Remarkable novel, noteworthy film

[Part 1]

It need hardly be pointed out that the novel and the film are two of the most powerful and endearing media of symbolic communication in the contemporary world. The relationship that exists between these two forms of communication is as fascinating as it is complex. One is moved to say that there appears to be an almost inverse relationship between the accepted literary worth of a novel and the cinematic worth of a film based on that novel. Some of the most memorable and significant novels by such internationally acclaimed authors as Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence have been converted into films without conspicuous success while outstanding works of cinema have been made based on fairly undistinguished novels. Antonioni’s Blow-up is a case in point.

However, it needs to be said that occasionally we come across a great work of cinema that has been based on an equally great work of fiction. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s (1927-2001) film version of Kobo Abe’s novel The Woman in the Dunes (suna no Onna) is a case in point.

Kobo Abe (1924-1993) who is regarded as one of the leading novelists and playwrights of Japan is the author of such well-known and widely discussed novels as The Face of Another, The Ruined Map, The Box Man and of course The Woman in the Dunes. Many literary critics have asserted that The Woman in the Dunes, which won for him the coveted Yomiuri Prize for literature in 1960, is Kobo Abe’s finest and most accomplished novel – a judgment that I fully endorse.

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s film version of the novel, which was awarded the jury prize at the prestigious Cannes festival in 1963, provides us with an excellent and uncommon example of a distinguished novel paving the way for the making of an equally distinguished film. It is my intention in the following columns to explore, what I regard as the primary reason for this rare success. Beyond the indisputable talent of Kobo Abe and Hiroshi Teshigahara, there are other factors that need to be examined as a way of understanding the complex intersections and conjunctions between fiction and cinema.

Abiding themes

One of Kobo Abe’s abiding themes has been the alienation of man, the agonies it produces and the impossible quest for identity. It is my contention that he has chosen to examine these themes with the power, precision and the elemental attraction of myth. This is certainly the case with The Woman in the Dunes with has the seductive power of myth.

Hiroshi Teshigahara

The novel narrates the bizarre story of a man held captive by a woman at the bottom of a dangerous sand pit in a remote sea side village, and his attempt to make sense of the strange world into which he has been plunged much against his will. How he overcomes the initial bewilderment , and seeks to impose an order on the pressing chaos,is a testimony to human tenacity.

The protagonist of the novel, Niki Jumpei – who through the text is not referred to by name, but by the pronoun he –is a school teacher. His hobby is insect collecting, for which he evidently had to pay a high price. He disappears one August afternoon. The author presents this mystery in a casual and matter-of-fact way setting the stage for the depiction of the weird experiences that are to follow.

‘One day in August a man disappeared. He had simply set out for the seashore on a holiday, scarcely half a day away by train, and nothing more was ever heard from him. Investigation by the police and inquisitives in the newspapers had both proved fruitless.’

Hobby

In his search for insects – that was his hobby- Niki Jumpei arrived at a desolate seaside village near the sand dunes. As ‘sand and insects were all that concerned him’, he was hardly aware of the grim and forbidden terrain into which he had stumbled. At last when he does scan the surrounding reality, he finds it anything but pleasurable.

‘The shape suddenly steepened. It must at least 65 feet down to the tops of the houses. What in heaven’s name could it be like to live down there/he thought in amazement, peering down into one of the holes. As he circled around the edge he was suddenly struck by a biting wind that choked the his breath in his throat.

The view abruptly opened up, and the wind, the turbid, foaming sea licked at the sore below he was standing at the crest of the dunes that had been his objective.’

Unfortunately for Niki Jumpei, he had missed the last bus and there was no way to return home. The villagers, therefore, invite him to spend the night with them in the village. He accepts that kind invitation gladly, triggering an unusual chain of strange events; he is asked to spend the night in a shack at the bottom of a sandpit. It is indeed a weird place

Warm reception

‘Indeed, if it had not been for the warm reception, the house itself would have been difficult to put up with at all. He would have thought they were making a fool of him and would doubtless have gone back at once the walls were peeling, matting had been hung up in place of sliding doors, the upright supports were warped.

Boards had replaced all the windows, the straw mats were in the point of rotting, and when one walked on them they made a noise like a dead sponge. Moreover, an offensive smell of burned, moldering sand floated over the whole place.’

Here, in this nightmarish world, Niki Jumpei is held captive with a young woman. It seems as if the only available reality is the ever present sad.

