The school teacher was furious with the villagers’ cheat and questioned the widow how a free man could be trapped in a place like this. It is ridiculous. In the view of the teacher, everything in dune is not free, because he has no right to choose freely. Cigarettes and alcohol are rationed, newspapers and comic books are selected, and even spouses are bound together by force. Nevertheless, freedom, however precious, is not as worth as the water.
“Freedom” is hard to judge. Like spiders in dunes, flowing sand limits their freedom to spin webs, forcing them to hunt within the lampshade. However, the flying moth’s irresistible desire for light make lampshade a perfect hunting ground, thereby the freedom to spin webs is insignificant. When the teacher was imprisoned at first, he enthusiastically depicted the colorful life in Tokyo, but the woman was indifferent. The teacher did not understand, but in the process of struggling, he found passion in the dunes –he found the crow trap can store water. It is not until this moment did he get rid of the trap of slavery, and find his freedom in the water trap, which is only as big as a sand hole. When he did have a chance to climb up the rope ladder and escape from the dunes, life in Tokyo was no longer meaningful.
At the beginning of the film, the teacher is lying on a ship full of sand, thinking, and here’s his monologue: “The certificates we use to make certain of one another: contracts, licenses, ID cards, permits, deeds, certifications, registrations, carry permits, union cards, testimonials, bills, IOUs, temporary permits, letters of consent, income statements, certificates of custody, even proof of pedigree. Is that all of them? Have I forgotten any? Men and women are slaves to their fear of being cheated. In turn, they dream up new certificates to prove their innocence. No one can say where it will end. They seem endless. You criticized me for arguing too much. But the facts speak for themselves.” When finishing the film and looking back, the teacher who finally retains in the dunes has no certificates of his relationship with the woman, villagers and the work of shoveling sand, but those nexuses gradually become something that he could not abandon in the bottom of his heart.
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