Sunday, April 5, 2009

Un chien andalou

One of the more influential films of the early surrealism movement was Un chien andalou produced in 1928 by Spanish writer/directors Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. 16 full minutes of dead and rotting donkies, slit eyeballs, and dream logic may amount to too much for some people to handle, but i think it's amazing by way of grandeur weirdness. Laiden only with one or two Argentinian tangos, silence remains. The only rule of making this film?

"No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted."
, spoken by Buñuel himself. He also stated that "Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." So there you go, art without "meaning". Further proof that not all art has to symbolize something or that the artist is "trying to say something through their art". Take that you "higher level thinkers".