Woman in the Dunes - 1964 (砂の女, Suna
no Onna, "Sand woman") is a Japanese film directed by Hiroshi
Teshigahara.
The work slightly
reminds one of ‘No Exit’ a 1944 existentialist French play by Jean-Paul
Sartre.
It has a nightmarish and bizarre setting in which the protagonist is trapped
and squashed by a ridiculously blind authoritarian society.
It’s a very difficult to ‘sit through’ movie. Repeated viewings are necessary
in the intermittent phases of life to appreciate this work of art.
Synopsis: An entomologist while
catching and observing insects misses the bus back to Tokyo. The villagers
offer to help him. Instead he finds himself trapped in a large sand pit with a
woman. The woman has accepted her fate and has no desire to get out of the pit.
The man at first refuses to accept this as a way of life and attempts to escape
in vain the impenetrable wall of sand which is a barrier between him and his
‘freedom.’ In the beginning there is anger, irritation, rage, then helplessness,
powerlessness and hopelessness ending with resignation and acceptance of his pointless
and doomed fate – reduced from ‘being to
nothingness’!
Ultimately one is left to imagine a wary world without humanity’s
dependence on paper qualifications like passports, driving licenses, aadhar
cards, pan cards, voters ID, birth certificates, university certificates,
medical certificates, etc. to prove our ID, credentials and existence to others.
The movie is open to interpretations. The viewers are left with their own
ideas and perspectives. The sand pit may be a symbol of human existence. The man
and the woman can be seen as a representation of humanity’s existentialist
dilemma. Like Sisyphus who was infinitely predestined to roll a rock to the top
of a hill only to have it roll back down again - both the characters dig sand
out of the pit only to have it slide back again.
Were they living to clear sand or clearing sand to live?
Call it a Kafkaesque situation, existential environment, Stockholm
syndrome or Sisyphus position; it needs patience, philosophical awareness and a
lot of reading to appreciate and admire this work.
The film also exposes the western worlds’ ignorance and or prejudices when
it comes to showering all the credentials and recognizance to Akira Kurosawa
and not acknowledging, overlooking or ignoring Yasujiro Osu, Takahi Miike,
Nagisa Oshima, Mikio Naruse, Masaki Kobayashi, Kenji Mizoguchi, Hiroshi
Teshigahara amongst others – otherwise this would have been a cult film !
