Woman in the Dunes (1964)

Woman in the Dunes is a landmark of 1960s art-house cinema that mesmerizes with its hypnotic logic and seduces with its lush sensuality. Recalling the existentialist absurdity of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit and Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, director Hiroshi Teshigahara spins this deceptively simple parable about a man inexplicably stuck in a hole with a lonely widow. He initially struggles against his assigned task of shoveling sand and attempts to escape, but, by the end of the film, like Sisyphus, he accepts his fate and does not leave when given the chance. Though noted Japanese novelist Kobo Abe's script deals with universal questions about life and existence, the film also has a particularly Japanese subtext about national identity in the face of Japan's rapid modernization after World War II. The film opens with the unnamed protagonist's looking like the model modern Japanese, dressed in Western garb and acting as an individual. Yet, after he accepts his role as part of that odd community, he is dressed in a traditional Japanese garment. Only then does the narrator reveal his name. The film's philosophical/sociological underpinnings aside, it is a stylistic tour-de-force. Critics at the time commented on the film's intoxicatingly erotic atmosphere, and Teshigahara's brilliant handing of the camera seems to communicate how it feels to touch a lonely widow's naked, sand-speckled back. Few films have so deftly explored the tactile aspects of cinema and no film has photographed sand with such vitality, making the dunes shift and tumble like a slithering viper. Woman in the Dunes is a brilliant, surreal work that will linger for days, if not years, after viewing. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide