crossbow0106 If you're familiar with Hiroshi Teshigahara's work, especially the notorious "Woman In The Dunes", you will understand the starkness, the harsh reality, the irony of this film. Ostensibly about a miner who is stalked by a man in a white suit and who then is killed for reasons that do not become apparent until nearly the end of the film, the film is, like "Dunes", an uncompromising look at life. The film is technically superb on the DVD box available, and it is highly recommended. This film is not for everyone, it is for people who are interested in serious Japanese cinema. There are nuances in this film that show the mark of a great director, though. Again, be prepared: This is not happy go lucky. It triumphs mostly because of its persistence of vision. That is an endorsement for any filmmaker.

zetes Teshigahara's debut, at least as a feature length director of fictional films. Like his most famous work, his sophomore feature A Woman in the Dunes, Pitfall is based on the work of Japanese author Kobo Abe. While Pitfall is far less famous than A Woman in the Dunes, it is at least as good. It's been a while since I've seen Dunes, but at the moment I'd rate Pitfall higher. The story is about a man and his son who arrive in a mining camp to start a new job. The child notices a lanky man in white following them about. The father (Hisashi Igawa) notices nothing. Following orders, Igawa goes down to the beach. The man in white follows and attacks with a knife. The child hides, watching his father's murder from afar. The film is a murder mystery. It is also a ghost story, as Igawa rises from the dead and wanders the camp looking for answers to his murder. The child hides and avoids contact with the human beings around him. The film plays out as an existentialist nightmare, people wandering through empty landscapes, surrounded by distant hills of dirt and rocks, abandoned settlements and seemingly unmanned mining equipment. The film-making style is very cold, very distant, very geometrical in its compositions and editing. It's quiet and frightening. It's incredible sad. And it's one of the best films I've seen in a long time.

happyreflex I'll skip the synopsis and go right for the flaws. The little boy was sketched as a weak caricature. Our hero, the murdered man, was given some very weak dialog. The subplot about the divided miners' union was verbose. The confrontation between the two union heads came to an unbelievable conclusion. The man in white was not as much of a mystery as the film seems to think he is. At the end, with four principles dead, we expect them to meet at last and discuss what has happened with one another, but instead the movie watches the boy run crying down a road, and damn it, the movie isn't about the boy! -----paragraph----- The film sets up the murdered man to slowly come to realize the fact that there will be no justice for his murder and that it is better, once one has died, not to torture oneself by watching the world he has left behind. That the movie ends before he comes to this realization makes the ending very unsatisfying. Of course, the film doesn't allow him to realize as much as the viewer feels he should. Perhaps that is the greatest flaw. Or perhaps it is the fact that the two union heads fight each other to the death when at least one of them should know that it is more important for them to unite against a common enemy. Then there's the man in white. The movie seems to think he's a mystery, but it's pretty obvious that he's a representative of the mining company looking to crush the unions. The murdered man, our hero, does not realize this, nor does the movie seem to think the viewer does, but the viewer does know, and with all the murdered man has heard, by all rights he should, too. Instead, he spouts weak dialog about his murder. He recites his stilted inner monologue like a man in a stage play, and it doesn't work. Really, he's too complacent. He passively watches people talk about him. He does not put up any kind of fight to make the living world hear him. He doesn't undergo the process of accepting that he cannot interact with the living world. At the end, he's even trying to speak to a living man, even though he should have come to realize that it's impossible. And, as I said before, he hasn't made any progress toward accepting the fact that he must forget the world of the living and accept his fate. His story arc feels very unfinished. The script needed a rewrite.

xhari_nairx This film is very difficult to find in the West. It's not on video and you'd probably have to be lucky and find it at a film festival or a revival house. It's the first collaboration between director Teshigahara, writer Kodo Abe, and composer Toru Takemitsu, who went on to make the more widely available WOMAN IN THE DUNES and FACE OF ANOTHER. It's not quite as strong as WitD but is on par with FoA. This is a satire about a deserted town who's inhabitants are ghosts swallowed up by corruption. Teshigahara's direction is solid and Takemitsu comes up with another appropriately dissonant score balancing tension and humor. It's worth seeing for anyone interested in the three principal collaborators, particularly since opportunities to see it are rare. Takemitsu in particular could almost single handedly make a movie worth watching.