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movielocke wrote:What's the symbolic meaning of the hand coming out of the sand to grab the clothes? It's strikingly surrealist, a bunuel sort of touch...

Just riffing here, but the idea of Japan itself (i.e. the land) directly effacing its inhabitant's identities (since the loss of the clothes is what precipitates their identity crisis) is consistent with Oshima's concerns in this and other films of the period. Identities are also overwritten in outrageously non-realistic or surrealistic ways in Death by Hanging and Diary of a Shinjuku Thief.

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