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†¦show more content†¦There are other sand dwellers nearby, but we never see them. â€Å"This way please,† she says. She is beautiful and passive; she accepts her fate. She could be Eve, except that there is no garden. While he eats, she fans him. She says many curious things about the sand, including: â€Å"last year the sand swallowed up my husband and daughter.† There are weird montages and jarring music. Some of this shows similarity to what other filmmakers were doing at the time, such as the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni and the French New Wave. Such directors were concerned with artistic vision, experimentation, alienation, and the social-political uses of cinema. At night they sleep next to each other. The sensuality is building slowly. He looks at her body, covered by sand. Her body undulates like the sand, like the surroundings. In the morning, however, there’s no ladder and he’s in a panic. This is an interesting dash of poetic justice, for the entomologist has no problem with capturing bugs from their habitat and bottling them or pinning them to a board. Keiko I. McDonald argues that â€Å"The irony lies in the shared fate of the tiny insects pinned down to the board and the entomologist who pinned them there. Both are helpless victims; just as the insects are classed into some genus and species, so is man forced into a socially fabricated identity. Like the insects, the man is pinned down by the forces of society†