Rating: 
Summary: Unforgettable.
Review: Certainly, "Woman in the Dunes" is not for everybody. But I watched it two weeks ago, and am having a difficult time forgetting it. A Japanese "L'enfer c'est les autres," but so much more! A must for anyone who enjoys thinking about life.
Rating:
Summary: surreal
Review: don't take the film literally or else you'll miss out on its poetry. my first reactions were; why would anyone... how come she doesn't... who would want to ... can't they... and so on. once you get past the unreality of it soon it takes you not only to a different place but a different frame of mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Could there be a worse movie?
Review: I am a college student majoring in film with an emphasis or writing and directing. We had to watch this film in one of my film classes. One word: junk. This movie had nothing redeeming about it; I do not care what people say. The lighting was bad; cinematography was shoddy at best, and the acting atrocious. Maybe I am a cynic and am slightly biased towards modernist films. I usually find foreign films to be some of my favorites including Run, Lola Run and The Color trilogy: Red, White, and Blue, but this movie did nothing for me except annoy me and infect me. I am sure none of you agree with me, but I felt I should inform people that this movie is defiantly not as great as everyone says it is and should not be placed on a petal stool. This is just my humble opinion.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Myth of Sisyphus
Review: I read Kobo Abe's book WOMAN IN THE DUNES years before I saw this film. I loved the book and think it's Abe's masterpiece, but, good as it is, it certainly didn't prepare me for the shimmering and enigmatic beauty of the film. WOMAN IN THE DUNES begins when a Japanese entomologist visits a remote and sandy area of Japan in search of rare specie of tiger beetle. Unfortunately, he misses the last bus back to town and has to sleep in the home of one of the villagers, something he thinks will be an interesting experience. I suppose he should have expected something strange was going on when he found out the house was at the bottom of a sandpit, but he doesn't seem to find this at all strange. What he does find strange, however, is that when he awakens during the night, the woman is not sleeping, but is, instead, outside shoveling sand away from the house. He goes back to sleep, thinking her bizarre behavior is really not his problem, but in the morning, he finds that the rope ladder he used to descent to the woman's house is gone and he is trapped. The woman explains to her visitor that both her husband and daughter died in a sandstorm and now, her visitor is expected to remain and help her shovel the sand and send it up to the surface in buckets. In fact, it's necessary, she tells him, for she can't do it alone and, if they don't do it together, the house (as well as the neighboring house) will not only cave in, but the villagers above will have nothing to sell. If the above doesn't seem to make any sense, then you've caught the point of the film very well. Life, it seems, is, more often than not, pointless. And, we are captives of this pointlessness. Like Sisyphus, we roll our personal rock back to the top of the hill each and every day only to find it back again at the bottom the next morning. At first, the male visitor in WOMAN IN THE DUNES refuses to accept his fate. He tries every means he can think of to escape. The woman, however, is of a different mindset altogether and she embraces her fate and her life and, of the two, she does seem the far happier and more content. WOMAN IN THE DUNES is a very powerful film and one that is, I think, absolutely flawless. Of course, it helped greatly that the book from which it was adapted was a flawless masterpiece as well. The cinematography is WOMAN IN THE DUNES is gorgeous. This film, more than any other I've ever encountered, uses visual images to the greatest advantage. The shots of sand are mesmerizing. The sand that covers the body of both the man and the woman is visually seductive. And, one shot of sand raining down on the head of the man as he tries to escape is simply breathtaking. WOMAN IN THE DUNES IS filled with images such as these and their cumulative effect is close to soul shattering. WOMAN IN THE DUNES is also a very seductive and erotic film. The man and woman are trapped, seemingly forever, in a fate they cannot escape. They have no one to care for them but each other, no one to love but each other, no way in which to find pleasure but in each other. WOMAN IN THE DUNES is, I think, a very pessimistic film for most westerners, who like to feel they are masters of their fate. Some things, however, simply can't be controlled and the best we can do is alter our reaction to them. The ending of WOMAN IN THE DUNES is quite surprising, but after some reflection, I saw it as inevitable. I know WOMAN IN THE DUNES is certainly not going to be a film for everyone, or even for the majority of viewers. It's very slow paced, very interior and introspective and very "arty." It is gorgeous, though, and it is very, very provocative. I couldn't recommend it, or Kobo Abe's book, more highly. WOMAN IN THE DUNES was a "must have" DVD for me.
Rating:
Summary: everything as the same as the novel !
Review: I read the book on " Woman in the Dunes " and to my amazement the producer did a wonderful job portraying the story in great detail on this DVD ! !
Although, he left out the part when the male character had a veneral disease ; in the movie it doesn't talk about that !
The movie was everything that I'd come to expect : passionate, suffocating, and erotic !
Rating: 
Summary: It all depends...
Review: I recently viewed this film from the public library, as the print broke repeatedly when it was shown at the local "art film" house (or, well, the closest thing we have in these here parts.) The art direction is stunning, and the visuals are extraordinary, especially the parallels drawn between the shifting sand dunes and the body of the woman with which the hero is entrapped. It was more involving on a story level, or perhaps rather at a character level, on second viewing. Nevertheless, I do feel compelled to point out that liking or disliking this film is NOT an intelligence test. The main character is quite unsympathetic to an American audience, and one is not condemned to repeated viewing of "Rush Hour 2" if one thinks so.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful metaphor about awakening from dream to Life
Review: I saw the film 30 years ago when I was about 30. I didn't get it, but it got me. I searched for it in vain for 20 years. Today it is, for me, a most concise and compelling lesson on freedom perceived as the surrender to necessity, allowing yourself to do what needs to be done. And it is so beautiful!
