The Second Chapter-- Surrealism

I'm pretty psyched about this blog of mine, so I think I'm going to do another post...
Let's start with a little recommendation/a bit about me, if you know me well, you know that I carry around a bag with a few of my art supplies and writing notebooks, I also generally have a few movies on me (for when life can't wait eh? *wink wink nudge nudge*)... but I think these movies deserve a viewing so I'll tell you what I have on me now.  First off, two movies I mentioned in my last post, Black Swan and The Big Lebowski, two amazing (and very different) movies, and then I have Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Synecdoche, New York.  All four movies are amazing, two are twisted dramas and the other two are comedy... but I would recommend any and all of them (and may touch on them later).


That's all besides the point though...


Let's start this off with a director... who is that director you ask? David Lynch is that director... I haven't seen too many Lynch films but my interest in him has been heightened by my gorgeous girlfriend Samantha who seems to also be intrigued by his work.  I bought a copy of Eraserhead for her a while back and I must say that it is a very... unique debut.


For those of you who have not seen Eraserhead... well, prepare yourself for one of the strangest films you MAY encounter.  It's done completely in black and white (as all great film school debuts should be, am I right?) and had a budget of $10000.  The film includes such hard hitting topics as, a person's head falling off and his brain used as erasers, a women in a radiators singing, mutant babies, white noise, old men pulling levers in the Moon, and mini chickens leaking black fluid... and that's only the half of it.  This is the movie that started our interest in Lynch (however it's not the first Lynch movie I've seen).


Here's the IMDB synopsis... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/plotsummary


My first Lynch film (because I know you were all asking when you read that) was Blue Velvet, which, in my personal opinion is a very fucked up film... what could you expect from it?  a disembodied ear, Dennis Hopper inhaling gas and screaming into a woman's vagina, fellatio at knifepoint, drugs, an androgynous man singing the song "Blue Velvet" and voyeurism.  This movie actually disturbed me slightly when I first saw it and made me question whether I wanted to watch Lynch (until I eventually saw Eraserhead). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/plotsummary


I'm a fan of surrealism (sorry to those of you who aren't), it may be pretentious and far reaching at times but it's intriguing and generally artistic (at times too artistic).  The problem with surrealism is the occasional forfeit of plot... Many surreal paintings and films deal with dream imagery, and if there's one thing about dream imagery it's the fact that it's often changing, non-linear and confusing with little explanation (and films that include this, like Lynch's Mulholland Drive, use non-linear, confusing and only slightly connecting dream logic), it makes the movies ever changing, interesting and great for people with A.D.D. and a twisted mind... but hard to follow at times.
(Plot summary of Mulholland Drive for good measure...  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924/synopsis)


If you don't know much about surrealism, it's a artistic and cultural movement that started in the 1920s, evolving from Dadaism (which actually influenced many other major art and cultural movements).  Not many films were made during the 1920s surrealist movement, however, the few films that were made were fairly influential... one of these was Un chien andalou, (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/plotsummary) which is a 16 minute short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.  This film includes many odd happenings and actually does some surprising (or I suppose they're not surprising since it IS surrealism) things for the 20s, such as show nudity and a man groping a woman and chasing her with the intention of rape.  Luis Bañuel went on to create other influential surreal films and Dalí, as you probably know, was a very influential surrealist painter.


Well, I'm going to wrap this one up for now, I may come back with more on surrealism at a later date (hopefully I'll know more about it by then), but there are two surrealist directors to get you started, one old, one newer...  Also to help you out I'll post the filmography of both!


Louis Bañuel:


Un chien andalou (1929)
L'Age d'Or (1930)
Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (1933)
Gran Casino (1947)
El Gran Calavera (1949)
Los olvidados (1950)
Susana (1951)
La hija del engaño (1951)
Subida al cielo (1952)
Una mujer sin amor (1952)
El bruto (1953)
Él (1953)
La ilusión viaja en tranvia (1954)
Abismos de pasión (1954)
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1954)
Ensayo de un crimen (1955)
El rio y la muerte (1955)
Cela s'appelle l'aurore (1956)
La mort en ce jardin (1956)
Nazarin (1959)
La fièvre monte à El Pao (1959)
The Young One (1960)
Viridiana (1961)
El ángel exterminador (1962)
Le journal d'une femme de chambre (1964)
Simón del desierto (1965)
Belle de jour (1967)
La Voie Lactée (1969)
Tristana (1970)
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)
Le fantôme de la liberté (1974)
Cet obscur objet du désir (1977)


PHEW! now that THAT'S over...


David Lynch:


Eraserhead (1977)
The Elephant Man (1980)
Dune (1984)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Wild at Heart (1990)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Lost Highway (1997)
The Straight Story (1999)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Inand Empire (2006)


Lynch also has a ton of short films, a few music videos, a few TV shows and some online series' and has worked with Sparklehorse and Dangermouse on the album Dark Night of the Soul and even has his own album called BlueBob.


Also, I'm not going to delve into it yet, but I feel like it'd be wrong not to at least mention a certain director in a surreal post... I'll most likely discuss him later... Federico Fellini, who combined fantasy and modern real images and what is considered "baroque"


ANYWAY... that's all I have for you now, sorry for being so short but if you want more film bloggage check out this self proclaimed "movie douche"... http://musingsofamoviedouche.blogspot.com/
especially if you want some of that fringe horror shit!


See you later