This blog post examines how Surrealism and avant-garde art deconstructed existing aesthetics and revealed the essence of human desire.

Surrealism

Surrealism is a literary and artistic movement that sought innovative expression irrespective of existing aesthetic standards by surfacing the irrational realm of perception and the subconscious, opposing rationalism and naturalism. This overarching concept is termed ‘avant-garde art,’ referring to revolutionary artistic movements aimed at transforming established artistic concepts. Today, as specific schools or criteria have become ambiguous, it is also used as a general term for cutting-edge artistic trends. Subsequently, Surrealism and Abstract Art formed the two major currents of avant-garde art.
Luis Buñuel is said to have made films by focusing all his energy on how images came to him, based on unconscious associations drawn from his own memories. When viewing his work, one must remember not to try to understand the narrative, but rather to accept the feelings evoked by the images without prejudice.

The Ambiguous Object of Desire

This film features a middle-aged man named Mathieu. Like other middle-aged characters in Buñuel’s films, he is drawn to the beautiful Conchita, a socially vulnerable woman. However, Conchita rejects him, exposing the flawed perception of an authoritarian man who misunderstands and disregards the essence of womanhood. This film goes beyond an attempt to reflect on male desire for women, revealing the layers of meaning inherent in female desire itself. Mathieu’s persistence, refusing to give up despite being rejected, evokes the feminine masochism discussed in Freud’s ‘The Economic Problem of Masochism’. He displays a desire to place himself in the passive position of a woman. Furthermore, Conchita’s attitude, which constantly mocks him, contains sadistic elements. To say that all she wanted was simply freedom is inevitably one-sided.
There is a symbolic scene hinting at how the writhing desires of these two characters will unfold. Towards the film’s end, they witness a woman sewing a hole in a bloodstained gown. They confront a primal fear of deficiency, deeply buried within. Thus, their attempts to satisfy their desires can only be imperfect sutures, like sewing a hole, forever imprinting deficiency and absence. Unlike most commercial and classical directors who sought to manipulate audience consciousness by reinforcing the misrecognition that makes fiction appear real, Buñuel, as seen in this film, aimed to strip the illusion bare and expose it, thereby pulling the audience out of their state of misrecognition.

Mulholland Drive

Typically, when discussing a film, we recount its overall plot. A film’s story progresses through cause and effect, with events connected, allowing us to follow the narrative and feel we understand the film to some degree. However, in Mulholland Drive, there is no causal relationship between events, and the characters’ personalities are multifaceted.
The main characters Betty, Rita, Camilla, and Diane are all played by the same actress. Some call this film a satire of the Hollywood system, while others describe it as a work that dissolves the boundary between dream and reality. Like a Möbius strip, the interconnected events do not permit a single, consistent interpretation. The director says, “Don’t try to understand my film; feel it with your body,” but this is by no means easy. Up until now, when watching films, we have been conditioned to first understand and only then hold onto the feeling.
Let’s focus on the blue box, an important motif in this film. Early in the film, Rita carries a blue key in her bag. Then, midway through, blue boxes are found in Betty’s apartment and Diane’s house. The moment they open that blue box, the characters transform into completely different people. What does the blue box in the film signify? Like Pandora’s box, the moment it’s opened, everything changes. I believe this box shares the same context as Pandora’s box. The moment Pandora opened her box, all the evils of the world trapped inside were released. Similarly, the moment the box is opened, the characters transform into beings filled with twisted desires. Was the key to the blue box ultimately the key to unlocking evil desires? Interpreting the time before opening the box as a dream and the time after as reality is meaningless. The boundary between dream and reality is ambiguous anyway. As seen in the film’s opening scene, dreams manifest as reality; it’s impossible to know whether the dream I had was truly a dream, or if I’m mistaking the reality I’m currently dreaming as the real world.

The Two Women in the Film

The two Conchitas appearing as the ambiguous objects of desire are how Mathieu perceives her. Mathieu, seeing one Conchita as two, does not love her; he desires an absent, imagined being. He views Conchita as the absent woman in his fantasy, possessing both rational and sensual aspects. To borrow Lacan’s expression, desire arises from lack. Desire emerges precisely because fulfillment is impossible. To fill this lack, a fantasy structure is created by identifying oneself with the object that provokes desire. For Mathieu, who cannot possess Conchita, she becomes the object of desire. He falls into the fantasy of creating two Conchitas through an imaginary union with her. Conchita is the object of desire, and this fantasy remains unrealized. As Mathieu himself says, if he were to possess everything Conchita desires, he would cease to love her; without lack, desire vanishes. When desire vanishes, the fantasy becomes unnecessary. Thus, Conchita, the symbol of lack, remains split into two until the end, and Mathieu cannot escape the structure of the fantasy.

Conclusion

Mulholland Drive, where two actresses portray one ambiguous object of desire and two women each play two distinct characters, freely traverses reality and fantasy. The former deals with human desire, while the latter, through the actresses, collapses the boundaries between reality, illusion, and dreams, questioning whether what we see is the true reality. Surrealist films commonly challenge the reality we perceive, shatter it, unsettle the audience, and sometimes provoke indignation. They also shake the audience’s sensibilities and way of thinking, compelling them to view reality through a new lens.