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| UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) | |
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Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement, which was a chaotic expression against
World War I, the bourgeois society, and conservatism.
The followers of the Dada movement found an expression of ideas through the absurd and what did not require analytical thinking.
Surrealism’s foundation rests within Dada, but also psychoanalytical work by Freud and Jung, as surrealism sought through extraordinarily bizarre and far-fetched imaginative artwork to express the visual imagery of the subconscious mind.
Intentionally the artists were creating ideas and notions that had no logical direction.
In a sense, surrealism is a diverging art form, as it does trigger several ideas, yet none
are related to anything. Luis Buñuel directed Un Chien Andalou with the help of Salvador Dali, which presents a number of erratic cerebral impulses with no logical explanation. Each scene and each action have no connection with one another, as all the cinematic moments merely exist in front of the camera that captures the moment. The visuals converge through 24 frames per second that land on the retina, which transmit a number of images to the brain where images diverge. For example, Buñuel's creation presents a notion of observing a bouquet of orchids while the orchids actually are conjoint letters of masculinity, or maybe it was the seashore. In a sense, Buñuel artificially forms cognitive dissonance through pairing up situations and oddities that evoke an internal alarm of something unsound. Buñuel’s 15-minute film opens with the infamous scene where a man sharpens a razor, which the man later uses to cut through a cornea, iris, and pupil as the audience gets to witness an eye’s lens and insides gush through the cut. At the time of the release, Un Chien Andalou was breaking new ground for cinema and art, and still to this day, the eyeball scene evokes disgust and revulsion. Yet, it offers an artistic expression of the political climate of the society in which Buñuel lived. Before the shooting of each scene, Buñuel and Dali agreed on the idea that each scene should not reveal anything in regards to rational thought. In other words, if it made sense it did not belong in the film. This is further evolved as there are dreamlike scenes where a man is pulling two priests that are tied to two pianos that have dead donkeys resting on top of the pianos. Then there is a scene with a hand that has a hole in the middle where ants are crawling out. Dali and Buñuel, two upcoming artists, used their artistic expression to vent their discontent with society in a scandalous ways, which Buñuel mentions in his autobiography. On the eve of the premier Buñuel prepared himself with stones in his hands while anticipating the audience's reaction. Some suggests that Buñuel thought of bringing the stones after having seen Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece Battleship Potemkin. Nonetheless, it offers further expression of Buñuel's discontent with society, which he fought through his surrealistic expression in his film. Un Chien Andalou offers a cinematic experience like no other. The film tears the audience in different directions through every scene. The audience strives to find a reason behind the madness, and it is almost as if the viewer can hear Buñuel’s and Dali’s laughter in a distance while trying to find the non-existing logic. In the many attempts, some proclaim to have found some logic in the film, yet the filmmakers scoff at these attempts. However, art is art, and with art there is an intrinsic need for artistic freedom that desires to express whatever one desires, so maybe the scoffing and laughter is wrong. Maybe one should let the eye of the beholder have the freedom to express their notions of an idea as the idea evolves into another notion. In the end, Buñuel's surreal impression leaves the audience with haunting images, or a lot and nothing, yet it is the viewer who fully, and only, understands what is presented. |
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DIRECTED BY |
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| Luis Buñuel | |
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France |
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| REVIEWED | |
| 3/3/2005 | |
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The Internet Movie Database. |
