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7.6/10
Archivist John
Senior Editor
A definitive 7.6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Un chien andalou remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
So, you’ve heard about Un chien andalou, right? The famous one, the really weird one. Look, if you’re coming to this expecting a story, or characters you can root for, or even just sense… turn back now. Seriously. This 16-minute short is not for you. But if you’re curious about film history, or just want to feel genuinely unsettled and intrigued by something totally out there, then yeah, it’s absolutely worth checking out. It's a foundational text for surrealism, and it’s still kinda shocking even today. If you need things to make sense, you will probably hate it. Like, truly.
Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí basically just threw a bunch of images at the screen and dared you to figure it out. And you won't. I mean, not in any traditional way. It starts off, and you're immediately in this strange, almost dreamlike state. A guy sharpens a razor, looks at the moon, and then… well, let's just say a woman's eye meets a razor blade. 😬 It’s still shocking. Even knowing it's a trick, it makes you flinch. That’s how it opens, setting the stage for everything that follows: unsettling, visceral, and utterly illogical.
From there, things just get stranger. Suddenly, it’s "eight years later." Or "sixteen years later," or something equally random. Time itself seems to be a joke here. We see a man on a bicycle, dressed like a nun. Then he’s in an apartment, and a woman is there. He’s looking at his hand, and there are ants crawling out of a hole in it. 🐜 It's such a specific, disgusting image, and it just… is. No explanation. No build-up. Just ants.
There's this moment where the man is trying to grope the woman, and he pulls these two grand pianos, with two dead donkeys on top of them, and some priests, too. All tied to ropes. It’s heavy, right? He's straining, but the pianos move. It’s such a bizarre, heavy image that feels symbolic but refuses to actually mean anything concrete. It’s like a visual punchline without the joke.
And the cuts! The film jumps from a street scene to a close-up of an armpit, then to a cross-dresser. It’s all so abrupt, so jarring. You can almost feel Buñuel and Dalí laughing, saying "try to connect this." The crowd scenes have this oddly empty feeling, like half the extras wandered off, or maybe they just didn't need many. It’s not about grand scale, it’s about the uncomfortable intimacy of these weird vignettes.
The whole thing feels like a fever dream. A really well-shot fever dream, actually. The black and white cinematography is quite stark and beautiful, despite the grotesque subject matter. It highlights the textures, the shadows, the sheer strangeness of everything. There’s a scene where the man’s mouth disappears, and a patch of hair grows there instead. Just… poof. It’s gross and fascinating.
I found myself just staring, trying to make sense of the nonsensical. Like, why does the bellboy keep showing up? Or the identical men on the beach at the end? They're just… there. And then the final shot, two people buried in sand, being eaten by insects. It's bleak, but also just another image in a string of them. No grand revelation, just a lingering, uncomfortable image to end on.
This isn't a movie you understand. It's a movie you experience. It’s a raw, untamed piece of art that refuses to play by any rules, and honestly, that’s its greatest strength. It’s a short, sharp shock to the system, and it sticks with you. Not because of a plot, but because of those specific, unsettling images that just pop into your head days later. If you want something challenging, something that makes you think about film in a different way, then absolutely, give it a watch. Just don’t expect to sleep soundly afterwards. 🐛
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