sandtrap

For some reason my local public access television station is showing Suna no Onna four times this week. Better known as Woman in the Dunes in English, it is based on the book by Kobo Abe telling the story of a man trapped in a sandpit and forced to clear the ever-falling sand away from a woman’s house at the bottom.

I’d seen this film quite some time ago, but for the sake of listening to some Japanese, I thought I’d watch it again. Unfortunately, there were subtitles, and no matter how hard I try my eyes are automatically drawn to the little English letters at the bottom of the screen. It’s true even when I watch American movies with my Japanese friends and they request we put on the English subtitles to make it easier for them to follow. I miss half of the film while reading the script of a language I can fully understand.

Woman of the Dunes is quite old, however, and the subtitles helped me out with a few outdated phrases and poor sound quality. On the other hand, the contrast between black and white was so stark that many of the white letters were lost in images of sand, sky, and lonely faces. I couldn’t help thinking what it the film would look like in color; was the sky a brilliant blue which allowed the rays of the sun to beat down mercilessly on the man as he struggled with the sand, or was it a dark grey adding to the feeling of heaviness and the somber reality of a working against a force which could not be stopped? I think either one would convey an equally strong impression, but the black and white picture probably is most effective; it leaves no room for hope.