砂の女

Yesterday I watched 砂の女 (Suna no Onna), which is  a film adaptation of Kobo Abe’s book by the same name. In English this translates to Woman of the Dunes. I found this on YouTube, and no subtitles (either in Japanese or English) were available, so I ended up watching the entire 2.5 hours in Japanese. The basic plot line is that a teacher who is out in the dunes hunting for bugs misses the last bus home, and is “kindly” offered a place to stay in a tiny hut int he middle of a hole carved out of sand. However he is actually trapped, and forced to live with the woman of the house, who has to shovel sand for a living. I remember the part when this is discussed for the first time, and in Japanese the man says something that translates roughly to “you live to shovel sand and you shove sand to live.” The women makes a comment about it being comparable to living a salaryman life in Tokyo, and that really struck me as I could easily see the connection. Basically, the woman has to shovel the sand every night to stop if engulfing the house, and also so that she receives rations from the men at the top of the hole. The plot continues with the man trying to escape a few times, and eventually choosing to stay in the sand dune house.

The way this film was shot is really beautiful, with careful consideration to framing and lighting. My only criticism is that the dialogue between the characters and the screeching music (Hitchcock-esque in that kind of hair-raising horror style) are of completely different volumes. So I had to keep turning the volume up to hear the dialogue, and turn it down when the music played so my eardrums didn’t burst.

What I took from this film is sense of perpetualization, and I realised that I am facing a similar issue in my own life at this current time. Due to the global pandemic, I am ‘trapped’ in Australia, unable to choose what I do with complete freedom. I am stuck in this inescapable sense of repetition with no sense of an out or an end point. Sams as the main character trapped in the sand. The sense of helplessness and struggle that the main character feels when he comes to the realisation of being trapped resonated strongly with me.

I am not perfect with Japanese, but I could catch the gist of the movie and the conversations within it. After viewing the film, I looked up the plot on the internet just to double check my understanding, and it was in line with what was written. To deepen my understanding though, I have decided to read the English translation of the original book. It is only 166 pages long, so it won’t take too long to read. From what I have read so far, the film follows the book quite closely, down to the dialogue (I recognised exact phrases from the film.)

In terms of applying this to my own project, I think I would like tot ouch on that sense of repetition and helplessness somehow. I would like to make my viewers feel that through the work, in the same way that I felt the hopelessness of the main character when I was watching this film.

(1) Suna No Onna 1964, uploaded DVD, Toho Film (Eiga) Co. Ltd., Japan.

(2) Abe, K 2013, The Woman in the Dunes, translated from Japanese by ED Saunders, Vintage Books, New York.