The Death of Salvador Dali

This short film is a lot of fun for art nerds like me. If you aren't as familiar with surrealism then you would probably be like 'who the hell are all these people?' So long as you don't take it seriously you will probably enjoy it. Parts of it seem almost like a music video and in the end it doesn't give you much meaning but it is fun to view for 20 minutes.

The actor who plays Salvador Dali does a great job imitating his pompous manic egomania. Dita Von Teese doesn't do as well playing Gala in my opinion. I realize it is a bit unrealistic that everyone speaks English in this film (like I said, don't take it too seriously) but at least the other actors use accents reflecting their characters' nationalities. Dita Von Teese just uses her American accent. Gala Dali was born and raised in Russia in actuality. Anyway, for $2 on Itunes I would say this film is definitely worth it if you are into Dali and surrealism.

This short film, The Death of Salvador Dali, was made not only for admirers of the quintessential surrealist (maybe too for Freud 'fans' if that's not too obtuse a description), but those who are newcomers to the work of Dali or don't know much about the surrealist movement (I have to be reminded who Andre Breton was to my embarrassment) it's still a funny and wonderfully and precisely bizarre little movie. It poses the question: could Freud make Dali go mad, which is what Dali needs as opposed to being "normal" and not producing the same output he usually does? For Dali, life slips in and out of dream as though he were asleep all the time. For Freud, madness can be cured but he's indignant to the suggestion that he can spur on madness if he can also cure it. For everyone else in here... you just have to see it for yourself.

This is funny stuff, and thankfully without much of a message, at all, except maybe to embrace your inner weird. There's also the good narrative tactic by the filmmaker to not make sense of what is real or not, a trademark of the co-author of Un chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or. One moment we think someone's just shown up, the next Dali's on the couch, or again drawing with his left hand, or even... seeing his old buddy Luis Bunuel in a desert? It also concerns itself with death repeatedly, in one of the most uproarious motifs I've seen in a short film in a while, and it never goes too far into being something to take seriously. That said, it's more accessible to admirers or those who know who these people are. The good news is that it's the best antidote for the flawed, barely two-dimensional Little Ashes feature that was just released. Pattinson may have done a decent job, but he's no match for Salvador Benavides.