Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog)

Film poster

Un Chien Andalou (1929) - Luis Buñuel

A landmark of early cinema, An Andalusian Dog was a surrealist film directed by Luis Bunuel with involvement from Salvador Dali. Although it was only about 15 minutes long, many images from the film still have cultural relevance today and are immediately recognizable. Combining elements of Freudian psychoanalysis and bizarre imagery, the film is an abstract exploration of the director's subconscious. There is no clear plot or message to the film, as it instead focuses on creating a purely visual experience. 

Signs without ideology?

On the surface, the various images in the film seem to be totally meaningless and nonsensical, grouped together at random. However, within the film itself there is a consistent internal logic that governs the events within. While physical space and material reality can bend and be altered without much effort, the internal logic cannot be opposed as easily. Essentially, the only eternal and unifying aspect of the film is that it is pure ideology: the product of the subconscious mind itself. 

The film's opening scene is that of a man sharpening a razor, then cutting open the eye of a sitting woman. This scene thus sets the tone for the rest of the film by demonstrating the truly visceral power of ideology. Ideology can render violence and destruction completely meaningless by simply refusing to acknowledge that it even occurred, as the woman shows no signs of the incident later on in the film and no other references are made to the opening scene. This physicality is reflected throughout the film in the overarching tone of death and decay. 

This foreboding atmosphere is the consistent ideology throughout the film. It mediates the various social relations between all characters: they can only communicate through violence, lust or fear, but nothing more emotionally complex. Like many other films, ideology has an infantilizing effect on its subjects, forcing them to be animalistic and rudimentary in their modes of interaction. The film ends on an ever more somber note, as the only hope for freedom is crushed with the last image of the two lovers buried in sand and frozen like statues. Life itself is thus secondary to the ideological apparatus. Instead of emerging from the material conditions around it, ideology in An Andalusian Dog is truly idealist in nature: it transcends all time and space, godlike in its power over mankind. 

Semiotic entanglement

Semiotics, the philosophical study of signs and symbols, can explain why An Andalusian Dog is so strange for the viewer. When signs become entangled and interlaced in ways foreign to our understanding of them, they thus take on new meanings and we have to cope with the juxtaposition of the two separate and distinct meanings to the same sign. This can be seen with the man in the nun's outfit, as the contextual meaning of the signifier is radically different than the viewer's understanding of it. This is a constant throughout the entirety of the film, demonstrating two possibilities. The first is that all ideologies are internally consistent in their semiotic relationships, but from the outside they are incomprehensible to any other ideology. The second possibility is much more sinister: ideology is essentially parasitic, transforming existing material conditions into semiotic relations that bear no connection to the original and subjugating society to its simulacra.

Conclusion

While the film may be unorthodox in many respects, it is a wholly unique experience that has deeply resonant commentary (intended or not) on the nature of reality, symbols and society. Its dreamlike nature is the result of its surrealist origin and the means by which it challenges the audience is something to be lauded. When viewed as an exploration of a parallel ideology with its own internal logic, the film's meaning becomes much more clear. The ultimate result of the film is an intended confusion, one that forcibly makes the viewer question his or her understanding of the authenticity of their own experiences in the ideology they are immersed in.