‘The more he tried to sleep, the more wide awake he became. His eyes began to smart, his tears and his blinking seemed to be ineffective against the ceaselessly falling sand.

He spread out the towel and wrapped it over his head. It was difficult to breathe, but it was better that way. he tried thinking of something else. When he closed his eyes, a number of long lines, flowing like sighs, came floating towards him. There were ripples of sand moving over the dunes. The dunes were probably burned into his retina because he had been gazing steadily at them for some twelve hours. The same sand currents had swallowed up and destroyed flourishing cities and great empires.’

Sand pit

It so happens that the woman in now destined to live with him at the bottom of the sand pit. Her husband and daughter had apparently died by being buried by sand the previous year. He is clearly a prisoner; he experiences a whole gamut of emotions towards her ranging from anger and irritation to compassion and erotic love. He seeks to escape from this hell-hole a number of times but he fails; his repeated efforts to flee from his captors prove futile.

Towards the end of the novel Niki Jumpei comes to the realisation quite by accident, that he can obtain water through the capillary action of sand, a discovery that indeed serves to usher in a fundamental change in his attitude and worldview. We are left with the feeling that it is as if he has invented a new self for himself.

The interplay between self and place, which is central to the meaning of The Woman in the Dunes, seems to have opened a new chapter in his biography. What is even more interesting is that the escape from his captors is no loner his top priority. The following memorable and reflective passage brings the narrative to a close..

‘There was no particular need to hurry about escaping. On the two-way ticket he held in his hand now, the destination and time of departure were banks he had to fill in as he wished. In addition, he realised that he was bursting with a desire to talk to someone should the water trap. And if he wanted to talk about it, there wouldn’t be better listeners than the villagers. He would end by telling someone – if not today, then tomorrow. He might as well put off his escape until sometime after that.’

Privileged themes

The Woman in the Dunes has as its privileged themes questions of identity and alienation – themes which Kobo Abe has sought to probe into with the power of fabulist imagination. Sand is the dominant trope of the novel; it is everywhere pervading the thought, imagination, speculations, reveries and actions of the protagonist.

As one critic has aptly pointed out, sand is the novel’s central metaphor, standing for the shifting reality in which the protagonist needs to come to terms with himself and his circumambient reality, in which he needs to sink roots to anchor his existence.

Many critics ad commentator have endeavoured to interpret the significance of sand in diverse ways from their distinct vantage points. It is my contention that sad signifies worldly existence and water wisdom, a symbolism akin to Buddhist thought. Kobo Abe was, to be sure, not a Buddhist writer; but his gloss carries, for me at least, overtones of Buddhist thinking.

Hiroshi Teshigahara has made a visually stunning and critically acclaimed film on the basis of Kobo Abe’s novel. How does one account for this success, when in the history of cinema, it has been repeatedly demonstrated, thatoutstanding novels do not often result in outstanding films.

As I stated earlier, one can argue that Kobo Abe is an outstanding novelist and Hiroshi Teshigahara is a outstanding director. One can also argue that the novel is visually conceived and this makes the task of the screenwriter and director that much easier.

It is also a known fact that the director of the film worked very closely with the novelist. All these factors, in their differing ways, contributed to the successful cinematic trans-creation of the novel.

To my mind, there is yet another reason, and in many ways a deeper one, for the success, namely, the dialectic between self and place. This is crucial to the intent of Kobo Abe as a novelist both thematically and stylistically and it has a direct and vital bearing on the art of cinematography

Dialogues

Hiroshi Teshigahara has sought to stick as closely possible to the original novel; even the dialogues are by and large taken from the novel. The director has added a few incidents like the rape scene and the scene dealing with his old girl friend that takes place at the beginning of the film. He has also shortened the escape scene which is much longer in the novel. Beyond these, it has to be said that the film remains faithful to the novel.

A feature that distinguishes the novel is the dialectic between self and place that is put into play by the novelist. It is evident that Niki Jumpei is realised, defined and evaluated in terms of his relation to place. At first we are made to see how he seeks to escape from the urban environment that he normally inhabits. Next we see him against the backdrop of the desolate and remote sea side villages.

