Customer Reviews

Suna no onna (Woman in the Dunes) [VHS]

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When I first saw this movie a number of years ago it made a tremendous impression. I had walked in "cold" into an LA art theatre and had no idea what I was watching and what to expect. But I soon found myself mesmerized as if under the spell of the Ancient Mariner - it still retains some of this power today.

The plot of this movie has been fairly well summarized by several reviewers. For completeness, I give a thumbnail sketch: A youngish man for the city (Tokyo) goes to a desolate part of the countryside to collect insects (his hobby). He overstays, and misses the last bus back. The local villagers decide to put him up with "Granny" - who turns out to be thirtyish, not-unattractive woman, who ominously lives at the bottom of a sand pit. The next morning the man finds the ladder removed, and himself trapped in the sand pit. Much of the movie portrays his half-hearted attempts to escape, and his tempestuous relationship with his woman "jailor." Near the end of the movie he is given a clear and easy chance to escape, but decides to "postpone" his departure.

This film is an adaptation of the novel by the same name by the Japanese writer, Kobo Abe. A major and fascinating writer, Abe shares stylistic affinities with Dostoyevsky and (especially) Camus. Alienation and loss of identity are prominent Abe motifs (as they are with Camus). The movie was made in Japan; so unlike many Hollywood films, it is fairly faithful to the novel. For stylistic reasons, it was made in black and white: shadows are an essential element in the mood.

An extreme reductionist view of the film/novel might go something like this: The movie explores the eternal dance by which man and woman accommodate themselves to each other. The woman's need for security, stability, and social respectability often conflict with the man's need for freedom, new experiences, and impractical dreams. Gradually, through a largely unconscious process, the two make those small adjustments which allow for a log-term - if somewhat uneasy - alliance.

A secondary theme is the corrosive effects of time. Or more accurately, the effects of the second law of thermodynamics/entropy: things not constantly repaired, whether house or relationship, inevitably deteriorate. Time/entropy is represented in the film by the unceasing flow of sand. Light and shadows - prominent throughout the film - symbolize the dualities of life.

It is easy to make a case that the movie has a misogynistic tone. Certainly the image of woman as an ant-lion lurking at the bottom a sand pit is not the most flattering. But upon further analysis this view must be rejected. The reason the protagonist does not return to his former life (once given the chance) is simply that his former life lacked emotional meaning. The struggle with the woman at the bottom of the sand pit, although grim in certain respects, reconnects him with those parts of himself which his overly civilized and sterile city life had disconnected.

In Japan,this film is titled SUNA NO ONNA. In 1964, the movie won the Grand Jury prize at Cannes, and it was nominated for two Oscars. It was directed by the multi-talented Hiroshi Teshigahara, who as well as a film director, was a poet, calligrapher, a wood block artist, had worked with ceramics, and had directed opera. It was based on a novel by Kobe Abe. The themes prevelant in the film leap from Zen parable to existential horror and Noh drama. It is reminiscent of stories by Franz Kafka, like METAMORPHOSIS.

The cinematographer was Hiroshi Segawa, and he played with light and shadow like a painter, finding a perfectly balanced blend between Abe's prose and Teshigahara's vision. He helped Sand become the third major character in the film, giving it personality, creating a Dali-esque canvas. He photographed sand as if it were a breathing beast, with wind rippling over the white dunes spreading the sand like waves of water, flapping the edges like it was moving silk. And he utilized a lot of extreme close-ups of skin pores choked with grains of sand, and sweaty strands of hair with sand granules clinging to them.

Toru Takemitsu did the music. The score was minimalist, yet powerful and staccato, piercing through us with flute, drum, and strings. The music only materialized when it was needed and necessary. Most of the film was not underscored with music. We heard breathing, moaning, rolling waves, shoveling, the crackling of fire, the bubbling of water, soap on skin, and the terrible creaking of old wood as that house swayed beneath the steady onslaught of the sand.