Rating:
Summary: Unforgetable
Review: In its basic form, this movie focuses on the unimportance of culture. There is a village so encroached by sanddunes that each house is located at the bottom of a 30 feet deep pit of sand with steep walls. As the ever creeping sand falls into the pits, villager spend more and more time shoveling this sand out or else have there homes buried in it. Into this strange world wanders a man with no life. His soul is so empty that his only sustenance is his wild fantasy of discovering a new species of beetle and thereby become fames. The villagers play matchmaker and put him in a pit with a beatiful but lonely woman who has lost both husband and son to the sand some years back. At first, the man resents his entrapment and tries to escape but gradually he becomes fond of the woman possibly even to love her. when a chance to escape finally appears, he choses to stay with the woman in the pit rather than go back to a numbing life in Tokyo. In real life, there are people whos life are affected by sanddunes. Although their homes are kept above the dunes, the wells that provide water cannot be raised so they have to keep digging out the sand and build walls around the well to try to stop the moving dunes from covering their life giving water. They wage a relentless war agains the sand - Not such a fantasy after all. I highly recomend this DVD to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Sand Never Rests
Review: In Japan,this film is titled SUNA NO ONNA. In 1964, the movie won the Grand Jury prize at Cannes, and it was nominated for two Oscars. It was directed by the multi-talented Hiroshi Teshigahara, who as well as a film director, was a poet, calligrapher, a wood block artist, had worked with ceramics, and had directed opera. It was based on a novel by Kobe Abe. The themes prevelant in the film leap from Zen parable to existential horror and Noh drama. It is reminiscent of stories by Franz Kafka, like METAMORPHOSIS.
The cinematographer was Hiroshi Segawa, and he played with light and shadow like a painter, finding a perfectly balanced blend between Abe's prose and Teshigahara's vision. He helped Sand become the third major character in the film, giving it personality, creating a Dali-esque canvas. He photographed sand as if it were a breathing beast, with wind rippling over the white dunes spreading the sand like waves of water, flapping the edges like it was moving silk. And he utilized a lot of extreme close-ups of skin pores choked with grains of sand, and sweaty strands of hair with sand granules clinging to them.
Toru Takemitsu did the music. The score was minimalist, yet powerful and staccato, piercing through us with flute, drum, and strings. The music only materialized when it was needed and necessary. Most of the film was not underscored with music. We heard breathing, moaning, rolling waves, shoveling, the crackling of fire, the bubbling of water, soap on skin, and the terrible creaking of old wood as that house swayed beneath the steady onslaught of the sand.
An essay written by Albert Camlus on the Myth of Sisyphus influenced the plot; that if a person is forced to exercise their entire being toward nothing, accomplishing nothing, mired in repetition, the human spirit is still not vanquishable. It will find joy in the task. Camus wrote,"happiness and the absurd are twin sons of the same earth; inseparable." Sisyphus achieved an emotional victory after he learned to love the rock he was pushing repeatedly up the mountainside. Our protagonists achieved a kind of emotional victory when their labor became sacred and necessary.
Eiji Okada played Niki Jumpei, a stranger wandering the dunes searching for insects; especially one rare beetle. Missing the last bus back to Tokyo, he approached some villagers and requested local accommodations. They agreed, and let him stay the night in a house at the bottom of one of their great sand pits. This was a village that the sand had attempted to devour, comprised of a honeycomb of pits dotted across the shoreline, mostly devoured by the shifting sands; only the occasional rooftop protruding out of the darkness of the many pits.
His hostess, played by Kyoko Kishida, was a thirty-something woman, widowed by the sand, and determined to stay the course, to remain in her domicle. She had to shovel the windblown sand constantly to deny the elements the chance to bury her alive. The following morning the man finds that the rope ladder he descended on was missing. He was trapped. Obviously the villagers were in on the conspiracy. Trapped there he lost his freedom, but in its place he found purpose, and with purpose he found meaning, and with meaning he found a strange joy; something he had never known.
This is a stunning film, perfectly in balance; blending poetry, literature, calligraphy, cinematography, and music. It is what all good movies aspire to be-- it is art. It a true classic, almost without flaw. I saw this film three decades ago, and as a twenty-something youth, during my University days, I was not fully appreciative of the subtleties within the piece. It is a timeless parable of the human condition, a film that begs for more than one viewing. The photography haunted me, and the eroticism, and the existential terror stayed with me. It made me hunger to read the novel.
Rating:
Summary: This film marked me forever. A must have movie
Review: It will remain in my memories as the must of all I've ever seen. I've seen this cerebral movie 17 yrs before and I'm still well impressed about this. If you wanna see fine art at its summum you have to see this. I'm a little bit deceived about the impossibility of having this masterpiece on DVD, but who knows maybe one day we'll be able to find also masterpieces like this on DVD.
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