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"Are you shoveling sand to live, or living to shovel sand?"
Woman in the Dunes is a classic Japanese film that I’ve put off watching for a few years. Not for any particular reason, I just was easily distracted by other films. And the two-and-a-half hours running time tended to drop it down the list as this Butterfly can have the attention span of a gnat. But today I dusted off my courage and hit play.
Note: We are not told the Entomologist’s name until the last frames so I will just call him E, because any term ending in ologist I usually screw up and trip over. The FL was never given a name so I’ll refer to her as The Woman, much like a character in Sherlock Holmes.
E is searching remote sand dunes hoping to discover a new variety of beetle that would be named after him. He misses the last bus out of town and a helpful villager tells him he can spend the night with a local. The Woman’s hut lies at the bottom of a sand dune pit and requires climbing down a rope ladder. She is very hospitable and strangely spends the night shoveling sand which the villagers haul up in buckets. The next morning when he attempts to leave, the ladder is missing and the unnatural sand cliffs are impossible to climb. He ascertains that he has fallen into a sand trap and is expected to shovel sand for his food and water with no possibility of parole.
The most beautiful and compelling character in this film was the sand. Director Teshigahara Hiroshi filmed grains of sand at the microscopic level and far above showing the mesmerizing rivulets across wide dunes. It was also unrelentingly invasive as it sought to take over the house and bury it minute by minute. Only for a minutes after a weekly bath were the characters bodies not covered in the tiresome fragments. They often appeared as if cursed by Medusa and turned to stone. The unearthly and unnerving music highlighted the strange shifting world the characters inhabited.
“Are you shoveling sand to live or living to shovel sand?”
Failure to shovel sand meant no food or water. The Woman was as much of a slave as E. How long had she been there? Was it a generational enslaved caste? She seemed to think of it as necessary for the village, but she never climbed the ladder and joined the villagers. It would never occur to her to leave. E struggled to escape several times before seeming to succumb to his plight. Was shoveling sand a parable/allegory about work? Especially salaryman work? Meaningless, repetitious, and almost impossible to quit. Other than enriching the union, it didn’t benefit society as a whole because anything made out of the cement it went into would be substandard and possibly deadly. There were other slaves we heard about but didn’t meet.
The characters lived on the bottom of the survival pyramid. Through a continuous grind of backbreaking tedious work, they received strictly rationed and controlled food and water. The sand continuously threatened to consume their shelter and their lives. They participated in raw, carnal sex. But eww, sandy sex brings on a whole host of indelicate problems. The pit provided no entertainment, no variety, and no real choices. The only true autonomy they had was to live (obey) or die (disobey). The woman desired a radio. Why? The outside news would only mock their isolation and enslavement. E’s curiosity ebbed until he accidentally made a discovery that excited him. Given his mental enslavement the revelation served to trap him more tightly.
The film reminded me of the original Star Trek’s pilot called The Cage. Warning! 60 year-old spoiler! Beings with telepathic powers needed humans to provide physical labor for them. They set a trap and used a beautiful woman as bait and reward. They also perversely enjoyed watching and punishing the humans. The villagers in The Woman in the Dunes were both perverse (they liked to watch) and cruel. Perhaps I’ve belabored the point attempting to understand this film and the story was simply karmic payback for the Entomologist trapping bugs in glass tubes and then pinning them to boards. In that case, he probably deserved what he got. Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
9 June 2025
Trigger warnings: There were a couple of nude scenes, but sexual encounters were done “tastefully” and implied more than showing body parts. There were bugs but not the ooey, gooey, or eight-legged kinds.
Note: We are not told the Entomologist’s name until the last frames so I will just call him E, because any term ending in ologist I usually screw up and trip over. The FL was never given a name so I’ll refer to her as The Woman, much like a character in Sherlock Holmes.
E is searching remote sand dunes hoping to discover a new variety of beetle that would be named after him. He misses the last bus out of town and a helpful villager tells him he can spend the night with a local. The Woman’s hut lies at the bottom of a sand dune pit and requires climbing down a rope ladder. She is very hospitable and strangely spends the night shoveling sand which the villagers haul up in buckets. The next morning when he attempts to leave, the ladder is missing and the unnatural sand cliffs are impossible to climb. He ascertains that he has fallen into a sand trap and is expected to shovel sand for his food and water with no possibility of parole.
The most beautiful and compelling character in this film was the sand. Director Teshigahara Hiroshi filmed grains of sand at the microscopic level and far above showing the mesmerizing rivulets across wide dunes. It was also unrelentingly invasive as it sought to take over the house and bury it minute by minute. Only for a minutes after a weekly bath were the characters bodies not covered in the tiresome fragments. They often appeared as if cursed by Medusa and turned to stone. The unearthly and unnerving music highlighted the strange shifting world the characters inhabited.
“Are you shoveling sand to live or living to shovel sand?”
Failure to shovel sand meant no food or water. The Woman was as much of a slave as E. How long had she been there? Was it a generational enslaved caste? She seemed to think of it as necessary for the village, but she never climbed the ladder and joined the villagers. It would never occur to her to leave. E struggled to escape several times before seeming to succumb to his plight. Was shoveling sand a parable/allegory about work? Especially salaryman work? Meaningless, repetitious, and almost impossible to quit. Other than enriching the union, it didn’t benefit society as a whole because anything made out of the cement it went into would be substandard and possibly deadly. There were other slaves we heard about but didn’t meet.
The characters lived on the bottom of the survival pyramid. Through a continuous grind of backbreaking tedious work, they received strictly rationed and controlled food and water. The sand continuously threatened to consume their shelter and their lives. They participated in raw, carnal sex. But eww, sandy sex brings on a whole host of indelicate problems. The pit provided no entertainment, no variety, and no real choices. The only true autonomy they had was to live (obey) or die (disobey). The woman desired a radio. Why? The outside news would only mock their isolation and enslavement. E’s curiosity ebbed until he accidentally made a discovery that excited him. Given his mental enslavement the revelation served to trap him more tightly.
The film reminded me of the original Star Trek’s pilot called The Cage. Warning! 60 year-old spoiler! Beings with telepathic powers needed humans to provide physical labor for them. They set a trap and used a beautiful woman as bait and reward. They also perversely enjoyed watching and punishing the humans. The villagers in The Woman in the Dunes were both perverse (they liked to watch) and cruel. Perhaps I’ve belabored the point attempting to understand this film and the story was simply karmic payback for the Entomologist trapping bugs in glass tubes and then pinning them to boards. In that case, he probably deserved what he got. Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
9 June 2025
Trigger warnings: There were a couple of nude scenes, but sexual encounters were done “tastefully” and implied more than showing body parts. There were bugs but not the ooey, gooey, or eight-legged kinds.
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