Film Comment: Woman In the Dunes

In the black and white 1964 film Woman in the Dunes (Japanese Title: Suna no Onna), an insect collector from Tokyo escapes his boring existence by spending time in the desert region of Japan, collecting bugs, and staying in the homes of local people.  On his current trip, the only place to stay is with a woman who lives at the bottom of a sand pit.  The man happily climbs down the unstable wooden ladder into the pit to spend the night.

The next day the man realizes that the ladder is gone and that the walls of the sand pit are sliding down onto the house.  Then comes the surprise: he is expected to to stay with the woman and help her shovel sand away from the house.  In return, he gets her.

At first the man struggles to leave, but soon, he gives in and wouldn't leave even if he could.

This film received two Oscar nominations and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.  It is obviously an allegory, lacking any logical story sense, being more a situation than a narrative.  With nudity, vaginal, and phallic symbols abounding it is obvious that the ensnarement is sexual.  The man finds himself trapped in a situation for which he is partially responsible; he was not forced to climb down into the pit and he should have known better than to do so.

The woman is the sugar and the glue, and the pit is the trap.  The man is the fly, but he does not struggle for long, because the sugar is so sweet.  Before he is even aware of it, the man does not want to leave.

People often create their own prisons by the bad choices they make.  Each choice, good or bad, makes it easier to make the next choice in the same direction.  It also makes it less likely that we will turn around and go back the way we came (μετάνοιά/repentance.)  Each bad choice can limit future choices.

Many things (food, sports, career, hobbies, etc) which may on their surface seem to be benign, innocent, or essentially harmless, can, if we make them our entire lives, ensnare us like the Woman in the Dunes. Some situations and activities (gambling, smoking, recreational drug use, pornography, drinking, heavy flirting, promiscuity, etc) must be avoided because of their ability to ensnare us in unexpected ways which can rapidly escalate out of our control and from which it becomes impossible to extricate ourselves.