MOVIE REVIEW: WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964)

 

Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara 

Screenplay by Kobo Abe from his novel 

Cinematography by Hiroshi Segawa 

Music by Toru Takemitsu 

Edited by Fusako Shuzui 

Art Direction by Totetsu Hirakawa and Masao Yamazaki 

Produced by Kiichi Ichikawa and Tadashi Ono

Starring 

Eiji Okada as Man from Tokyo

Kyoko Kishida as Woman in the Dunes

…

"Are you shoveling sand to live, or living to shovel sand?"

…

Review by William D. Tucker. 

A disenchanted man leaves Tokyo for a sandy coastal area-I guess it's a beach, but when he's in the thick of it . . . well . . . it's something beyond beach. This disenchanted man has very likely left behind a wife and a career as a teacher. He lies on his back in a ruined, perma-beached fishing boat, and ruminates on the existential paper trail that defines one's humanity: driver's licenses, tax returns, hunting licenses, gun permits, PTA memberships, IOUs, union cards, contracts,legal depositions, last wills and testaments-all the tedious proofs of himself, of all the people of contemporary Tokyo. 

The only physical validation this man willingly seeks is the perfect pinned insect collection. He's especially keen to discover a new species, and get his name into a field guide. Gotta catch 'em all. 

Our bug-collector discovers a strange community out in this sandy region of people who live in houses at the bottom of huge pits. They climb in and out by rope ladder. A seemingly unassuming local man greets the bug-collector and tells him it's okay to photograph the landscape and collect bugs so long as he's not secretly working for a government inspector's office. The people of the sandy area seem to want to stay off-grid. 

Our bug-collector misses the last bus back into town, and asks the local man if he can stay for the night. Local man offers up one of the houses down in the pit. The offered house is the home of a woman who is more than happy to accommodate the man from Tokyo.

Our bug-collector climbs down the rope ladder, thinking he has found lodging for the night. But he has unwittingly arrived in his new forever home. 

The all-too-accomodating woman of the house makes dinner and tea for the disillusioned city slicker. She informs him that the sand draws moisture, gets into everything, and creates decay and rot. The man-tone condescending-tells her that's not how that works.

"Use your common sense!"

But, as we will all discover in the fullness of time, the sand in this place is rather aggressive, and operates according to a different natural regime. The people who live in the pit houses must constantly clean the sand that finds its way onto all surfaces including human bodies. Every morning you wake up with those sinister grains clinging to you, invading every crevice and crack. Life in the pit involves cleaning yourself, your belongings, and shoveling back the encroaching dunes lest they bury you alive. 

The woman's husband and daughter were recently consumed by the hungry sands. And our man from Tokyo finds himself conscripted into a sick parody of domesticity as a replacement hubby. The rulers of the sandy area control the rope ladders, and they have no plans to let their latest captive go home. 

Our man resists his captivity, but we already know that some part of him was seeking a new life. And, perversely, he has blundered into a new existence. What we see onscreen might be an uncomfortable psychological allegory for rootlessness and lack of belonging. Our man-recently fallen out of love with Tokyo-could be an allegorical figure addressing a deep skepticism about postwar prosperity, maybe even civilization itself.

The people of the sandy area seem to be off-the-grid types, wanting nothing to do with laws and taxes and social norms. And yet they need fresh blood at regular intervals to avoid inbreeding, and so they have to capture outsiders to keep their bizarre way of life going. A brutal and sadistic courtship ritual late in the film graphically illustrates this process. Gotta catch 'em all. 

It is eventually revealed that the people of the sandy area fund their anti-civilization by illegally selling the aggressive sand to concrete manufacturers, even though this increases the risk of structural collapse in projects-such as dams, office buildings, government facilities-built with such concrete. 

At one point, our man from Tokyo, while in the depths of dehydration, hallucinates the doorframe of the pit house filled with spectral, shimmering water. Sometime after that, he discovers an unlikely source of water via "capillary action" that seems to be the reward of his hallucination. This strikes me as our man being co-opted by the "mind" of the dunes, since I think it's really the aggressive sand which is in charge. The sand inflicts an irresistible force of decay upon our illusions about civilization and domestic contentment. The people of the sandy area are thralls of this power, and they work to ship the sand to their ultimate Enemy: Tokyo. 