The third stage, which constitutes the bulk of the novel, presents us with his encounters with the ubiquitous sand in the shack at the bottom of the sand pit .Finally we witness his struggles with the environment and eventually his triumph over it with the discovery of water. This results, as I have noted, in the fashioning of a newer self. It is my contention, then, that this interplay between self and place is pivotal to the intended meaning of the novel, and indeed to that of the film

Interestingly, something that the cinema is able to accomplish far more persuasively than other media of symbolic expression is this – the capture of the life of space, the representation of the reciprocal relationship between self and space. Spatiality is a fundamental determinant of the meaning of cinema. It is, in my judgment, a special power granted to cinema. Consequently, the very fact that Kobo Abe’s novel reconfigures precisely this facet of human experience certainly makes it easier to turn it into a literary work replete with cinematic possibilities.

It is evident, to me, that director Hiroshi Teshigahara was quick to exploit these potentialities to the full. The visual representation of the nexus between self and place is a central part of the meaning of the film.

Changing shapes

As I stated earlier the governing trope of the film, as indeed in the novel, is that of sand. It is in turns beautiful and terrifying, attractive and repulsive. Many viewers would agree with me that director Hiroshi Teshigahara has succeeded in capturing with remarkable power the changing shapes, forms, patterns of sand. At one point in the film, he magnifies a single grain of sand so as to fill the entire screen; at another point, he depicts how the sand floes endlessly in a cascade-like manner.

Throughout the film we are presented with shots showing how Niki Jumpei’s and the woman’s bodies are covered with sand; it is as if their very being has been penetrated by sand.Indeed, I can scarcely think of any other film in which sand plays such a dominant and disturbing role. H Hiroshi Teshigahara possesses an acute sensibility to place.

Niki Jumpei walking solitarily across the dunes as the sun sinks beyond the horizon; the pitiful condition of the shack in which he is doomed to live with the woman; the woman holding up an open umbrella to keep the sand falling on the food as Niki eats his dinner; the torrential and terrifying fall of the sand on the shack; the shack as observed by the villagers from above; the faces of the villagers transformed into diabolic masks; These sequences are movingly presented through Hiroshi Teshigahara’s wonderful use of the camera and attentive editing.

It needs to be emphasized that Niki Jumpei’s new awareness of himself that he has now acquired is attributable directly to his confrontation with his environment, and the director has spared no pains in enforcing this point.

As I stated earlier, The Woman in the Dunes communicates powerfully and cogently the emergence of the protagonists newer self.

This is accompanied by an appreciable shift in his cognitive style and perceptual modes. It demonstrates in interesting ways the proneness of human beings to adhere to specific cognitive styles, modes of perception and to structure and reify reality in accordance with that style.

What the novel seeks to establish, in my view, is the compelling need to remove oneself from such a rigid cognitive style as a way of realising one’s self fully.

The realization of one’s self fully may be an impossible dream; however, the aim should be to get as close as possible to that ideal.

It need hardly be emphasized that these cognitive styles are, for the most part, products of, and embedded in, specific discourses which exercise a profound influence on them.

Discourse

Niki Jumpei is indeed a creature of modern urban society and the discourses that brought it into being. He may not be totally satisfied with the all aspects of this discourse, but he certainly operates within its boundaries and adheres to its dominant rules. It can be argued that he structures his reality in relation to the signification system that he has inherited from the environment that he has inherited. Moreover, he is a resolute insect collector; the entomological and scientific discourse has deeply penetrated his being.

It is evident, as Kobo Abe presents him to us, that he prizes a rational and analytical frame of mind. Consequently, he likes to reduce things to their basic constituent elements. He privileges reductionism over holism. Early in the novel, we are told the following.

‘His head bent down, he began to walk following the crescent-shaped line of dunes that surround the villages like a rampart and towered above it. He paid almost no attention to the distant landscape. An entomologist must concentrate his whole attention within a radius of about three yards around his feet.’

Clearly, Niki Jumpei is used to classifications and atomisations rather than seeing thins holistically. As a consequence of his experience in the shack with the woman, and as he increasingly becomes more acquainted with her ways of thinking, feeling, imagining. His cognitive style begins to change. We perceive that he has opened himself to newer possibilities. Interestingly, towards the end of the novel he says the following. ‘He was still in the hole, but it seemed as if he were already outside. Turning around, he could see the whole scene. You can’t really judge a mosaic if you don’t look at it from a distance. if you really get close to it you get lost in detail. You get away from one death only to get caught in another. Perhaps what he had been seen up until now was not the sand but gains of sand.’

(To be concluded)