitive Amid Enveloping Sand Dunes

[EUyeshima · 9/10 · 24 July 2007]

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.

Sand: A metaphor for "usualness" generating "mental inertia."

[Prion · 10/10 · 28 January 1999]

In early 1966, when the annual Oscar nominations for best director of the year were announced, Teshigahara might have even made a wry smile. What is surprising to me today is not that a Japanese filmmaker almost unknown in the US was nominated, but that the Motion Picture Academy in 1966 had such a keen aesthetic sense as to appreciate his radical work. "Woman in the Dunes" (Suna no onna) was far ahead of its time, radiating Absolute Beauty.

An entomologist (Eiji Okada) seeks lodging for the night in the dunes, and is led by the villagers to the bottom of a sandpit where he finds a widow (Kyoko Kishida) living in a shack. Next morning he discovers he can no longer climb out. He is expected to remain there and to live with the woman, who needs a man's help. Because the sand drifts into the shack without cease, shoveling sand away from the sandpit is her primary daily routine. After all attempts to escape the situation fail, he becomes accustomed to it and finds another way of life.

It is almost meaningless to try to ascertain any scientific or economic logic beneath the surface of this allegorical story (written by Kobo Abe). Such hairsplitting will only make you lose the merit of this work. The primary subject of the story seems to lie in a certain passive mentality to be called "mental inertia," mental acclimation, conformity, or something like that. "Mental inertia" is caused by "usualness" (or "dailiness"), and comes to dominate the subconscious in due course. Abe and Teshigahara metaphorically depict such "usualness" as the character of sand -- usualness formed in an unusual situation.

The woman has a strong mental attachment to the status quo around her; despite the cruel fact that the sand has killed her husband and daughter, she prefers to stay there and not to change her life. This is the "mental inertia" of the work. The entomologist, too. He at first thinks the whole situation surrounding the woman absurd, and tries to escape it. However, he becomes accustomed to the situation day by day, and accepts such absurdity after all. By whom is he forced to do so? The villagers? No. Himself! He chooses to return to the sandpit and stay there even when he becomes free to leave. He becomes a captive in the dunes by "mental inertia" just as he has been in the city.

After seeing this work, I came to feel that many variants of "invisible sand," which might dominate our "free will," are drifting and accumulating around us without cease, whether or not we realize it.

Pictures are great. The sand is living here, showing various expressions. Surely it "acts" as a main character in several impressive scenes, including an unforgettable love scene where the couple is caked with it.

And, music! -- if we may call this incomparable sound work so. It not only enhances each scene fully, but also gives life to things that are not expressed in image alone. From barbaric drum music through sensual sound like the sand's "breathing," Takemistu-sound is full of imagination and magic.

A perfect fusion of Image, Sound, and Subject. See "Woman in the Dunes" and die.

A Parable About Human Existence

[Eumenides_0 · 10/10 · 20 April 2010]

Hiroshi Teshigahara, adapting a novel by Kôbô Abe, has created a movie that portrays human existence with all the horror, irony and sensitivity that only a great artist can. It is so easy to reduce existence to a mere isolated concept, but few movies like Woman In The Dunes show the many angles from which our lives can and must be read.

Before becoming a parable about human existence, however, this movie begins simply with an amateur entomologist looking for insects in sand dunes. He's on a three-day vacation and left Tokyo for a bit of peace in the countryside. Furthermore, he hopes to one day find a unique species of insect and get his name on a field guide. Then a local villager convinces him to spend the night and takes him to a decrepit house inside a sand pit; the entomologist gets there through a rope ladder and enjoys the woman's hospitality, although he finds her strange for shoveling sand into buckets all night. In the next morning he's all ready to leave but the rope ladder is gone and he realizes that he's trapped and doomed to help the woman shovel sand into buckets forever, in return for rations.

There's a Greek myth, of King Sysiphus punished to carry a boulder up a slope only for it to fall down every time he was about to reach the top. It was a futile task but Sysiphus never stopped. Surely Kobo Abe got inspiration from this myth to create his story of a couple forever fighting sand dunes that continue to collapse and slide down, always threatening to devour their house and them too. The work is futile but must be done; and can't we say the same about life in general, which is fated to end sooner or later without us ever understand its purpose? Actors Eiji Okada and Kyôko Kishida (the woman in the pit) almost carry this movie alone on their shoulders. When one thinks about it, there isn't much about this movie except for two people talking and doing things. The entomologist is a person of action, decided not to give up and always planning escapes. The woman is resigned and toils because there's nothing else to do, she knows no other life.

