Flick Picks
October 2007

Woman In the Dunes
Reviewed by Cynthia Burr Larson

Woman In the Dunes, a black & white masterpiece with subtitles, was made in 1964 in Japan. It was directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and starred Eiji Okada as an entomologist on a mini-vacation at the shore and Kyoko Kishida as the woman. It won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for two Oscars.

The opening imagery with the music is abstract and introduces flavor of the film. An amateur entomologist (bug collector) takes a few days away from the hustle and bustle of the city to follow his passion. He finds that he has missed the bus home, and some villagers tell him there is a place to stay nearby. They graciously take him to a place where he has to climb down a rope ladder into a sandy pit. When he arrives there, a woman places an umbrella above his head, feeds him supper and fans him. He questions her about the umbrella, and her answer is that the umbrella will protect him from the sand. At one point he debates with her about the moisture in the sand, not thinking she might know a thing or two about it since she lives in the house all but buried by shifting sands. At night she adorns herself with work clothes and goes out of the house to shovel sand and attach buckets of it on pulleys for the villagers to take away. The traveler notices this, but ignores it and lies down to sleep. The next morning he sees her asleep, naked with her skin beautifully dabbled with sand.

He gathers his belongings while she sleeps and goes out of the hut to leave. He looks around puzzled and cannot find the rope ladder. After he realizes it's not there, he tries to climb the massive sand dune walls only to end up panicked, angry and exhausted, unable to depart.

The woman spends all her time preventing the prevailing sand from consuming her abode. In fact one of the great metaphors of the film is expressed when the traveler asks the woman "Are you shoveling to survive, or are you surviving to shovel?" The traveler, meanwhile, attempts to find solitude and finds it in a most unusual way. After accepting his captivity, the traveler looks for ways to satisfy himself. He is excited by bugs he's never seen before and rigs a trap for a crow to find a way to get water. In essence he has adapted to the lifestyle of tending to his survival and reaping the simple, basic rewards. Being trapped with the bare necessities and no external stimuli, the physical needs of food, water, and intimacy becomes even more intense.

The cinematography is magnificent. The sand rolling in the wind appears to be like water. The sand in avalanche is like something I've never seen. It's filmmaking at its best. Especially in black and white, the textures of sand on their skin is in itself beautiful and erotic. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful cinematic creations and must not be missed by the astute film goer. It captures texture and essence and story. This is an adult film.

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