Modernist Myth in Suna no Onna’s The Woman in the Dunes

Modernist Myth in Suna no Onna’s The Woman in the Dunes

The Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna, 1964) was directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and based on the novel by Kobo Abe and falls into the camp of modernism. It’s a faithful adaptation and has realistic and expressionistic elements. Because it is a parable and paradoxical, there are many interpretations – in other words, we’re on our own with this one.

An entomologist (Niki) is walking in a stark desert-scape. Everything is shot in black and white. There are closeups of bugs and sand. In one shot, a grain of sand takes up the whole screen. Sand is moving and pouring, it’s a living entity, an organism. The sun is a powerful presence. The man sits in a boat that appears skeletal in the sand. At one point, he says, “All this paperwork to reassure each other.” Right away, we’re introduced to the alienation theme. Society is ordered by numbers and paperwork, it crushes us with efficiency, dehumanizes us. In nature, he realizes society’s deficiencies. This world we all know through personal experience, or by reading Kafka. The bureaucracy, which seems so rational, is brutal in its machine-like efficiency. Two decades later, George Lucas’ Star Wars would refer to this bureaucracy as the Empire.

Where does one turn? Where is meaning, where is freedom? Nature, community, love? These are possibilities in the film, but each one has its dangers. Yet, to bring up a contradiction, the protagonist doesn’t mind this world of rationality and efficiency when he is in control. Most likely, he has no problem with his job when he’s back home and not a prisoner but a well-paid worker in the bureaucracy.

The last bus has left, so he has to seek shelter in the village. A person in a str...

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...tion that

is about the art of writing fiction. In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities Polo describes a host of cities

to the Great Khan. But there are TV antennas and airplanes here and there. How can this be? The

artist, rather than giving you a transparent view, shows you his creativity, as well as the

indivisibility of time.

Of modernism, the existential dilemma stands out most sharply. Of postmodernisn, the

dispersal of responsibility stands out most sharply. What’s so significant is that the film appears

during the early years of postmodernism -- when it was figuring itself out.

Works Cited

Desser, David. Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

McDonald, Keiko I. Cinema East: A Critical Study of Major Japanese Films. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 1983.