Their relationship is strange and constantly in flux: there are moments of intimacy (this movie is extremely erotic and shows some of the most beautiful nudity in a movie I've ever seen), there's tension between them, there's violence and tears. One of my favorite scenes, and one of the most disturbing in this or in any other movies, is when the entomologist asks the villagers to let him climb up the pit once in a while to walk. The villagers agree but only if he has sex with the woman in front of them - he thinks for long seconds and then tries to rape her, much to the entertainment of the villagers, looking down as if it were a show. It's a difficult scene that both actors pull off and shows how low the entomologist is able to sink in his loss of humanity.

Finally I must speak about the sand. When we think of sand in cinema, we probably think of the deserts in Lawrence of Arabia. In that fine movie the sand is decoration, it's part of the location. But here it's a character in itself - it's alive, it slides, it kills, it's beautiful, it's unpredictable, it's omnipresent. The director spends a lot of time filming sand in all its behaviors. The characters never once forget it, they're always blowing it away or dusting it off their bodies.

Woman In The Dunes is one of those movies that one has the chance of discovering from time to time and leaves one in awe at its simplicity of plot but complexity of emotions. It's very much a perfect movie.

An extraordinary movie that you won't EVER forget!

[Infofreak · 26 October 2003]

'Woman In The Dunes' is a superb film adaptation of a fascinating novel by Kobo Abe. Abe was heavily influenced by Kafka and wrote several very strange and unforgettable books, but this was his masterpiece. He scripted the movie himself, and the director Hiroshi Teshigahara obviously "got" the material, so the film is also a masterpiece. It includes some of the most striking visual imagery I've ever seen, and I would have to say this movie is among the very best I've watched. Yes, it's THAT good. The two leads (Eija Okada and Kyoko Kishida) both give superb performances and there are some genuinely erotic (though not explicit) scenes between them. Okada plays an insect collector on holiday who finds himself stranded overnight in the country. Kishida is a local woman who agrees to lodge him for the night. However she lives in most unusual circumstances - in a shack surrounded by sand dunes which continually invade her home. To say anything more about what happens would be to spoil the extraordinary movie that follows. You can read it as an allegory or take it as a filmed nightmare, it's up to you, but believe me you won't EVER forget 'Woman In The Dunes'!

Profound without being pretentious

[miszel · 10/10 · 9 December 2004]

This classic film is one of the few to still live up to the name of "perfect film". Everything in the film is perfectly controlled and at the same time so natural.

The story involves an amateur entomologist captured in a giant sand pit somewhere on the coast of a small Japanese island. He tries to escape but a mysterious woman and some nasty villagers keep pulling him back in.

Despite being made in the early sixties this film still packs a dose of eroticism that most contemporary filmmakers pray to achieve. The black and white cinematography is absolutely haunting (watch out for poor video copies which are way too dark, there is a new DVD out which shows what the original print intended)

This is about as close as you can get to a perfect film. There is nothing that could ever be improved upon.

Best film analysis of existentionalism.

[Invariable Self · 10/10 · 12 July 2001]

Harsh and beautiful analysis of existentionalism. All the Sartrean trappings along with an element of Camus are presented in this film better than any other I know. The realization that life is absurd leads the main character to venture towards trying to make meaning out of what is essentially meaninglessness. The intersubjective relationship between man and woman is examined both erotically and violently while the villagers play the crucial role of the everpresent Other. Disturbing ending only underlies the overpowering presence of the sand dunes. The sand being the strongest metaphor in the film, illustrating the belief that life is nothing but a giant and endless egg-timer flowing sand down upon us. Highly recommended.

A brilliant tale of the changing Japan

[Atavisten · 10/10 · 2 April 2005]

I get more and more impressed with the classics of Japanese cinema and this is def a highlight. Mesmerizing and artsy it portrays a etymologist and 'the woman of the dunes' trapped in sand. The trap itself obviously symbolizes the trap a certain desert beetle digs to lie in the midst of it waiting for prey which cannot help but sliding into it. Its the same for him, he cant climb the sand walls, the more he struggles the more the sand runs a little like the woman who in fear of the outside continues her sisyfosan existence.

The psychology between the two is excellently depicted. The tension is intensified trough images of sweaty skin and running sand. The cinematographer is a master in filming this. Lots of black. Editing also is sharp and very well done. Sound is minimal and fits the images' bleak and deserted dunes.

Much can be said about this movie, it is one for repeated viewings for sure.

A haunting existentialist parable.

