This was probably not the best choice to follow on the heels of Play. I don't mind multiple foreign films in a row, especially from different countries, but it's also another artsy drama about people getting away with a crime against the innocent. The key difference is that this one has a sort of happy ending, insofar as the victim chooses to go along with it.
Based on a novel by Kōbō Abe, the story focuses on a Tokyo teacher, Niki Jumpei (or Junpei, depending on the source), who heads to a desert to study native insects. Having missed the last bus of the evening, he takes nearby villagers' suggestion of rooming with a young widow (never identified by name) who lives at the bottom of a sand pit. She spends the night shoveling the ever-shifting sands, partly to collect it for sale and partly to prevent it from burying the cottage altogether. Jumpei offers to help, but she says she wouldn't have him do it on his "first night." He'd already told her he would stay only one night. That was his first warning....
Yup, it's a trap for her involuntary assistant. And unlike with probably most forms of enslavement, there is little threat of physical force. The villagers above simply pull up the rope ladder, and the sand walls don't lend themselves to climbing. If Jumpei doesn't do any work, they don't send him or the woman any rations. (Frankly, the rations they do send look mighty skimpy for manual laborers to me.)
The woman briefly indicates that Jumpei is not the first man to have been trapped with her like this. She does not say whether he escaped, was released, or died. Heck, maybe he was her late husband. Way to make the situation even creepier.
The worst part is how unnecessary the setup is. Never mind the prospect of finding temporary volunteers in the village or, I dunno, moving her out of there; they could've planted vegetation or whatnot to combat the threat of burial. They simply went with the cheapest option without regard to ethics.
At first, Jumpei is as appalled and determined to escape as you or I would be. (Personally, I'd also plan to come back with a posse and burn the entire corrupt village to the ground, but that may be more of an American mentality.) If he can't leave on his own power, he can hope that someone comes looking for him in the right place. But how long can that hope live?
For that matter, how long can he stay angry at his only companion? She does solemnly apologize more than once for the trap. Only when the movie's half over does she even hint at why she has no desire to leave: (1) Her husband and son are buried there, (2) she doesn't foresee a better lifestyle elsewhere, and (3) she doubts that anyone would care about her if not for her highly visible crisis. None of those reasons impress me, but Jumpei drops the argument and the film scholars wax eloquent about its allegorical value. I'll leave you to figure out what that is, but Greek myth comes up in discussions, despite the fact that Sisyphus actually did something to deserve punishment.
Jumpei develops awkward feelings for the woman, leading to some steamy scenes enhanced by Hiroshi Teshigahara's cinematography. (There's an unusual amount of nudity for a black and white oldie, but not really in sexual contexts.) In the end, he finds a means of escape but a reason to keep putting it off.
WitD gets extremely strong praise, but once again, I got a little too angry to grant it more than average marks. If you're up for a story that's slow and simple on the surface but has led to any number of term papers for half a century, by all means, check it out. If nothing else, you'll get a few spartanly pretty images.
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