Dune

Thephrase vaststretches of sanddoesn’tevenbegin to describe it. There
arewavestrickling down,making it alllook like a limitlessocean of
sand, there are enormous mountains of sand,which,while the sand is
shifting,look like avalanches. We see sandfalling down withgreat force,
like a waterfall. The sand is not somuch apart of theirlife, itpretty
much is theirlife. It is the only all-pervading reality that engulfs them,
is on their bodies, and in the water they drink. Andbetween all this,when
the woman asks “Are the girlsprettier in Tokyo?“, and keepsdemanding that
they get a radio, so it wouldtake their mindoff things, and they’d be
able to get theweather report, you cannot help but laugh at thesheer
absurdity of it all.Thisfrighteningabsurdity lies at theheart of Hiroshi
Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, anadaptation of Kobo Abe‘s novel of the
samename (healso wrote thescreenplay), and the singlefinestcinematic
realisation of Albert Camus‘ The Myth of Sisyphus, aparable about a man
condemned by thegods toendlessly rolling ahuge boulder up a mountain
top, afterwhich it wouldfall downagain. Andhuge sand pits seem amost
perfect way of visuallyrecreating a Sisyphus-likestate of existence. You
canclimbthe most formidable mountain, but how do youclimb a mountain of
sand? Or how do you swim in anocean of sand? You can nevercling on to it,
but neither can you get itoff yourskin. And so on. It is one of the
movie’s many triumphs that itevokes Sisyphus’eternalpredicament by
engaging the eyes, ears, mind andheart, butperhapsmost astonishingly,
theskin. I’ve yet to see a movie thathas such a rich tangibleeffect,
generating an eroticism you can virtually feel. We see thedelicately
beautiful Kyoko Kishida, disheveled hair and all, includingcloseups of
herskincovered in sweat and sand, andfind her,because (and not in
spite) of this, bestowed with aunique, electrifyingsexuality.Kyoko
Koshida plays a widow, living alone in a sandpit, in a village full of sand
dunes. Her’s is astrange situation, one involvingdigging sandeveryday
fortworeasons: so herhouse won’t be consumed by the sand, and so the
sand can besold by the villagers. “Do yourake sand tolive, or do you
live torake sand?“, the man (Eiji Okada) asks,whohas beentrapped by the
villagers in thehouse, to lend the woman a helping hand in her daily
chore. The man is an entomologistwho had initially come there to study
sandinsects. It was here that Inoted asimilarity with Imamura, astrange
fascination withinsects, their desperatestruggle for survival, inequal
partsnoble and pathetic,perhaps hinting atsimilartraits in theirhuman
subjects. In anycase,while the mandoespoint out thepointlessnature of
her daily existence to the woman, he soon enough descends into asimilarly
pointlessloophimself:constantly trying to escape the sand pit. These
frequentefforts, all ofwhichfail in one way or the other, culminate in a
cruel, yethypnotic sequence, observed bymysterious masked figures, and
much elevated by Toru Takemitsu’s harshpercussivescore. And in a superb
ironic twist, it ishismost ridiculous escape attempt, trying totrap a
crow, to tie amessage to it’s legs, thatultimately and unexpectedly
becomeshis salvation. Perhaps it is Teshigahara’s own, idiosyncratic way
of highlighting howfate often conspires in unexpected ways.