[seandchoi · 10/10 · 4 April 2002]

Hiroshi Teshigahara's "Woman in the Dunes" is truly a unique movie. It's about an entomologist who goes on a holiday, only to find himself trapped in huge sand pit with a woman. The woman has no will to get out of the sand (it's been "broken"--like that of a stable horse--no doubt), but he refuses to live a "meaningless" life in the sand pit (like the woman). He tries to get out, but it's all in vain: the wall of sand is an impenetrable barrier between him and his "freedom." And so the story goes. The sand pit, I guess, is a metaphor for humanity's existentialist plight. Like the mythological Sisyphus, who was condemned for eternity to roll a rock to the top of a hill only to have it roll back down again, the two characters in this film dig sand out of their pit--but the sand keeps coming back....which raises the question: If life is meaningless--as Satre and Camus have said--what will we do? Do we keep digging? Do we opt for suicide instead? Or what? This is one of those films that haunt you after you see it; you'll keep thinking of it during subsequent days and even weeks. It is also distinguished by its luscious and crisp black and white deep focus photography. "The Woman in the Dunes" is (sadly) a far too little-known cinematic treasure that is thought-provoking, beautiful, erotic, and even eerie. Once you see it, you won't soon forget it.

Haunting but Dragging Parable of the Senselessness of Life

[veramkaufmann · 7/10 · 4 March 2016]

A brusque schoolteacher takes a trip out to the dunes to get away from it all by indulging his entomological hobby, hoping to get his name in the books for the discovery of a rare insect. Instead, he is entrapped by a woman who lives endlessly shoveling out the sand from her house in a pit in the dunes. Her husband has died and she needs a man to help with the work and relieve her loneliness. To the man, the life in the dunes is insufferable and absurd, and he does everything possible to escape. To the woman, the life in the dunes is all she knows and she sees little point in venturing beyond, to a wider world where she will have no significance.

The film is visually arrested in its shots of drifting dunes, struggling insects, the protagonists, sometimes covered with sand. The two main protagonists are examined in an unsentimental style, empathetically, and yet without any glamorization. We question whether they have any more hope to transcend their situation, than the insects that the man captures. The sand is a metaphor for the routine and pointless nature of the tasks of life. In the end, we are left with the question of which protagonist is closer to correct. We root for the man to escape his criminal imprisonment, feeling the ridiculousness of the situation, but at the same time it's made clear that in his real life in Tokyo, he has little more significant to await him, and that he might just as well learn to love this as anywhere else.

On the negative side, the film is long at over two hours, given the extremely spare plot and low-key approach, and grows boring. It's a film that's more fun to think about afterward than watch. In addition, on rewatching the film, the artificiality of the set up begins to wear. It is somewhat of a "one note" movie, with a didactic, Twilight Zone kind of air, where you know the sand stands for one thing, the house for another, it's all a metaphor for life, etc.

Overall, a film worth watching, but not perfect.

Teshigahara's masterpiece

[mevmijaumau · 10/10 · 2 October 2014]

Woman of the Dunes is the second film of what I like to call Teshigahara's Trilogy of Identity, preceded by Pitfall and succeeded by The Face of Another. The links these films share is that they're collaborations between Teshigahara, novelist Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu, they're shot in B&W, and they offer interesting takes on one's identity and how its fragility may be manipulated.

Woman of the Dunes is the best of the trilogy and one of the greatest accomplishments from the Japanese New Wave. The story follows an entomologist getting tricked by the villagers into living with a mysterious widow, and digging up sand for them, which gets sold illegally. The woman's life is doing nothing but digging sand for them, and the protagonist scoffs at that very idea, however he slowly realizes that the life he left back in the city is just as unfulfilling as the eternal sand-digging Sysiphus-style.

He develops Stockholm syndrome and falls in love with the woman. Lots of things happen, and in the end, his personality has completely turned topsy-turvy and is torn to pieces (evidenced via the water ripples in his reflection). He chooses to stay in the dunes, and his name (Jumpei Niki) is revealed through a document appearing on-screen. His opinions on the dullness of city life are apparent in the beginning of the film, where he talks about how in the city the only things that make you a person are certificates, documents, social conventions, papers and more papers. It was evident that nobody in the city cared for him because no one came to search for him later on when he was stuck in the village. Once a prisoner, there were people who acknowledged him, be it the sand woman, or, to a whole different extent, the villagers. Yes, shoveling up sand for days and days only to help his captors is pointless, but the life he left behind gave him even less fulfillment.

There is a lot of visual symbolism. The most obvious example is that throughout the film, Jumpei's figure is shown behind slats and bars, thus symbolizing his captivity (this effect is also used extensively by Yoshida and Kobayashi, who made films more or less at the same time). Notice how the opening credits feature various stamps, grotesque drawings of urban images in midst of sporadically spread lines, resembling a dune swallowing up a city, much like the dune life swallows up a city man. And then of course, there's the insect Niki collects, which actually catches its prey the same way the villagers caught Niki. Masks of all kinds are also used throughout the trilogy.

The marvelous B&W photography of sand is, of course, the most prominent visual motif and perfectly captures the ubiquitous sand's intruding nature. This expresses itself nicely during the extreme face close- ups, where we see the sand accumulated in Niki's and the woman's pores. In the desert, time means nothing yet Niki, coming from a city, checks his watch all the time as a mean to reflect his technical, control freak-like mind.

