19. Woman in the Dunes

Woman in the Dunes
Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964

A vacationing schoolteacher (Eiji Okada) spends the night in the home of a recently widowed woman (Kiyoko Kishida), who lives in the bottom of a large sand pit. In the morning, he finds that the villagers have pulled up the later and intend to keep him in the pit for the rest of his life.

Well, now. That's more like it. Woman in the Dunes is a masterful, moody exploration of how and why one finds meaning in life, full of allegorical concepts (Sisyphus, anyone?) and striking images. The constant shots of sand, flowing in the wind like water, are both mesmerizing and terrifying, easily enough to make anyone forget that a sand pit like the one in this movie could never really exist. In fact, Teshigahara spends much of his time playing with the effect of simultaneous attraction and repulsion, to great effect. The most striking example would be the image of the sleeping woman, lying naked on the floor, coated with a layer of the glistening, infernal sand that threatens to consume everyone. Marvelous stuff. My only real complaint is that the pacing falters a bit in the latter half - it drags for a bit, then several developments are rushed through with multiple month jumps in time. It's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, though - and the final moments more than make up for it.

9/10