“About Surreal-ity”

Synopsis A young journalist’s assignment to interview Salvador Dalí is a great opportunity – if only he would agree to sit still and answer a single question. As the interview is delayed, detoured, disrupted, and deranged by Dalí’s inexhaustible self-regard, the journalist finds herself becoming the subject in this surrealistic comedy.

SUR-REALITY: A Brief Comment, based on this month’s film, “Daaaaali!”
Mountain Shadow Director, John Bennison

I try to live in the real world as much as possible; at least what I perceive to be real in the face of the excessive proliferation these days of fabrications, distortions and misperceptions of reality. That’s why I was amused by a sculpture I came upon the other day during a group cycling trip through a park in Moraga, “The Fisherman.” It appeared to me to be totally Dali-esque in its portrayal of our everyday world, turned upside down; prompting a little reconsideration.

It’s also the reason I invite our audience to take a brief journey into what this film director refers to as Salvador Dali’s “cosmic conscientiouness;” and allow this sometimes-confounding film to playfully stir some of your assumptions and presumptions. In the Q&A with the filmmaker (below) Dupieux insists his film is not a surrealist story about a prominent figure of a by-gone epoch of the art world known as the surrealists. But, you be the judge.

Over the year’s, Mountain Shadow has brought our audiences a number of films that present the story of some well-known visual artists. There is little display of the artist’s works in this film, but rather the story of a unique figure that shares many of the common traits we all share; for example, keeping one’s ego in check, in the face of our own mortality. jb

Excerpts from an Interview with director Quentin Dupieux

Q: This new film appears to be a Dalí biopic. Was that the initial plan?

A: No, obviously not! And that’s the whole subject of the film: The impossibility of telling Dalí’s story. I don’t mean this in an abstract or poetic way. It’s definitely not Dalí’s life. We follow this journalist who wants to interview him and then make a film about him. But at every encounter, every attempt to get the master to talk, he escapes and so does the film. It’s an infinite loop, a film that feels like an aimless treasure hunt that makes you dizzy. ... That’s the film’s tribute to Dalí. A non-film about Dalí for a guy who would never have wanted to be put in a box. To do that, you’d have to look into the cosmos, as he did, and venture not far from madness. A mad film for a genius.

Q: The film opens with a shot that reproduces one of his paintings, “Necrophilic Fountain”. Why?

A: Opening the film with this painting is a way to warn viewers: “we’re entering a world where pianos are infinite fountains …” It’s also a way of playing on the distance between painting and cinema. You can hear the water flowing, watch the movement, whereas painting freezes everything. For me, it’s a way of telling viewers to get on board. From here, you’re in for a ride. A Dalí roller coaster.

Q: What does he represent to you? Why dedicate a film to Dalí?

A: It’s several things. I have the feeling that Dalí is a utopia that has disappeared; both as a man and as an artist. When I think of him, I see a world where art is at the center. They’re not afraid to be provocative, absurd, even embarrassing. Dalí would sometimes say something completely stupid, and we’d just shrug and move on. I show this in the film. But art has disappeared from our daily lives. These crazy artists used to be everywhere. And Dalí is the subconscious empowered. He was one of the first artists to promote his freedom as an art form.

Q: You invent a purely visual form of comedy, with framing gags, editing breaks, repetition and echo effects. It’s as if the form takes control...

A: The film is a tribute to Dalí. But also anachronistically, it’s a tribute to the cinema of the Monty Pythons. There’s a freedom in their films that has always delighted me. It’s comedy that’s at once demanding and completely idiotic. There’s a search for a new language, a taste for provocation, but also a kind of tenderness and humanity that moves me. He’s haunted by the fear of death. A lost, worried Dalí, who no longer knows whether he’s in the past or the present.

Q: Would you call this a surrealist film?

A: Absolutely not! It’s a word that no longer means anything. Surrealism meant something back in Dalí’s day. It was a battle, a desire to change the world, a way of looking at it differently. Today, everything is surrealistic in people’s mouths. As soon as they don’t understand something, they use that word. Or worse, “absurd”. This film is a game, an experiment, an attempt to make cinema differently. It’s a way of summoning up the spirit of Dalí and refusing to take things too seriously.