The performances are marvelous and unforgettable, the locations varied between sandy nothingness and a claustrophobic sand-ridden set, and the most important scenes are slow but they nonetheless stick with you. There's an unique feeling of discomfort felt throughout. It's a wonderful movie, what else to say.

Good

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 7/10 · 1 September 2010]

While there is sex involved there is no eros, whatsoever. Desperation, yes, but no eros. Then there is an odd critical claim that Niki has a wife, portrayed by Hiroko Ito. But this is simply not true. Yes, there are several shots of a second woman's body and face seen in the sand, but in no way does Niki nor the film indicate that this is a wife of his. Perhaps this is an imbuement because the character in the book mentions a wife, but, nonetheless, there is no such correlation in the film. Yet another mis-take on the film occurs when Niki almost succumbs to the taunts of the villagers to rape the widow, as they voyeur them. Some critics have claimed that this scene represents Niki's passage into the demented world of the villagers, almost like the scenes near the end of Tod Browning's Freaks, wherein the freaks claim new members by chanting, 'One of us.' But, there is no truth to this, as Niki is repulsed by his degradation. And the fact that they do not treat him any differently, after the fact, is proof that this claim is wrong. It is just a perverse sense of torture. Nothing more, nothing less. The villagers may, indeed represent Japanese society, humanity, or a variety of individual groups who are under the film's scrutiny, but this scene does nothing but show them in a horrid, fascistic light. Their perversity, however, clearly influenced scenes in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

And this reality connects the film to that masterpiece of another medium, one which aired just a few years later, the British television drama, starring Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner. Parallels between the plights of the two male protagonists abound. Both are trapped in circumstances, held by unknown forces in a 'village,' forced to go along with the villagers' perverse mind games, thwarted in their increasingly desperate ploys to regain control of their lives and bodies, etc. The difference is that, in the end, Niki submits to his tormentors, who are external in nature. By contrast, No. 6 defeats his foes, and we learn that they are, and always have been, internal.

The DVD package, from The Criterion Collection, Three Films By Hiroshi Teshigahara, comes with a fourth disk of supplements, the main feature of which is a documentary about Teshigahara and his Kobo Abe's lives and collaborations. There are also four short early documentaries by Teshigahara, none of which presage his fictive films. They are: Hokusai, Ikebana, Tokyo 1958, and Ako. The actual disk with Pitfall on it contains the theatrical trailer and a video essay by film critic James Quandt on it. One of the more interesting nuggets gleaned from it is that the bulk of the film was shot in sand dunes close to Mount Fuji. This is quite interesting since the dunes clearly look Saharan, as opposed to other desert's sand formations. Overall, it is a solid video package- with a few early blemishes, shown in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio, although the lack of an English language dubbed track would have been a great help because the white subtitles blanche out against many of the ultra-white shots of the film. The booklet features a career overview by Peter Grilli, an interview with the director, and essays on the films.

Woman In The Dunes is not only the best of the three films in this DVD set (oddly, a fact most critics agree upon), but also the most Absurdist. Yet, I do not think there is a causal connection between those facts, for there is a good deal of realism, as well. This is shown in many of the scenes where Niki is trying to devise escape plans. In his scientific zeal to catalog his experience, his sense of inventiveness mirrors that of the titular character in another 1964 film, Robinson Crusoe On Mars. It also continues the theme of the corruption of big business and unionism that was at the material core of Teshigahara's own Pitfall. It is the work of a master artist at the height of his powers, despite the minor contrivances the film takes on and asks its viewers to forgive. And viewers should forgive it, for that is its only 'flaw,' if one can call it such. And, for that solecism one gets a hefty reward of emotional and intellectual satisfaction from this almost two and a half hour long film that, despite its simple setup and spare cast list, barely feels like it runs for an hour. That's how engrossing its conception and execution is. That sort of service to the film going public deserves- no, demands, reciprocation. Go. Do it.

Suna no onna: The critical acclaim is lost on me

[Platypuschow · 4/10 · 2 January 2019]

Woman in the Dunes has an 8.5 rating on IMDB, that's insane! If it had more votes then it would be in the IMDB Top 250 and that's quite the accomplishment.

It tells the story of an entomologist who is trapped in a crater of sand by the locals and forced to live his life as a slave moving sand alongside a woman who came before him.

In true early Toho fashion the movie is bleak, dark and gritty but not entirely in a good way. For a start considering it's a Toho movie it looks terrible, dated and oddly dark (In the literal sense).

The performances are passable but absolutely not on par with what we're used to from Toho studios.

What saves it is the fantastic concept, I personally loved it but am saddened they didn't properly utilize it.

Woman in the Dunes is also famed for its eroticism, back in 1960's eastern cinema this was near unheard of so it was quite groundbreaking. The scenes are very tame, tasteful and include absolutely no nudity however.