In the end, we are given a name for our man . . . but it might not be his name anymore. 

Maybe that name, and all that it was anchored to, gave him no happiness. 

Such discontent may also be the secret power source of the aggressive sand. 

Looking at the movie listings in the paper . . .

 . . . and I notice that No Time To Die-the latest 007 flick-has a running time of two hours and forty minutes.

Two hours . . . and forty minutes . . . and still no time to die?

Well.

Maybe-just maybe-you ought to try living for a change, Jimbo.

I drop mic.

I transcend to lava. 

Listening to the Bee Gees . . .

 . . . and my dude is lamenting how his life is going nowhere, and he cries out for help.

But soon enough, he insists that he'll be "stayin' alive."

Hey, it's gonna be all right.

First of all, you can’t be "nowhere."

You're always somewhere. Even if you're dead, your body takes awhile to decompose. And if you're cremated, well, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. So even unto total obliteration . . . you're still not nowhere. You're just distributed a bit differently is all. You're always somewhere. Even in death.

Which makes one wonder . . . isn't it more of a downer to be somewhere as opposed to nowhere, since somewhere is the state you can't actually escape? Even in death?

Oh, yeah, I been thinkin' about this.

Plus, you're clearly goin' somewhere according to the overall context of the song and the movie it's associated with-which would be Saturday Night Fever . . . you're going to the disco! You've got sick moves! You're going to get laid! Hell, you might dance so good that you just auto-bust your own nuts all over yourself! That'll get you in the New York Times-which is definitely not nowhere, amIrite?

I think you know you can trust me on this.

Plus, this song is an evergreen hit. Even if you're sick of singing it or hearing it . . . there’s, like, a million cover versions on YouTube. It's ever-refreshed by the vocal cords of tyros! Even established singers have a go! The tightness is strong with this track.

My favorite cover version is one of the Vaporwave slow-mo versions. Sounds like Audrey II on the vocals, and it would go great with a Sam Peckinpah-style gundown sequence. 

Imagine that: Disco Vaporwave Peckinpah. 

Somebody out there surely has an album called Vaporwave Peckinpah in the works.

And if they don't . . . well, you know how it is. These young folks got mad stress. Too many side-hustles in the pipeline. But we'll get there. We'll get to Vaporwave Peckinpah. 

Just keep . . . stayin' alive. 

Forgive me, Jesus . . .

 . . . for I always skip the quizzes in those Uncle John's Bathroom Readers.

They just make me so tense!

But then a funny thing always happens.

I tense up at the quiz . . . then I relax completely when I give up, and turn the page-

-and at that moment . . . I invariably bust the fattest shitlog in the galactic quadrant. 

A real aperture-stretcher!

Always.

So, it all works out.

For my ass.

If you need more than 3 microwave minutes . . .

 . . . then you better just take the cat OUT of the microwave, go to the supermarket-

you've got the cat OUT of the microwave?

Very good, that’s important, and I thank you-

and, okay, so you see the big freezer section? 

Yeah, okay, so inside those freezers? 

They have little cardboard boxes that contain custom-made microwaveable dinners-you just buy one or more of those things-

right, at the checkout scanner area, right-

and you take your microwave dinner home . . . 

uh-huh-

your home, right-

you put that sumbitch in the microwave for 3 microwave minutes-

hey, man, if you need another 30 seconds or so, that's okay, I'm not mad at you-

and then you're golden. 

Okay? 

Alright. 

Good talkin'. 

