To tell a story on screen, you create a physical world that serves your purpose. But in Un Chien Andalou, the physical world is thicker, more resistant, more alive (and more dead). Instead of smoothly setting off the characters’ desires and fears, it becomes an opaque field of desire and terror in itself. The events that can happen in such a world are full of passion, comedy, horror; it’s just that they never get resolved and tidied up by narrative explanations. There are people in the film, but it is not “about” them—it is about us, our reactions, our disgust and perversity.
Posted 1654 days ago.