I don't see the appeal, I can't get my head around how the rating is so insanely high and certainly don't deem it top 250 material (But then again I do very few movies that are actually in there).

Great ideas, poor execution.

The Good:

Great concept

The Bad:

Looks terrible for a Toho film

Needlessly dark

Doesn't exactly grip you

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Don't look up when going down a sand bank on a rope

Damp deserts aren't a thing

Pregnancy can be smelt

Collected Insects

[tedg · 29 May 2002]

Spoilers herein.

Here is the rare example where knowledge of the filmmaker enhances the enjoyment of the work. At least that is true for this North American.

Teshigahara was one of a now large class of intellectuals rooted in Japanese traditions but seriously exploring fusion with `western' ideas -- ideas about abstraction, narrative and perception. That class is large now, but was very small in the early sixties, the superficial intoxication with postwar, promiscuous exploration of western style having by then been abandoned.

It borrows heavily from what Teshigahara thought was the Nabokov style: pervasive symbolism, floating perspectives on reality, self-imposed confinement. The notion of `bugs' and collecting is a bow to Nabokov himself who was rather famous in butterfly circles.

(The few mazelike drawings in the title sequence almost certainly influenced Greenaway's `A Walk through H' which explores most of the same notions from the same perspective.)

I saw this first in 1965 and was awed. This film is anti-Kurosawan -- the philosophy used for the camera eye is opposite from Kurosawa's. Kurosawa's notion revolved around a wholeness. Each shot was composed as a harmonious unit -- the action of a bystander in the background was as important (more!) than that of the foreground. No such differentiation was made between foreground and background. It was all of one whole.

Teshigahara's eye is different. He makes a clear distinction between the two characters and the environment. (The villagers are part of the environment.) As much attention is given to the dynamics of each separately. Much is made of the annoyance each causes the other. Transitions between skin (usually the woman's) and the surface of the sand are not to note a symmetry, but a dis-symmetry.

This is very much in line with the famous school of icheban (flower arrangement) that Teshigahara's father founded (and which Teshigahara himself later headed). Traditional icheban has always depended on the `missing center,' the implied elements whose absence is as important as those present. This new school makes that more explicit, with radical assymetries among placed elements. What is seen is made more important by what they imply, which is a quite different matter than implication by absence. Inference by presence rather than inference by absence. Radical in that day -- and it fits in a rough way with mature notions of western narrative symbolism, where certain things represent others, especially Nabokov's notion of frangible, constructed symbolism. That means that each symbol's meaning does not come from context and culture (as many would later and popularly claim) but from the mind of the narrator existing in the mind of the reader.

Twenty years later Teshigahara made a documentary on the architect Gaudi. Gaudi is the one architect who exploits this same notion of inferred reality.

This is worth watching. And Teshigahara is worth learning about.

One of the Best Films Ever Made

[Alex_Ellermann · 10/10 · 14 May 2010]

You need to see WOMAN IN THE DUNES as soon as you can.

Hiroshi Teshigahara's masterpiece works in so many ways that it's hard to determine where to begin. You can see this movie as a really cool, extra-long episode of The Twilight Zone. You can see this movie as a parable of the human experience. You can see it as an anticapitalist illustration of the plight of the working man. There's so much here: the pressures of society, the sexual politics of courtship and marriage, the tension between our animal and intellectual selves, the brutal leveling of Japanese society. And that's just the first pass on the story. The camera-work, the lighting, the music, the willingness to exaggerate points of view and ideas in light and sound, the achingly erotic and the terror of nightmare – it's all here.

Told in outline, the story seems to cry out for a Rod Serling introduction: "Imagine, if you will, a man. He carries a driver's license, a library card, cash – the things he uses to reassure the world that he is who is. He's out for a walk in the dunes, followed by an afternoon nap. But when he awakens, he'll find himself … in The Twilight Zone." He learns that he's missed the last bus. A passing local offers to guide him to a home where someone will take him in for the night. The home is in a deep pit in the sand, and he climbs down by rope ladder. There's a woman there, and she happily cooks him dinner and fans him while he eats. Later that night, he awakens and sees her shoveling sand outside. He goes back to sleep. When he awakens that morning, he sees her again. She's sleeping on her tatami mat, her nude body dusted with sand and glittering in the morning light.

The rope ladder is gone.

I've given you the teaser. Now, I'm heading into spoiler territory. If you're intrigued but don't want to know too much, now's the time to click away and put this film at the top of your queue.

You've been warned.