An essay written by Albert Camlus on the Myth of Sisyphus influenced the plot; that if a person is forced to exercise their entire being toward nothing, accomplishing nothing, mired in repetition, the human spirit is still not vanquishable. It will find joy in the task. Camus wrote,"happiness and the absurd are twin sons of the same earth; inseparable." Sisyphus achieved an emotional victory after he learned to love the rock he was pushing repeatedly up the mountainside. Our protagonists achieved a kind of emotional victory when their labor became sacred and necessary.

Eiji Okada played Niki Jumpei, a stranger wandering the dunes searching for insects; especially one rare beetle. Missing the last bus back to Tokyo, he approached some villagers and requested local accommodations. They agreed, and let him stay the night in a house at the bottom of one of their great sand pits. This was a village that the sand had attempted to devour, comprised of a honeycomb of pits dotted across the shoreline, mostly devoured by the shifting sands; only the occasional rooftop protruding out of the darkness of the many pits.

His hostess, played by Kyoko Kishida, was a thirty-something woman, widowed by the sand, and determined to stay the course, to remain in her domicle. She had to shovel the windblown sand constantly to deny the elements the chance to bury her alive. The following morning the man finds that the rope ladder he descended on was missing. He was trapped. Obviously the villagers were in on the conspiracy. Trapped there he lost his freedom, but in its place he found purpose, and with purpose he found meaning, and with meaning he found a strange joy; something he had never known.

This is a stunning film, perfectly in balance; blending poetry, literature, calligraphy, cinematography, and music. It is what all good movies aspire to be-- it is art. It a true classic, almost without flaw. I saw this film three decades ago, and as a twenty-something youth, during my University days, I was not fully appreciative of the subtleties within the piece. It is a timeless parable of the human condition, a film that begs for more than one viewing. The photography haunted me, and the eroticism, and the existential terror stayed with me. It made me hunger to read the novel.

Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes came to me at a time 30 years ago when I was watching 3-4 foreign films every week for about a year. For me, it remains a powerful film that has stayed cemented in my mind all these years. Universal and contemporary, it spellbinds the viewer with lyrical, sensuous b&w imagery. The story is allegorical. It focuses on what really binds a man and a woman together: lust and love and purpose. The trapped man's intellectual pursuits change from collecting dead insects to collecting life-saving water. Everything the man needs to be happy and satisfied ultimately becomes clear to him. He "frees" himself from the anomie and sterility of modern life by learning to live a purposeful existence based on emotional and physical needs. He no longer wants to escape his existence in the sand, for the sand prison, and all that it has to offer, frees him forever.

You have to watch "Woman in the Dunes" several times to even begin to catch all the symbolism in this amazing film. Just consider, for example, the begining of the film...all those official stamps for "identification" followed by the anonymous shifting sands and the strident chaos depicted in the musical score by Toru Takemitsu. Indeed the film, based on the famous Kobo Abe novel of the same name, is all about our identities. A business executive hunting for bugs in the midst of sand dunes...as if to say, looking for meaning in a vast desert. I will not spoil the story for you...but you will plunge from the modern world of government forms with its anonymous shifting sands into the depths of a rural, almost primitive world where human beings depend on each other for survival...i.e. to bail out that sand.

This film has beautiful black and white photography, wonderful acting and some of the most erotic scenes in cinema accompanied by a haunting sound track. The images will remain with you long after seeing it.

Well, I've read the reviews here and couldn't do any better. Also, I suggest you read Roger Ebert's take on this wonderful film. A must see for fans of Japanese cinema and for anyone who appreciates cinema as an art-form and not just entertainment.

I own both the Milestone release and the Asmik release (got via Amazon.co.jp). I agree with [...] - the transfer and the director's cut/extras found on the Japanese Asmik version are far superior than Milestone's (and far cheaper). Try to find the Japanese version if you can. I'd be selling my Milestone version *to get rid of it* but I let my sister have it. Four and 1/2 stars.

"Woman in the Dunes" is a minor classic of Japanese cinema; beautiful to watch, intriguing, and with a superb score and sound track by Toru Takemitsu. The DVD transfer,however, is very disappointing. The manufacturer claims that the DVD version is a restoration made from the original negative. This may be true, but its a mediocre restoration, soft and much too dark. Night and many interior scenes are barely legible. This is the first premium priced DVD I've seen that is inferior to the VHS version, at least the cassette put out by the Connoisseur Video Collection.

