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Luis Bunuel, even in his narrative features like Belle de Jour, preferred to view things through a dream-like prism. Think of how much of Belle de Jour’s narrative is occupied within the interior fantasy life and memories of its main character. Numerous things happen with no true “logic” to dictate them, and this is a thread that can be followed back to his first work Un Chien Andalou.
Beginning with the title, An Andalusian Dog in English, nothing much makes literal sense or has a grand meaning. There’s a thin plot which sees two people fight, reconnect, engage in various violent or sexual encounters and then it ends close to where it began. But this synopsis doesn’t capture the strange, nightmarish, beautiful and hallucinatory nature of viewing and experiencing these fifteen minutes.
Concerned more with free association than anything else, the dream logic of Un Chien conjures up some indelible images. Of course everyone knows that opening scene where a cloud cutting across the moon is paralleled by a man using a razor to slice open a woman’s eye, but what about the reoccurring image of a man’s hand with a hole in it and ants emerging from it? It’s a neat trick that left me wondering how they did that exactly. The same could be said for the part where a man removes his own mouth with a quick gesture.
It’s not hard to see why this was considered transgressive and shocking in 1929, but time has dulled some of the squirm-worthy luster of it. What time has not dulled is the never-ending sense of originality and creativity, no matter how outré the images get, no matter how loaded they become with religious, sexual or violent imagery, they are marvelous to behold. They may no longer shock as much as they used to, but these images can still produce awe in the viewer.
Un Chien Andalou may be easy for no-movie-fanatics to dismiss as artsy/surrealist nothing since it doesn’t conform to our notions and learned behavior to examine a story, a painting, a film for lessons and story to be excavated. It laughs at those notions. It may not have a “purpose” or a “point” to make, but that is what makes it so great. It is pure invention made by two radical youths – Bunuel and Salvador Dali – in the prime of youth and artistic ego. It’s maddening and mocks our tendencies in how we evaluate art, but greatness comes in many forms and sometimes what’s great about a work is that is pure anarchy, it means nothing and yet still feels alive after 84 years.
