I rarely write about old movies, unless I'm recommending them; and I highly recommend this one. An entomologist is lured by villagers and trapped in a dune sandpit, as a "helper" to a woman living there, to shovel the sand out every night. They shovel, and sand keeps accumulating; they don't shovel, and they'll get buried. So... "Do you shovel to live, or live to shovel?" The concepts and allegories are so far-reaching, the enigmatic but obvious ending so perfectly describes the mechanisms of totalitarian governance, I was confounded how we still grapple with paradoxes mentioned in 50-year-old Japanese films.
PS: You know what? Ebert's four-star review on this Cannes Jury Prize winner does a much more splendid job here. Read it after you've watched the movie.
"You cannot escape the pit. But you can make it a better pit. Small consolation is better than none."
Mo says:
I saw this on late night TV years ago but I'd forgotten what it was called. Needless to say I loved it!
ReplyDeleteApparently Teshigehara has two other good ones, "Pitfall" and "The Face of Another". I'll be on the lookout for them.
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