OK, back to it. It's too hard for a woman alone down at the bottom of that pit. She can't keep up with the shoveling and she needs a husband. He's it, and there's no way out. The villagers sell the sand and lower rations down to those who produce, so welcome to your life's work. At one point, he asks, "Do we shovel sand to live, or do we live to shovel sand?" Well that's just it, isn't it? If you aren't fully invested in what you do, if your job is just a job, if you're trapped, well, then what? Are you doomed to labor so someone else can profit from your misery? Does the whole point of your existence become the continuation of your existence? And what if you buy into the trap? What do you do if you get a chance to escape? There's a Japanese saying which roughly translates to, "The tallest nail gets the hammer." Do you put your head down and fit in? Do you keep shoveling? Do you have a choice? This is the kind of movie you wish you could have seen in college, when you had all night to stay up and talk through its ramifications. You know, however, that you couldn't have gotten it, not really, while you were still in college. You could have related to vision of the woman (or, later in the narrative, the man) with the light dusting of sand. But the role of the individual in the family and the family in society, the web of responsibilities among all the players? These are just ideas to you. You need to live them for at least a decade or so for them to sink in.

I haven't even gotten into the technical aspects of the film, the way it creates a living world in the sand, the way it photographs sand as a metaphor for responsibility or uses its dissonant music to jar the audience while reinforcing the narrative. Here's a film that understands points of view so clearly that it shows us not only what its characters are seeing, but what they're focusing on and what they're feeling and what they're thinking about. The camera isn't just a clever audience surrogate here: the camera reflects and directs, it's organic to the proceedings, a part of what's going on. You've heard of the God's Eye View? In this film, the camera sees what God sees. Oh, and the lighting. Wait until you see the light on the sand on the body – one of the most memorable images put to film. Watch shadows play across faces and flashlight beams glare down brutal humanity in its cruelty and hope for redemption. I would pay real money to see this movie broken down shot by shot.

So if you're young, see WOMAN IN THE DUNES and marvel at the photography and the music and the construction and the story and the ideas. If you're older, see this film and marvel at the photography and the music and the construction and the story and the ideas and the truths and hopes and perceptions and vitality of the cycle of life. See WOMAN IN THE DUNES and marvel. See WOMAN IN THE DUNES and never be the same.

Zen and the City

[kristbauer · 10/10 · 6 August 2005]

In my interpretation this movie is a reflection on Zen philosophy: Just like Zen monks that sweep the courtyards of monasteries and devote themselves to the most humble tasks to find inner harmony, Niki finds inner rest in the daily work of removing the sand, solving water supply problems and living a confined live. The movie suggests the modern lives we live in the big cities isolate us from our needs and ourselves. Just like a Zen garden, that is designed to mirror nature and men, the people in the dunes reflect our daily struggles and confinements. The surreal setting is a necessity to convey the message of the film. There is nothing goofy about the pits and how people behave in there. It is just hard for us western people to see the transcendence there.

I watched this movie on a Japanese Film Festival in Berlin in 1993. I can't remember all the details but the movie really mesmerized me. It is a very unique work and I wonder why it doesn't have the cult status of other movies.

Surreal sensual drama

[Prof-Hieronymos-Grost · 9/10 · 1 December 2008]

A Tokyo schoolteacher Niki Jumpei (Eiji Okada) and part time entomologist travels to a remote area in the hope of studying a rare species of beetle, his aim is to find it and have it named after himself. His first morning there he spends collecting specimens in jars from the sand, he is approached by a rather suspicious local, who questions him as to his motives for being there, Niki dispels the locals suspicions that he is some authoritative figure snooping and goes on his way. Resting briefly in an old boat, he ponders humanity's dependence on paper qualifications to prove our credentials to others, passports, driving licences, university certificates, medical certificates etc and what a suspicious world it would be without them. Niki ( incidentally a name we only find out a the end of the film) falls asleep with the hazy sun beating down on him, he is awakened by the same local, who asks him, how he is going to get home, as he has missed his last bus. Somewhat bewildered Niki says he'll have to walk, the local man says he might be able to help and offers to help find him a bed for the night in the nearby village. Niki is led through the treacherous dunes until they come across a large pit, at the bottom of which lives a woman, it is here that Niki will spend the night.

Niki immediately questions the woman, as to why she would live in such a desolate place, in a ramshackle house where the sand is constantly flowing through holes in the roof and he is amazed to find that her nightly Sisyphean task involves filling baskets with sand that has blown into the pit and having it hoisted up by the locals. After feeding him, the woman tells him he doesn't have to help on his first night here, he finds this a curious statement as he is only staying one night? The truth behind the pit is soon revealed as Niki finds that there is no way out of the pit, the rope ladder having been removed by the locals.

Teshigahara is perhaps best known for his surreal and existential works, Woman in the Dunes fits right into this category. The setting of the sand dunes with the blinding sun gives the film an otherworldly dreamlike quality, with continuing rivers of sand also adding to this quality. The revelation that he is being kept captive is also a rather scary and intriguing, the film traces Niki's mixed emotions of anger and aggression, his denial of his captors, his change of heart and the fact he would stop at nothing to get the merest of rewards from them. His transformation is complete as he himself turns into a captor, of the woman that he now shares his life with.