EVERY DAY IS HALLOWEEN #0: FEALTY-CON

in our August Form

are united

Flesh and Divinity

none may oppose our Will and Works

CREAT0R comes shuffling, 

eyes flitting all over,

birdly contempt

for every last thing he sees

nothing seems to hold his eyes

pouting mug too-fucking-much

the rubber-faced panto of disdain

assembled faithful

you clothe yourself

in image of our August Form

never forget that you are Merest Image 

'tho

for some among you forget your position and purpose

denying doctrines 

of Order

and Degree

the faithful eat it up 

CREAT0R insists that such a face

-known by critics as 'the fuckface'-

along with great caterwauling and stamping of feet

shall bring fortune

even in the face of Tyrant Reason

helps to have a private army

helps to have mercenary lobbyist whore-men in the lizardly Republican party 

and shady ties to oligarchs and dictators in Europe, Asia, South America,

you think these flicker spectacles pay for themselves?

and what of your own dim lives?

where would you be stumbling 

sans

Our Light?!

here we are

this quicksilver moment 

before the Tax Troubles and Accusations of Abuse 

gathering of the fuckfaced faithful

and whatever were you all

before our Works and Will

gave you such structure 

such purpose 

such mythic scope

to your quotidian functions?

because

CREAT0R

like all deities 

was a Gargantuan Lie

told by a Bloated Liar

if We Should Cease

then you would be duty-bound

to join us

in Ceasing

because 

CREAT0R 

like all gods 

must abscond 

but you are Merest Image

backdrop

to Our Form, Glory, Will, and Works

for you all

grand gestures are perfectly beyond your ability 

and so we take the role of a Christ in your lowly stead 

because 

CREAT0R 

must haul divine ass

to non-extradition climes

give the journalist and the federal agent the slip

I mean

shit 

everything 

happens

over video chat

now

Love on those Internets

fuckfaced faithful 

your money

like your information 

just wants to be free

and so our August Form

takes to the electronic ether

we shall deny Caesar his due

your Belief empowers Our Form

your Merest Image still serves

and Our Love blesses you all

at-a-distance

and our Will and Works

shall endure

comes the cascade of streaming documentaries, and podcasts 

chronicling abuse, fraud, megalomania, sexual servitude, 

CREAT0R still at large

-May 2019-October 2021

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEWS #18: SHADOWRUN SNES (1993)

closest we got

to a proper point-and-click adventure/mystery 

on Super Nintendo 

in the North American market 

amnesia

conspiracy

shamanic magic

spirit dogs 

cyborg technology 

project your consciousness out of your body

and into computer networks 

Dr. Strange by way of Neuromancer 

of course it's all orchestrated by a greedy red dragon

tabletop kitbash of Tolkien, Gygax, and Gibson

orcs with mini-guns

vampire lord gentrifiers 

yuppiefied combat mages

you got to talk with every damn NPC

to hunt down all the relevant keywords 

think on that

you start out as a trenchcoated gunman

but if you wish to prevail

against the bloody dragon of capitalism 

and get the sexy kitsune fox woman to pay you any mind

ye must use your words

my dog

use

your

words

-January-October 2021

EVERY DAY IS HALLOWEEN #18: HOLLY'S SECRET DOOR

at long last

on 69K remastered Cerulean-Beam Diskette

Holly’s Secret Door

the lost film directed by Montalban Sigurnjak 

rumored to be a hippie-dippie porno flick

turns out to be 

a satisfyingly brutal Italian-style Western

our woman is Holly Colorado

an Annie Oakley-esque sharpshooter

whose entire family is killed by a rapacious gang led by a hulking, creepy Christian preacher-man with a hysterical televangelist's wig of jet black hair-more on that later

Holly's hiding in the treeline,

petrified as she's only ever shot deer and birds,

as Mom gets stripped and beaten by firelight,

Dad is told,

by our good Christian villain,

"Cut out your eyes of shame, sinner! For you have the covetousness of Lucifer!"

Dad is handed a big-ass knife.

A door bursts open to admit obliterating white light,

Four strangely-pitched gunshots 

Dad and Mom each get two bullets to the head.

Holly only had four bullets left, it would seem.

