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BFI, Cinema, Classic Film Reviews

Classic Film Review: Woman in the Dunes (1964)

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Classic Film Review: Woman in the Dunes (1964)

Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara

Screenplay by Kōbō Abe – Based on The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Produced by Kiichi Ichikawa and Tadashi Ono

Main cast: Eiji Okada, Kyōko Kishida, Kōji Mitsui

Cinematography by Hiroshi Segawa

*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ***

I’d never seen Woman in the Dunes (1964) before, but after watching the director’s cut on the BFI Player, it has now catapulted into one of the best films I have ever seen. This could be first-watch bias, however, thematically, emotionally, philosophically and stylistically speaking, it absolutely touched upon, connected and spoke to me greatly about my life’s experiences and the human condition.

Niki Junpei (Eiji Okada), a frustrated schoolteacher and amateur entomologist from Tokyo, travels to a remote coastal village in search of rare insects. After missing the last bus home, he accepts an invitation to stay overnight with a young widow (Kyōko Kishida) who lives alone in a hut at the bottom of a vast sand dune. He soon learns that her husband and daughter were killed in a sandstorm and that she spends every night shovelling away the endless sand that threatens to bury her home. Though Junpei initially sees himself as a temporary guest, strange comments from the villagers hint that something more sinister is unfolding.

The following morning, Junpei discovers that the rope ladder leading out of the sand pit has been removed. Trapped by the villagers, he realizes he has been chosen to become the widow’s permanent companion and labourer, helping her dig sand that the village secretly sells for profit. As he struggles to escape, Junpei learns that the widow is also a prisoner of the community, both of them controlled through dependence on the villagers for food and water. What begins as an accidental overnight stay becomes a nightmare of confinement, survival, and the gradual erosion of freedom beneath the relentless weight of the sand.

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (1964) is one of those rare films where image, character, theme and performance become inseparable. Shot in pristine black and white by cinematographer Hiroshi Segawa, it is visually astonishing: every grain of sand, bead of sweat and shadow across a human body is rendered with an almost microscopic intensity. The beauty of the photography is deliberately juxtaposed with the darkness of Niki Junpei’s predicament. What begins as an innocent expedition to collect insects becomes an existential prison, as he finds himself trapped by commerce, a surrogate marriage and, most powerfully, the natural wall of sand that pins both him and the unnamed widow to their strange subterranean existence.

The sand is both physical and metaphorical. It shifts, pours, consumes and rebuilds itself, turning Junpei’s captivity into a distinctly Sisyphean struggle. Every attempt at escape merely seems to return him to where he started, yet what makes Junpei such a compelling character is his absolute refusal to surrender. He builds ladders, devises increasingly ingenious escape plans, attempts to train crows to carry messages and continually tries to outwit the villagers who have ensnared him. Each failure intensifies rather than diminishes his determination. Like Sisyphus pushing the rock back up the hill, Junpei is condemned to confront an obstacle that endlessly renews itself.

Yet Woman in the Dunes (1964) is far more complicated than a straightforward story of imprisonment. Junpei is trapped by the villagers, but also by economic necessity, social expectation and an enforced domestic relationship that gradually begins to resemble a marriage. The villagers need the sand removed; the widow needs a man to help her survive; Junpei needs water, food and eventually human companionship. Teshigahara transforms this bizarre situation into a miniature society in which freedom itself becomes increasingly difficult to define. The more Junpei fights against his surroundings, the more deeply he becomes connected to them.

The relationship between Junpei and the widow, played with extraordinary physical and emotional commitment by Eiji Okada and Kyōko Kishida, gives the film its human core. Their intimacy moves between hostility, dependency, tenderness and desire without ever becoming conventional romance. Although sex is an important element of the film, Teshigahara rarely needs explicit imagery. Bodies appear as silhouettes, fragments and outlines; Kishida’s naked form is often suggested rather than displayed. A shoulder, a curve, a shadow or sand clinging to skin can communicate more than an explicit image ever could. One sees more from less throughout.

That principle extends to the entire film. Teshigahara makes the smallest details monumental. Sand resembles water, skin resembles landscape and the walls of the pit sometimes appear infinite. Extreme close-ups turn grains of sand into an entire universe, while wider compositions emphasise just how insignificant these two people are against the enormous shifting landscape surrounding them. The immaculate monochrome photography makes the film simultaneously beautiful and suffocating. The sand can look almost luminous in one shot and utterly threatening in the next.

