“Un Chien Andalou” may be the most uncomfortable 21 minutes of my life. This Surrealist short film by Luid Buñuel and Salvador Dali refines the term “bizarre.” If you enjoy shocking imagery along the lines of a razor slicing through a woman’s eye, ants crawling out of a person’s hand, and a man pulling two pianos that contain rotting donkey corpses, The Ten Commandments, and two priests, this is a film for you! Otherwise, you might prefer not to see a man attaching a woman’s armpit hair to his face as a mustache. I should also mention that all of these images appear in a non sequitur fashion throughout a nonlinear timeline that makes no sense, all set to a soundtrack of tango music and Wagner. Then there's the fact that the two lead actors committed suicide later in life, including Simone Mareuil who doused herself in gasoline and set herself on fire in public (we aren't talking about the movie anymore, this is real life). Everything surrounding and within this film is bizarre. The “plot” doesn’t make any sense and you have to approach the film as a series of surrealist images. I certainly would use the words "cohesive" or "sensible" to describe it. “Un Chien Andalou” is interesting but it would be hard to call it enjoyable. I understand the historical importance of this film as well its popularity upon release in 1929, but I will stick with George Melies when I want to appreciate early film.
[Pictured: You don't want to see what happens next]
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