Years pass,

our good Christian monster

is now a bald, bullet-headed 'mayor'

-a dictator, really-

of a prosperous, thoroughly corrupt boomtown 

-haunted by that strange night

of four gunshots-

our Telly Savalas looking villain has traded his Jim Jones look for a Frontier Mussolini aesthetic, and he's got a private army of fashy, black leather rentboy mercenaries vibing all over his nuts, ready to commit all manner of atrocities in the name of His Baldness,

what we ultimately get

is a kind of inverse giallo

where we are rooting for the repeat killer

-Holly Colorado all grown up-

as Frontier Mussolini flails and froths and foams and fumes

as his boomtown 

gets sniped all-too-shit

Holly's sure shot aim

tearing open old wounds and bitter rivalries

Episodic

sort of a dystopian Our Town

as every good citizen turns out to be a wife beater, a child molester, a rapist, a murderer, a genocidal invader, a white supremacist, a bootlicker, a quisling,

Holly’s learned her lesson from the past

so this time

Holly's brought enough ammunition for the whole family of fascism,

highlights include:

the pedo-pastor 

who gets his hands shot off 

before being ignited by a Molotov cocktail 

the boomtown undertaker examining freshly killed mercenaries,

helpfully intoning,

"Looks like two shots to the head, each. Which makes this . . .Colorado-style shooting."

Snap zoom into Frontier Mussolini's glowering eyes. 

Of course, 

there's an uprising,

a half-dozen town whores, a Native American fugitive, a Black cowboy, and a quartet of hired gunslingers known as the Four Winds of Death

wage a raggedy insurgency,

which sparks off various sectarian hatreds,

all while Holly plays guerilla sniper,

striking and fading,

rinse and repeat

Frontier Mussolini gets shot numerous times in his thick torso, Peckinpah slow motion, raw liver squibs blasting off all over the place,

and then His Baldness's pampered wife throwing herself across his corpse in the town square,

presumably to preserve it from desecration,

but all she gets

for her trouble

is decapitation 

by shovel.

It's all rather blunt and satisfying. 

Repeated motif of a door opening

to admit a nuclear white light of death

every time Holly pulls the trigger 

Deleted scene features Holly explaining to a stock whiskey priest how the killing begins inside her mind, and the shooting is merely a formality,

in the actual movie, she says little, is basically 'Annie Oakley-as-Grim-Reaper' 

which I suppose is all-you-need.

Another deleted scene features Frontier Mussolini going berserk, beating the shit out of his loyal wife, and then breaking a bunch of shit inside his manor-a clear homage to Citizen Kane.

Yet another deleted scene features an alternate version of the killing of the pedo-pastor: he's strung up by the neck, shot repeatedly by Holly, writhing, gagging, lots of raw liver squibbing all over the camera. 

Allegedly, there was even more footage of various atrocities, including what happened to Holly's two brothers and three sisters, but they all simply disappear from the movie as it currently exists. You get a couple of shots of fearful, young faces by firelight, and that's about it. 

You got some podcast clown doing a commentary track. It’s fine. Basically, he's just telling you how cool the movie is as you watch it. Sure. Okay.

No interviews with cast or crew.

They all passed away awhile ago.

Yet the movie survives.

Thinks.

What if we spent all the money and research and development we devote to resurrecting obscure exploitation flicks to Discovering the Secret of Immortality?

Thinks.

Or would I prefer to be remembered by my works?

Thinks.

Yeah, I dunno.

The Cerulean-Beam Diskette tech's probably cheaper.

8 out of 10.

-in the end, Holly Colorado's face by the roaring firelight of the immolated Boomtown of Corruption,

eyes unblinking

as she beholds Frontier Mussolini's desecrated corpse strung up for all to see,

the stock whiskey priest 

mostly absent from the final cut

offers blessings to those 

"Who brought Righteous Fire to this Town of Iniquity!"

the town whores are line-dancing

the surviving gunslinger plays a fiddle

snap zoom into Holly’s placid, unblinking eyes,

freeze frame,

brief credits, 

because this was one of those movies that had most of its credits at the beginning, 

damn,

I didn't even talk about the terrific original score-

-October 2020-October 2021

EVERY DAY IS HALLOWEEN #17: DAD BODY.

Straylow

Superflat Killing Machine

conflicted enforcer of the Unitary Combine

hero and villain of twenty-seven novels of the N.E.O.C. Expanded Universe

Contemplate this empty suit of armor taking up too much space in my home office:

Straylow’s official battle gear

complete with articulated display stand and an engraved certificate of authenticity

evokes the antihero in full: mirrored, opaque, cyclopean, obsessive

disintegrator rifle slung over one shoulder,

exiled from a vast body of myth by corporate-marketing department schemes

Well, comrades,

Straylow’s mine, now!

