The woman in the dunes

Although the title is The Woman in the Dunes, it is about an man who falls victim to a vicious trap set by a remote village council, becomes a virtual prisoner in an derelict isolated place, and strikes to reclaim his freedom with all means.

The surprising turn is, in the end, he chooses not to take up the route for freedom. And in a 'civilised' world he once occupied, he is reported as'lost'.

A visual treat of a kind, especially when the camera lingers on forms and shapes of the dunes - it reminds us of many a sensual pictures taken of sand, dunes, and deserts by the world's most talented photographers - the film is an allegory of the works of our minds and how even the most incidental event can disarm our innate desire and will to live to our fullest. A realistic film as well: it traces the minute struggles of an ordinary life - from an idealist to a realist, and how we eventually settle for the simplest pleasure available.

In The Woman in the Dunes, the dunes appear boundless, sensual, appealing and full of lives to an inquisitive visitor with an eye for exotic desert insects, which he keeps in a jar before displaying them in a glass front case. Soon however, it turns out to a silent accomplice of the vicious village council with a hidden agenda. In the end though, it loses the importance in the protagonist's search for freedom when it appears that it is the mind that determines one's fate.

The derelict house, that appears fascinating and welcoming for a tired traveler, has also changed its role many a times in the story. Soon after the man is fed, it first becomes a prison, then a battlefield for its occupiers, and eventually, a place the imprisoned man settles in at his own free will.

The use of space (the vast outdoors and the confined indoors) and the sparse dialogues, all reminds me, strangely, of Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth, made some 20 years afterwards in China. The difference is while in The Woman in the Dunes, it is the trapped woman and the discovery of water in the desert win the battle and get the man to leave civilisation behind, in Yellow Earth, it is an enlightened teenage girl who is devoured by the currents of the Yellow River in her desperate escape from an arranged marriage, is celebrated by everybody on the yellow earth.