A brusque schoolteacher takes a trip out to the dunes to get away from it all by indulging his entomological hobby, hoping to get his name in the books for the discovery of a rare insect. Instead, he is entrapped by a woman who lives endlessly shoveling out the sand from her house in a pit in the dunes. Her husband has died and she needs a man to help with the work and relieve her loneliness. To the man, the life in the dunes is insufferable and absurd, and he does everything possible to escape. To the woman, the life in the dunes is all she knows and she sees little point in venturing beyond, to a wider world where she will have no significance.
The film is visually arrested in its shots of drifting dunes, struggling insects, the protagonists, sometimes covered with sand. The two main protagonists are examined in an unsentimental style, empathetically, and yet without any glamorization. We question whether they have any more hope to transcend their situation, than the insects that the man captures. The sand is a metaphor for the routine and pointless nature of the tasks of life. In the end, we are left with the question of which protagonist is closer to correct. We root for the man to escape his criminal imprisonment, feeling the ridiculousness of the situation, but at the same time it's made clear that in his real life in Tokyo, he has little more significant to await him, and that he might just as well learn to love this as anywhere else.
On the negative side, the film is long at over two hours, given the extremely spare plot and low-key approach, and grows boring. It's a film that's more fun to think about afterward than watch. In addition, on rewatching the film, the artificiality of the set up begins to wear. It is somewhat of a "one note" movie, with a didactic, Twilight Zone kind of air, where you know the sand stands for one thing, the house for another, it's all a metaphor for life, etc.
Overall, a film worth watching, but not perfect.
The film is visually arrested in its shots of drifting dunes, struggling insects, the protagonists, sometimes covered with sand. The two main protagonists are examined in an unsentimental style, empathetically, and yet without any glamorization. We question whether they have any more hope to transcend their situation, than the insects that the man captures. The sand is a metaphor for the routine and pointless nature of the tasks of life. In the end, we are left with the question of which protagonist is closer to correct. We root for the man to escape his criminal imprisonment, feeling the ridiculousness of the situation, but at the same time it's made clear that in his real life in Tokyo, he has little more significant to await him, and that he might just as well learn to love this as anywhere else.
On the negative side, the film is long at over two hours, given the extremely spare plot and low-key approach, and grows boring. It's a film that's more fun to think about afterward than watch. In addition, on rewatching the film, the artificiality of the set up begins to wear. It is somewhat of a "one note" movie, with a didactic, Twilight Zone kind of air, where you know the sand stands for one thing, the house for another, it's all a metaphor for life, etc.
Overall, a film worth watching, but not perfect.