The film is an epic at almost 2 ½ hours, its pace is incredibly slow but strangely it still doesn't feel that long, this viewer being drawn in to the complexities of the film. There's also a very sensual and sexual subtext, with the burning heat and little to do during the day and with the woman's recommendation that they sleep naked because the sand will chaff them, it is inevitable that sexual liaisons will happen and they do, sometimes it rough and ready and they wrestle each other, sometimes its sensuous as they provocatively wash the sand from each other in some very intimate moments.

Woman of the Dunes I have heard is full of subtext and hidden meanings, some are contradictory to the writer and directors visions so its hard to tell exactly on this my first viewing, exactly what they are so I will not even try to do so, I'll just sit back and let the film wash through my mind again and maybe it will all fall into place. The ending is controversial I would say, I can imagine it causes divide amongst those who have seen it, but in the context of the surreal setting and qualities of the film, I think it suits it fine, if nothing else it will get you talking about it, I think it's a film ripe for over analysis, so again I won't.

Slow pacing, yet intensly gripping!

[smakawhat · 8/10 · 16 July 2001]

What is heralded as a classic piece of Japanese cinema and I suppose a rave at Cannes during it's time, Woman In the Dunes is a great film but certainly not to everyones tastes.

A man who is searching for a unique insect in a sandy dessert area ends up trapped in a sandpit where a young woman lives. It becomes apparant that while the man can not escape the woman decides this is her future and that there is little she can do but accept it.

The film is an old black and white film, and many a times it is hard to see what is going on. The story is slow paced, and there is a lot of confusion through much of the film as to why the characters are in this 'unusual' situation. However, I completely got into it and was absorbed by the man who was felt trapped like an animal, and the woman who was accepting of her fate and somewhat comfortable. Also the shots of the dunes are spectacular, the film feels totaly claustrophobic, and it's one of this films which you keep asking yourself every 5 minutes, "How the heck did the film this!?".

But because of its slow nature and somewhat snail pacing and payoff many might not like it. Too bad.

Rating 8 out of 10.

"Who cares? We're living like animals anyway."

[drownsoda90 · 10/10 · 6 November 2016]

"Woman in the Dunes" follows a fledgling entomologist who is searching for sand beetles in remote sand dunes along the coast. After his bus leaves the area without him, he is given a place to sleep in the home of a woman who resides at the bottom of a pit; her hospitality however is mistaken when he discovers he has been tricked by the locals into being enslaved with her, doomed to continuously shovel the sand spilling down on them, or be buried alive.

A parable on futility and the human condition, or just a maddening new wave psychological drama, "Woman in the Dunes" was released in the 1960s to considerable acclaim, and helped put the Japanese new wave on the map. Based on the novel by Kōbō Abe, the film doesn't so much engage on a purely narrative level, as the narrative is fairly thin. The real grit of the film lay in the relationship between the two characters as they fight to survive, and also as they fight one another.

The film is rife with sexual undertones, as the mad villagers aim for the man to reproduce with the woman as some twisted form of entertainment. In one striking and haunting scene, the villagers arrive at night donning masks, and watch from the edges of the pit for the two to fight like dogs at their enjoyment. "Who cares?" he asks her, tackling her to the ground. "We're living like animals anyway." On a purely visual level, the film is dazzling. The camera revels in textures and tones, capturing the liquid motions of the sand with surprising detail. Close-ups of skin and surfaces slowly being inundated with grains of sand are ubiquitous and beautifully-shot.

Eiji Okada and Kyôko Kishida both turn in fantastic performances that run the gamut of emotional territory. The two engage on terms that are sometime cordial, sometimes sexual, and sometimes violent. The energy between the two is palpable, and their psychological energy comes across with surprising clarity. Their levels of desperation rise in the last act, and the tension is pulled like a tight-wire. Running just under three hours, one may expect the film to drag a bit, but I found it surprisingly engaging throughout, and I largely credit that to the two leads who make it impossible to look away from the screen.

Overall, "Woman in the Dunes" is a subtle and engaging surrealist drama with shades of a thriller and at times even horror. It recalls the survivalist desperation of something like "Lord of the Flies," but is profoundly more surreal, without ever taking its audience for granted. Many reviewers have seemed to echo the sentiment that the film is profound and artistic without being pretentious or ostentatious, and I completely agree. It strikes a balance in which its entertainment value is not sacrificed for its aesthetic and thematic goals, which is rare, especially in the art-house world. I've never seen anything quite like it. 10/10.

Haunting, erotic, unforgettable....

