Watching this week’s movie pick leaves you feeling as if you need a shower to wash off all the gritty sand and the mundane existence clinging to every pore of your sweaty body.
Woman in the Dunes keeps you scrambling to understand what’s going on.
For the first 30 minutes or so, I thought director Hiroshi Teshigahara‘s Woman in the Dunes involved a Town With a Dark Secret. I expected something along the lines of The Wicker Man or Get Out. It was more than that.
School teacher Niki Jumpei (Eiji Okada) goes to the dunes in search of a new species of beetle, hoping to make a name for himself in the field of entomology. However, after missing the last bus home, he accepts an offer from villagers to stay the night at the home of a woman (Kyôko Kishida) at the bottom of a sand pit. The next morning, he discovers that he’s been trapped and is expected to shovel sand in exchange for rations.
Jumpei struggles to escape and return to that school-teacher life and expects those who know him to come looking for him. Instead, he’s forgotten by the outside world and resigns himself to shoveling sand.
The film artwork (in the Now Showing box above) suggests that Woman in the Dunes is a lusty romance, but it’s far from it. It’s actually one of the most metaphorical films we’ve watched.
The environment has been a character in our other movies. The relentless rain in The Hole immediately springs to mind. This time, it’s sand.
Sand is everywhere and seems alive, cascading down the sides of the land, seeping through cracks, and finding its way into every nook and cranny. It’s the first and last thing you see in the movie, from a single grain at the beginning to a flowing dune behind the end credits.
Woman in the Dunes leaves you pondering the meaning of the sand. Is it a metaphor for the constant drudgery of daily life or the struggle to get ahead when everything seems to keep you down? Or something else?
It’s a seemingly simple story that provides a complex, thought-provoking experience.