Woman in the Dunes

1964 drama

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A teacher with an interest in entomology takes a three-day excursion to the dunes to find desert insects and hopefully discover something that will get his name in a book. He misses the last bus and is persuaded by the desert inhabitants to stay with the title character. She happens to live in a rickety shack at the bottom of a sand pit. Upon waking up the next day, he realizes he's fallen into a trap and since he can't get out of the sand pit, has been effectively tricked into having what amounts to a marriage with this woman. Along with the woman, a widow who refuses to even attempt to leave because her husband and daughter are buried in the sands nearby, he has to shovel sand to be lifted out of the pit in baskets. Apparently, it's being sold by the neighbors. He plots various escapes using bondage, futile climbing, and birds, taking breaks only to get himself a little somethin'-somethin' or to get sand out of his crevices.

This isn't erotic or even romantic as the cover seems to suggest. Instead, this works (I think) as a rich, dark, cynical allegorical/metaphorical take on marriage. There's plenty of despair, and I'm not even sure if the ending qualifies as a happy ending. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara ends indeterminately, in a way, and doesn't spell much out. The majority of this is driven by symbols (sand, lots of water, masks, flesh, soap, ladders, birds. . .all working as metaphor), but it doesn't come across as pretentious at all. Instead, it's completely beautiful and engrossing filmmaking. This director's got himself some eyes! Almost every shot in the 2 1/2 hour film is crisp, interesting, beautiful, and at least nearly perfect. The shots of gently moving insects, skin smooth and rough, and especially drifting and shifting sands are breathtaking. It was really difficult to want to move the eyes down to read the subtitles half of the time. Absolutely fantastic cinematography, and I honestly can't imagine a black and white film looking better than this one. "Slow" moments also force reflection like many Japanese pictures seem to do.

Note: I seem to be watching a lot of movies with deserts and/or kidnapping. Simon of the Desert, El Topo, Black Snake Moan, The Collector (this was nearly a reversal of that one except the kidnapee was the collector of insects), The Edukators, The Mummy.

Here I am watching the best movie I've seen this year: