I just screened this film tonight.

I've been screening films once a week, free of charge, for the last two years.

A couple of months ago, after a wildly successful screening of Suicide Club, I vowed to show one eastern film a month. Last month I screened Infernal Affairs. Tonight was the night for Sunna No Onna, the Director's Cut.

My venue is a downtown bar with limited capacity, but hey!, there's beer, wine and and I get to DJ after the film until closing time.
Tonight the owners thoroughly astonished me with a brand new digital proyector.
Do you know about how network news, back in the day, were expected to lose money because journalism was considered as an important duty to the community? Goddamn, I felt like Walter Cronkite today, but in a cultural sense, you understand.

Anyway, due to technical problems, as we figured out the focal point and proyection area, etc etc, for this particular device, Sunna No Onna began half an hour later than usual.

About thirty people showed up for the screening. At the end of the film, about twelve people remained, the ones who were mesmerized by it.

SPOILERS AHEAD

When Niki the entomologist escapes the first time, everybody in the audience was still there, but when he's caught in the sand trap and is put back in the sand pit, people began to trickle out.

Here's my reasoning: those who walked out wanted a Hollywood ending, they got a Hollywood ending, but when it turned out to be a false ending, they fled for the *beep* doors. And I'm sure a few of them, several years down the road, if asked, will say they've seen it and truly believe that Niki escaped, as their memory recollects.

What they missed is incalculable: the film goes three layers deeper, the emotional stakes are raised geometrically, and the ending becomes a thing of alien beauty and profound wisdom.

I am in that sand pit. So are you. Have you found the water in your own particular sand pit? Strangely enough, I have, back in 1997. Even as forces outside myself have put me (and you) in a straightjacket of sorts, my life is perfect, because I accept it as it is.

END OF SPOILERS

So what is freedom, anyway? To quote Devo, freedom of choice, or freedom from choice? I've met a few independent wanderers in my time, and they're just as messed up as you and I, maybe more so, definitely not enviable, wrecks with an inability to bond and grow emotional roots, always dreaming about that which they will eventually abandon for further transitory dreams.

Yes, man wandered in the past, and maybe we should do so today, but remember, in the past, man wandered as a group, not alone.
Also yes, in the film, the village members turned out to be superstitious barbarians with sadistic tendencies, but that's just a plot device in the overall philosophical argument Sunna No Onna delivers.

Here's my interpretation of Sunna No Onna: freedom comes from within.