Woman in the Dunes - 1964 by Hiroshi Teshigahara.

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 !