Review of Pitfall

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.