MovieChat Forums > La montaña sagrada (1975) Discussion > Does surrealist cinema really work?

Does surrealist cinema really work?

posted 10 years ago by svenrufus
4 replies | jump to latest

I'm not exactly a passionate surrealist, but I do tend to favour surrealist art in various forms - particularly paintings and sculpture, and to a lesser extent books (although my reading recently is dominated by non fiction for work related reasons). But I've never been able to get my head round surrealism in cinema.

All the surrealist films I've seen have been from around the time I was born (1970) and I'm not informed enough to know if there is anything significant/influential still going on in that respect. All the surrealist films I've seen have left me at best cold, if not frustrated and irritated.

I'm trying to work out why that genre doesn't work for me in cinema, while I'm naturally drawn to it in other media. My best guess at the moment is that technically, cinema at that time (ie 70's) was unable to properly express the vision that the director had due to practical limitations of set production/special effects etc, while in painting/sculpture/writing, there are fewer technical limitations on presenting precisely what the artist intends. Those practical limitations might be the result of lack of funding or lack of technological capacity. The result of the practical limitations is that the final product lacks something that the artist may have intended but given a different set of circumstances in which to work may have come closer to achieving.

I don't think that hypothesis quite covers all my doubts about the genre, but I can't do better. Without wanting to sound dismissive, I'm afraid the surrealist films that I have seen do come across to me as rather incoherent and just a bit self indulgent.

I'd be interested to know if there are any decent more contemporaneous surrealist films to broaden my understanding of the subject. Any recommendations?

[–] antoniojoy 10 years ago

I agree with you, i can enjoy a Dalí painting but two hours of surrealism might be too much for me,i think it´s a genre that you can use, but not abuse in movies. Lynch or Aronofsky do it this way i think.

[–] svenrufus 10 years ago

Interesting that you respond just a day or so after I watched The Tree of Life again, and by reviving this train of thought, I look at Malicks work as one to consider in this vein - and again, find it leaves me wanting something else.

I'm not sure if I would have thought about it in this context without referring back to this thread just now.

Lynch I'd accept, but I'm not so sure about Aronovsky (with the possible exception of Pi I guess). Maybe I'm just not able to see them in the same category as the 70's era surrealists because they don't have the excess that I was complaining about, and can achieve more of their vision through more modern techniques.

[–] musicbymartin 10 years ago

I'm sure I read somewhere that all cinema can be thought of as surrealist, given that none of it is entirely real, and when the rules of cinema are examined closely, they prove to be as illogical and strange as any dream. Most horror and sci fi highlight this.

Anyway, as for surrealism in films, I would look to Bunuel, Cronenberg, Argento, Paradjanov, Swankmajer, Von Trier, some Tarkovsky, Peter Greenaway, Roy Andersson etc etc.

My fave modern examples are "A Field on England", "The Double" and "Berberian Sound Studio" from the UK, "Adaptation" and "Synechdoche" from the US, "Enter the Void" and "Holy Motors" from Europe. I'm not great on Asian cinema, perhaps "Uncle Boonmee".

Dali made the point, though, that true surrealism is truly meaningless and unexplainable. Bunuel's "L'age D'Or" is a relatively pure example of this, but it is rare in cinema - you have to look for weird stuff like "Begotten" or "Anti Clock" or "Wavelength" or Brakhage stuff. Jodorowsky'sfilm, like those listed above, has "an explaination" and so are probably not surrealism in the truest sense. The meaning is hidden, mythic, but not entirely elusive.

[–] njverbos-974-152214 8 years ago

There is no contemporary surrealism. The influence of the movement continues to reverberate and influence many artists (myself included). But true surrealism is confined to the original movement. That movement was very much of its time and tied to (then new) ideas of Freud. At this point, Freud's ideas of subconscious have been built upon and (by many) rejected. Even many of the original surrealists were no longer involved in it within a few years of its coalescence (some were forced out due to not being "true" surrealists).

It's similar to the beat scene in that it was tied to contemporary developments and doesn't translate to a new time/place or a new group of individuals. Many modern works bear the stamp of surrealism's influence (including many of those listed in this thread) but can't be actual surrealism for these reasons.

Any time the action onscreen manifests the inner life of a character, surrealism is being invoked. That is, essentially, the point of surrealism. It has nothing to do with being simply "weird" or "trippy" (although it frequently is both of those things). It is the idea that a person's thoughts and dreams are as real as the physical world surrounding them.