Black mirror season 3 episode 2, shows horror surrealist imagery getting more disturbing as the episode progresses.

‘Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ – 2004, Michel Gondfry.

2001: A Space Odyssey – 1968, Stanley Kubrick.

Love death and robots Art of Love (2020)

Black Mirror Bandersnatch

Task 3

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind ( Michel Gondry, 2004)

Sorry to Bother You (2018) – Directed by Boots Riley

The Neon Demon (2016) – Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

Un Chien Andalou

Synopsis

Luis Buñuel‘s legendary first film, Un Chien Andalou written with Salvador Dalí, created a scandal at its premiere and its startling eye-slicing opening sequence has continued to shock viewers ever since. Despite Buñuel and Dalí’s energetic rejections of any rational meaning in the film, Un Chien Andalou is an exploration of desire and the obstacles in the path of instinctual passion, equally indebted to Surrealism and Freud.

Context

The years between 1900 and 1945 were very difficult for humanity. In this period, not only were there two world wars to survive but also, some of the worst parts of the social, economic, and environmental challenges of sustainable development all began to make themselves felt. The idea of ‘development’, especially for the developing world, also evolved in this period. 

The most famous of images from Un Chien Andalou, Buñuel’s slicing the Woman’s eyeball in the first scene can be understood as a symbol of spectatorship, and its close association (from Buñuel’s perspective) with violence.

Ants symbolize death, decay, and the potential for destruction. Dalí repeatedly used ants in his work after seeing them eat the remains of small animals when he was young. Ants also symbolize a collective, a team working together.

This could symbolise Dali’s perspective on the exploitation of workers at the time, and where the ants crawl out and rebel, the idea of rebellion against the upper class or the controllers.

The rotting Donkeys in this scene is a reference to the popular children’s novel ‘Platero y yo’ by Juan Ramón Jiménez, which Buñuel and Dalí hated.

After the war, artists had a newfound sense of freedom in their expression of Art, the artists were now responding to Froyd’s concepts and ideas. The theme of rebellion in surrealism art is evident as young men in the early 20th century were stripped of any freedom or choice as they had no choice but to fight and be in enlisted in war.

Spawned from the brutality of the first world war, Surrealism as an artform displayed the hysteria of imagery young men had to endure in the horrific conditions of trench warfare. Shattering conventional ideas about the world, Artists such as Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel challenged the traditional norms of art, which up until the first world war was mainly based on making art pieces reflective of the worlds reality’s. Instead these artists strived to show the realm of the unconscious, the dreamlike state off mind and fantasy’s that wasn’t represented in art.

By the Second World War, many surrealist artists, threatened by the highly conservative third Reich, fled Europe for survival. Through this, the movement began to spread to places such as the United States, were western artists such as Jackson pollock were made and created new ideas of surrealism as a global art movement.

i would give the film an 8/10. I though the film was extremely odd and freaky. some scene i just did not expect and it just kept getting crazier and more wild as it went on. However i kind if liked the feeling of not knowing what to expect as it felt like every scene was something new.

My memorable scene would be this scene as whereas most of the film is more gory and disturbing i found this scene more slapstick and comedic which i though was a good little change

Score: 5/10

I think the most memorable scene was the scene where the aggressive man was held back by the two pianos, in which two decaying donkeys were placed on.

This is down to the absurdity and shock value of the scene, where this is left complete unexplained and random.

I’d give this a 7/10

I enjoyed the creativity and multitude of absurd scenes that linked together through this one woman. However I feel like it was trying to tell a story which made me want to understand what was happening, e.g the passing of time, and this left me more confused, and slightly frustrated at times, however as a whole it was enjoyable.

A scene that stood out for me was the man pulling the men + piano + cows. Despite the disturbing imagery, it was quite humorous to see just how much this one man was pulling.