Museum of Resistance and Resilience

Annotation

Buñuel and Dalí open the film with a mundane action: sharpening a razor. But, the scene quickly transgresses into something violent and shocking as the razor slices through the woman's eyeball. Viewers are left wondering if that was a dream, a vision, or real life. It all happens so quickly that viewers only have seconds to speculate on the meaning and context. With such little time, viewers are left predominantly with emotions and reactions. This is exactly what surrealist artists desire to provoke in viewers. Buñuel and Dalí's work protests the widely held notion that films must have context, plot, and meaning. Instead, shocking images are sprinkled throughout the film without any climactic build-up or adherence to storyline.

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