There is also a wonderful irony at the heart of Junpei’s predicament. He arrives as an entomologist searching for insects, only to become a specimen himself: captured, observed and contained within a pit from which he cannot escape. The collector has become the collected. Teshigahara never labours the metaphor because he does not need to. It exists naturally within the imagery and situation, allowing the audience to discover its implications rather than having them explained.

Woman in the Dunes (1964) is virtually flawless in character, theme, cinematography, direction and performance. More than sixty years after its release, it remains startlingly modern and visually unlike almost anything else. Its central image — two human beings endlessly shovelling away a mountain of sand that will simply return tomorrow — is cinema distilled into an unforgettable metaphor for existence itself.

The only negative? Why didn’t I watch it sooner?

Mark: 10.5 out 11

Cinema, Reviews

GODZILLA (2014) – FILM REVIEW

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GODZILLA (2014)

**CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS**

This massive budget reboot of Tohu’s iconic monster GODZILLA is not a terrible movie. It is a technical triumph in fact and has some memorable moments; however, for a MONSTER movie and cinematic experience it was a bitter, bitter disappointment. Plus, at times – dare I say it – it was pretty boring.

If I pay ten quid to see a film called GODZILLA I expect and demand ultimate carnage with the lives of thousands destroyed – eaten and crushed and fire-balled to death –  while cities and oceans are awash with blood, rubble and the tears of survivors.  Because Godzilla is a metaphor for nuclear attacks don’t you know so surely this should be your first priority:  show annihilation and destruction of cities and humans?  That’s what I want for my money!

Gareth Edwards and his massive team of filmmakers offer some destruction over its 120 minutes but ultimately Godzilla fails as a monster movie; it fails as a disaster film and fails most importantly as a piece of drama driven by believable and empathetic characters.  It’s not a great surprise to be honest as the sophomore director got the gig on the back of his independent film MONSTERS (2010)  which was filmed on Prosumer cameras with special effects and editing also done very cheaply. Much kudos goes to Edwards’ for creating Monsters on such a low budget and he is certainly a filmmaker who deserved a big break.

Monsters, like Godzilla was slow-moving, solemn and very serious in tone and in both films their monsters are hidden from view only appearing in full way too late in the narrative for my liking. I enjoyed Monsters because it gave us the brilliant actor Scoot McNairy who has gone onto to feature in some fine films notably Argo (2012) and Killing Them Softly (2012).  But it was essentially a love-story-come-travelogue with the creatures having little direct impact or threat on the characters.

Sadly, this also happens somewhat in Godzilla. It begins promisingly enough in 1999 with a nuclear explosion caused by the hatching of an egg which releases an unknown creature into the sea. So far, so intrigued.  Flash forward 15 years and Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is devastated by the loss of his wife (Juliette Binoche) during said nuclear disaster and obsessively attempts to find out what happened that fateful day.  Throw Brody’s son portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson – quite handily a bomb disposal expert – into the mix and you get a promising character axis on the go.  Simultaneously, scientists Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe enter the fray to investigate but they are dull cardboard cut-outs there to serve us mundane expositional ramblings with no character momentum whatsoever. But Cranston’s character disappears from the narrative quite quickly and moreover, having to wait an hour before the first main bit of monster action really tested my patience.

I realise Edwards chose to go down the less-is-more route of Jaws (1975) but the reason the shark could not be seen in that was because the mechanical beast was beset with troubles and didn’t work so Spielberg and his team had to think creatively around this issue. Consequently, they created so many great set-pieces – something severely lacking in Godzilla. For example the scene with the two fishermen trying to catch the shark with a lump of meat is an especially brilliant sequence where the camera and music act as the shark. It’s a quality and economical piece of filmmaking with a fantastic punchline at the end to lift the mood.

When they do appear the Monsters are amazing to look at but there was not enough in the screenplay for me to actually give a damn by that time. The ensemble cast are pretty much wasted in my view and the less said about the screenplay the better. I feel it would have been better to have done a Towering Inferno (1974) or Poseidon Adventure (1972) style disaster movie with an ensemble star cast battling against the impact of Godzilla on their lives. In fact, Godzilla, however impressive he may look is pretty benign as a threat to humans; a decision which dumbfounded me. Overall, I felt the film needed a bigger name director like Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson or a James Cameron figure to give us that WOW factor. The screenplay also had a humour bypass too and I failed to get value for my entrance fee. Sad to say this film was a gigantic disappointment.