French's Un Chien Andalou

Based on my prior research, Wikipedia to be specific, Un Chien Andalou is the French term for “An Andalusian Dog.” I don’t know what an Andalusian Dog is. I tried to seek assistance from Google but I didn’t get gratifying answers. All I know is it’s a dog and Andalusia is a place somewhere in the southern region of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. Sounds like a vacation place, eh?

Okay. Back to the film.

This film is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali (remember the artist of the painting Persistence of Memory? Yes, that’s him.) And this film also… uhhmm... Hmm… enough!

I would be very honest with you. I can’t contain it anymore. I cannot write a review for a film that I don’t understand. And I’m telling you right now that this is my first time to watch such surreal-type of movie. And it’s a silent film, so I’m like…what the??? It’s as if I’m watching a film without a plot, chronology, story, moral, structure, or even purpose.

But of course, I would concede as early as now that I may not be explicitly correct with everything that I just mentioned above. I might be wrong or I might be right. That was just my honest opinion. It’s a surrealist film, so I shouldn't be expecting something conventional in sense of speaking, right? But seriously, what would I get out of a film that transition from one scene to another without showing any relevance to one another? The chronological arrangements of the scenes are disjointed, jumping from one scene to another scene. That just didn't make sense to me.

This film is… something!

I am boggled by the fact that a man had to slit a young woman’s eye (and this was shown in a close-up angle) and she didn't have any painful reaction, at all. She looked calm as if nothing happened. That’s just so brain-wracking. And gross. There was also that scene that insects, which looked like ants to me, were emerging from a hole of a man’s palm. That’s nasty. And guess what the ending scene is? A shot of a couple buried in the sand up to their elbows. And that’s out of nowhere. Unbelievable, right? Well, those scenes or cuts might symbolize something, I just don’t know it. And, again, I don’t understand.

Actually, there were lots of scenes in that film that I don’t understand. I've watched a lot of films, well mostly modern ones, specifically Hollywood films, so you may understand where I’m coming from. And I will be a hypocrite if I tell you that I had an analysis of this film or what this scene simply means, for this and that, yadda yadda yadda. No. I’m not gonna do that. You’re not gonna hear that from me.

If there is something I got from this the film, it’s that it made me think. A lot. I was like frowning the whole time analyzing what really happened. Then I realized, maybe they’re just nothing and I’m just over-thinking and over-analyzing. Maybe that’s the point of the film, to rouse the audience’s psychological ability.

So there, that’s it. Sorry, you've got nothing from me this time. :)

Credits: All of the photos used here came from Google.com search engine