Thirty years ago I saw this film for the first time, and for thirty years I've remembered the beautiful cinematography and the haunting images. I just went back and watched the DVD, afraid that it couldn't be as good as I remembered. It is.
An entomologist searches the desert for unknown beetles, hoping to achieve fame. Comfortable and careless, he assumes that he is in control of his world. Suddenly everything is reversed and he is trapped as completely as the beetles he arranges in display boxes. Wonderful to see a movie that talks about life in human and humane terms, instead of a plot-heavy paint-by-numbers formula from Hollywood. Watching at 20, I saw a parable about the precariousness of life and how easily a wrong step could doom a person to a life of drudgery. Now, at 50, the images of being trapped in the relentlessness of work seems less connected to the sand trap our hero finds himself in, and more a condition of life itself. By world standards those of us with DVDs and the leisure to watch them are wealthy indeed, but still the need to do the work that the world confronts us with remains. Work and eat. Don't work, don't eat. It's a simple reality that Teshigahara treats with compassion, dignity and beauty.

A man from Tokyo roams the Japanese desert to get away from the busy city and to capture various insects for study. He wanders a little too far with nowhere to stay as night approaches. The local villagers tell him that he can stay with a local woman. They lower a ladder down into a house in the midst of a sand pit. The woman is attractive, friendly and hospitable. When the man attempts to leave the next morning, he discovers that he has been tricked: there's no way out of the pit without the ladder, which has mysteriously vanished.

The obvious questions are why has this man been trapped and what is his role in the village? I won't go into the answers, but `Woman in the Dunes' gives viewers a lot to think about and a lot to examine. Part allegory, part parable, part fable, `Woman in the Dunes' is an absorbing story of loneliness, manipulation, and sexual energy.

`Woman in the Dunes,' if nothing else, is a glorious lesson in cinematography. The film's images are guaranteed to stay with you for a long, long time. In some ways, `Woman in the Dunes' contains some of the most spectacular desert scenes ever filmed. They are not on the same scale of a film like `Lawrence of Arabia,' but they are nonetheless spectacular. But the film is much, much more. This is a film you'll find yourself thinking about for a long time afterward.

2 hours, 3 minutes

Yes, this is a ground breaking movie, yes it is now out of print.

Of course, the gougers are trying to get you for $90, when they are selling the CUT version of the movie.

The director's cut is $45 (approx) from Amazon JP, or can be had for $15-$20 from the EU via eBay.

Your mileage may vary, but don't be gouged by shysters / pirates.

This great classic film, directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, and scripted by Kobe Abe, from his excellent novel, is a cinematic delight and must have for your cinema collection. The film begins with an entomologist (Eiji Okada) who is studying and collecting insects at the dunes of an oceanside village. As he begins his journey back to to Tokyo, he misses his bus. Since this was the last bus back, he finds himself stranded. However, the local villagers decide to put him up for the night with 'Granny' (Kyoko Kishida), who is a thirty-something-year-old woman who lives at the bottom of a sand pit. The next morning, when the young man decides to leave, he finds the ladder to the bottom of the pit removed. The film then proceeds to show his attempts at escaping this pit. As the viewer, you realize that his attempts at escape are only half-hearted, and even when the opportunity and chance allows him to leave,[later in the film] he does not.

The rope ladder he must climb up and down, when he attempts to leave, was removed by the villagers [who receive sand used in cement making from the women in the pit]. Realizing that he is going to be a prisoner of the pit until the rope ladder is sent back down the pit, he finds ways of escape. Finally, one day when the entomologist discovers there is fresh water beneath the sand, he sees this as his chance to escape. However, he does not. He decides to stay and figure out how the local people can use the water to aid the villagers of this remote village. Moreover, he wants to understand this woman in the pit, and her suffering. This film will remind many viewers of Kafka, with Taoism and Zen thrown into the mix. This is a very deep and profound film. One of the truly great films of Japanese cinema. It is highly recommended. [Stars: 5+]