Educational Media Reviews Online

This film addresses the life and work of famed surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Featuring some never-before-seen archival footage, it emphasizes the domestic Dali, his youth and primarily adulthood. We experience the forming of his key relationship with muse and partner Gala Dali. At best, this is an infectious survey of how the fury of doing his work is central to Dali’s artistic output. Treatment of the major periods in his life here can be uneven, and the narration in a few spots gives us unnecessary repetition. While not debilitating to an otherwise informative introduction, the film’s scope also sometimes leaves us wanting more. We wonder what else resides in the troubled relationship between Dali and his father, or the rift with a sister who attacks the surrealist movement in her own published writing. The loss of a brother is treated quite late in the film yet is vital to themes within Dali’s life and his views on spirituality and mortality. Dali comments on that loss in his family, saying, “I was forced to play the role of genius.” There can be an incongruent aesthetic tone between the sober museum curatorial filter that the filmmaker uses as a narrative spine, and by contrast, a confrontational couple at its center, who turn their backs on the privileges of bourgeoise life to get closer to communities of fishermen and shatter complacencies in the art world.

The film presents Dali as a laborer, but also his joyful interaction within realms of the famous and wealthy, including hob nobs with Hollywood celebrities and internationally known filmmakers like Visconti and Hitchcock. This documentary is too a fascinating glimpse of Dali as the driving architect behind spaces in Catalonia he and Gala call home. Within his creative work, we traverse Dali’s embrace of the degradations life presents, reflections of those themes within his paintings and other designs, and the unquestionable role of inspiring women without whom it is doubtful Dali’s efforts would have broken through to a wider world. This is a documentary more about the man than his manifestations on canvas. And about those places where art is born. The film is a solid companion for those engaged in deeper critical study of particular art works made by Dali, or useful as a general survey for the uninitiated. With surrealism as a response to paranoia, and perhaps even a reflection on death-wish inclinations inherent in humankind, this documentary is recommended and succeeds in its celebration of a central figure in the surrealist art movement. It works as a relatable dirge on how creativity often is a commentary on endings.

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