Behold Straylow

this is my Dad Body

a vehicle of fantasy

now I’m the twilight agent playing both sides against the middle

cosplay vengeance upon all the hours given up to building the network,

paying the mortgage,

vaping medicinals to damp down the anxiety, stress, back pain,

having to hide my medicinal use from mom, when she and dad are staying over

awkward discussions with Katie about how we explain the medicinals to Alyssa and Doug Jr.

'cause they savvy that Daddy's a stoner

and there's still enough ambient druggie shame in the culture 

in the house that I pay for

of course I should be ashamed,

the medicinals,

the $5,000 and change I dropped at Excelsior Con to win the Straylow armor away from an aggressive bidder,

believe the shame,

the shame’s more real than any fantasy or reality 

canon or no,

hey:

maybe

some higher corporate power

like

Nick

my boss at Network Analytico

will de-canonize my mother’s disapproval,

Katie’s, too. 

Pray to your Boss for salvation. 

A very old routine.

Stray has no place in the New Mythos.

I’m not supposed to believe in him.

But I do.

I’ll dwell in my own head-canon for all time. 

Dream of a vigorous prostate exam

Wherein

I am besieged by assassins

As I blaze away with my Unitary Combine Custom Disintegrator 

The doctor begins to vigorously work my prostate 

"You've got to open yourself, Doug," the doctor urgently intones, "let me be your spotter."

Mind's eye gives me a glimpse of my prostate being massage-molded into a shape very like a Playstation One controller

Oh, yes

It's a two-hander

I'm stretched wide

Open to cosmic possibilities 

Painful

But every blast's a headshot 

Once I give myself over

To the Doctor Inside

Worth it.

The guy who sold the armor to me

made a decent supplemental income

wearing the armor at parties and cons

‘til Protean Obligate Film Holdings shut down the Extended Universe

mailed actual dead tree cease and desist letters

lockdown of the mythos

the fanscape laid to waste by legal decree

all in the name

of making piles and piles of cash

off a simplified soft reboot

complete with a new Expanded Universe displacing the original EU

adieu antiheroes 

later for shades-of-gray

some shareholder putz said his brat didn't understand why Straylow had to nuke the planet in order to save it 

Comes a vision

I'm navigating the twisty, cyberpunky corridors of the third iteration of the Straylow first person shooter sub-franchise, when I catch a glittering glimpse of a figure racing around a corner-

I'm zooming, now, enemies autodestructing, giving up the bit as I abandon the vanilla game for godmode urgency 

Catching up

I see I've been chasing myself-a doppelganged Straylow, like holy shit-

He's filling my vision

Hand outstretched

That asshole pain throbs bright and clear, red lines shooting through my helmet heads-up display,

Usually the visual signifier of in-game damage to hit points

But now the game groks my hemorrhoids 

Doppel-Stray makes a plucking gesture with his fingers

My asshole throbs in time to the pluck-panto 

Sure I sit too much

Now my hero's looking out for me,

I guess

Scared Straight For Hemorrhoids 

Gotta get myself to a gym

Or Stray shall telekinetically pluck that swollen vein

Yikes

But also

Thanks.

Now I wear the armor in defiance, 

put on the Straylow self

Wear it to parties and cons and protests

Stray dreams intensify

Stray teaches me The Music of the Hemorrhoids 

Which can raise the dead

I'm plucking my own swollen vein, now.

Yes, there are protests

Never protested a war

or our current authoritarian-in-chief

Resurrecting all the de-canonized fodder

I'll have the complete set

As long as I keep plucking that string

but now I’ll make my stand

for the proper shape of the mythos within my heart-canon-

Eerie is The Music of the Hemorrhoids 

Blurs reality and dream

The living and the dead

Canon and excluded

Straylow,

the Twilight Operator,

And I,

His sacred Hemorrhoid Minstrel-

At home

At last

In the world of my own plucking.

-May 2014-October 2021