Woman of the Dunes (1964)
(Suna no Onna)
Country: JAP
Technical: bw 127m
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Cast: Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishoda
Synopsis:
An entymologist on three days' leave to investigate a remote seashore is offered hospitality for the night at the house of a young widow deep in the dunes. Next day he discovers he cannot leave and is condemned to live with her and help her stave off the creeping advance of the sand night after night. Initially rebellious to his fate, he ultimately adapts and finds rewards in it.
Review:
An extraordinary film, a sort of gentler, more cosmic Onibaba, with its eerie modernist score and extreme close-ups of flesh and hair looking like sandscapes. The character of the widow is truly affecting, the meekest of captors, though not without guile initially; he is far less sympathetic, if understandably put out by his predicament. By artificially confining this city-dweller at the bottom of a sandpit, the filmmaker both examines his resourcefulness in the face of absurdity, the growing insignificance of the specimens and former life he held dear, and comes to the conclusion that humans will accustom themselves to anything if they have a sense of purpose (he discovers how to generate fresh water). A film of the senses with something to say about collecting.
(Suna no Onna)
Country: JAP
Technical: bw 127m
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Cast: Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishoda
Synopsis:
An entymologist on three days' leave to investigate a remote seashore is offered hospitality for the night at the house of a young widow deep in the dunes. Next day he discovers he cannot leave and is condemned to live with her and help her stave off the creeping advance of the sand night after night. Initially rebellious to his fate, he ultimately adapts and finds rewards in it.
Review:
An extraordinary film, a sort of gentler, more cosmic Onibaba, with its eerie modernist score and extreme close-ups of flesh and hair looking like sandscapes. The character of the widow is truly affecting, the meekest of captors, though not without guile initially; he is far less sympathetic, if understandably put out by his predicament. By artificially confining this city-dweller at the bottom of a sandpit, the filmmaker both examines his resourcefulness in the face of absurdity, the growing insignificance of the specimens and former life he held dear, and comes to the conclusion that humans will accustom themselves to anything if they have a sense of purpose (he discovers how to generate fresh water). A film of the senses with something to say about collecting.
(Suna no Onna)
Country: JAP
Technical: bw 127m
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Cast: Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishoda
Synopsis:
An entymologist on three days' leave to investigate a remote seashore is offered hospitality for the night at the house of a young widow deep in the dunes. Next day he discovers he cannot leave and is condemned to live with her and help her stave off the creeping advance of the sand night after night. Initially rebellious to his fate, he ultimately adapts and finds rewards in it.
Review:
An extraordinary film, a sort of gentler, more cosmic Onibaba, with its eerie modernist score and extreme close-ups of flesh and hair looking like sandscapes. The character of the widow is truly affecting, the meekest of captors, though not without guile initially; he is far less sympathetic, if understandably put out by his predicament. By artificially confining this city-dweller at the bottom of a sandpit, the filmmaker both examines his resourcefulness in the face of absurdity, the growing insignificance of the specimens and former life he held dear, and comes to the conclusion that humans will accustom themselves to anything if they have a sense of purpose (he discovers how to generate fresh water). A film of the senses with something to say about collecting.