[evilhinata · 10/10 · 19 January 2005]

After watching this movie, my idea of what a good movie, had changed. The imagery is utterly beautiful, and the emotion of the relationship is intense. While other movies rely on acting, or emotion to capture the audience this movie is very special because how the director, and the screenwriter(kobe abe, also wrote a book by the same title), let the viewers develop their own ideas and perspectives. Having seen this movie with other people and looking at different comment about the movie, each person had a different opinion of the movie. In a complex world full of vice, and danger, it is sometimes the simplest things that can make a man beg for mercy. The everlasting sand, can bring you to love, or to destruction...

Tried my patience

[bandw · 6/10 · 19 January 2012]

Niki Jumpei is an entomologist out searching for insects in the sandy desert. He misses the last bus home and winds up being the "guest" of a woman living at the bottom of a large excavation some twenty feet in the sand below the desert. When Niki goes to leave, the rope ladder he came down on has been removed. So, he is stuck down there and spends a good part of this two and a half hour movie trying to get out of the hole. If that setup does not appeal to you, then you might give this a pass. This movie produced such a sense of claustrophobia in me, that I had to pause it about half way through to go out for a walk.

The relationship that develops between Niki and his host (not always platonic) provides some interest, but the real heart of the story centers on the changes in outlook that Niki experiences after being in the pit for several years. I greatly appreciate a story that is believable but also works as allegory, like Camus' "The Plague," but here we have an unbelievable story that is bent to support an allegoric interpretation. We are exhorted to discover that we can find meaning in a restricted sphere of experience. This is not a novel idea and I find it ironic that the artists who advance this theme usually are leading full, rich lives.

The black and white cinematography is a plus. The opening scene focuses on a grain of sand at a microscopic level and then the camera draws out in a sequence of shots that finally wind up with a desert shot. A goal throughout the movie must have been to photograph sand in as many creative ways as possible.

The sparse score by Tôru Takemitsu is notable.

I felt sorry for the actors who had to spend so much time in the sand. They must have welcomed a good shower after a day of shooting.

I think that the reason that this film gets consistently high marks is because that someone who is familiar with the plot and still chooses to watch it is someone who would be inclined to like it. I thought that that would be the case for me, but it wasn't.

Very positive, An all time great movie

[jabez · 10/10 · 2 September 2002]

An excellent and gripping depiction of the human condition trapped in roles. Even sexually explicit roles serve to define us closer into the various greater and lesser societal roles that keep us from ever having a clear definition of ourselves in the universe. The best that the hero can come up with is a buddistic resignation that he is on a round trip ticket that he can cancel at any time;this is a better piece of make believe than what is usually served up to dull us to the total lack of meaning in our existence outside of God. The photography, music and drama accentuate the message. Anyone familiar with Earnest Becker's "The Denial of Death", will see that the writer and director came to the same insights as Becker. Most deeply thoughtful movie I've seen in the last two years.

What You Think You See, You Get!

[net_orders · 7/10 · 1 May 2016]

Viewed on DVD. This film immediately presents the viewer with two basic problems. First, how to navigate the DVD menu to turn on/off the subtitles (Criterion label DVD menu designers seem to delight in making this a game on release after release). Second, trying to figure out what this movie is really about. Is it a protest against modern society in general and Tokyo life styles in particular? Is it an anti-capitalist tome? An anti-labor union allegory? How the conventional wisdom of not digging deeper when in a hole is untrue (especially for sand)? An anti-prison movie? A free-the-sand-dune-bugs protest film? All of the above? None of the above? For sure, it is a spider-and-the-web fantasy tale, and a pretty scary one at that. There are also elements of magic scattered about. Only two characters and essentially a single set manage to hold the viewer's attention for two hours and change. This is made possible by A-list actor Eiji Okada and actress Kyoko Kishida. It's Kishida's low keyed, but riveting performance that particularly maintains the viewer's attention. The film was shot in a narrow-screen format and in black and white at a time when this type of packaging had long been abandoned by almost everyone except art-house film directors. Camera work uses a lot of deep focus; tracking/panning is occasionally jerky. Score is sometimes grating; at other times it substantially adds to the sense of terror. Subtitles are fine and essentially indispensable when marginal characters speak with Western Japan accents. Restoration is outstanding. Just sit back, relax, and let the allegories begin! WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Cultural Mindset Clash.

[chocknog · 1/10 · 22 February 2018]

Having watched the film and read the reviews that focused on the intended Metaphor, I still could not but feel annoyed at how he gave up trying to escape and accepted his fate. I cannot but compare what I might have done in the same predicament as the one he found himself in. I would have totally focused on escaping until I did escape by getting to the Beach and following the Shoreline Then I would return with a Back Up Crew and lay my Vengeance on those Kidnappers for holding me Hostage to teach them that there is a Price to Pay for Wrong doing. There is a Zen thing going on which the Entomologist guy embraced in the end but that isn't My Culture or Mind Set. He was more like 'Louis Dega' to my 'Pappillon'.