Man Ray & L'Etoile de mer

The first thing that I noticed about this film that relates to surrealism is the blurry aspect of the film which takes away the distinguishing features of the characters as they interact. Another surrealist aspect is the timeline sequence of the film. It cuts from scene to scene using slides in between that say things like, "After all." The non linear progression of the film is surrealist because it defies expectation. Also, the content is highly abstract and it's hard to follow the storyline, if there even is one. At various points we see two figures, underwater creatures and spinning objects. Everything about the content of the film is meant to be unexpected and out of the usual.

 

One line on a transition slide particularly struck me as odd when it said, "Beautiful, beautiful like a flower of glass." I thought that was odd because when I think of flowers, my mind doesn't immediately jump to glass. This an example of how the film defies expectations, in a simple version. The more obvious version is when it jumps around from part to part with no obvious progression. I really am interested in the blurry aspect most, though. It takes away all features that distinguish a person so that they can't be picked apart from anyone else. Therefore, the person could be anyone.