What's the most surreal moviein your experience?

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thing that gave you the level of kafka nightmarish dream...
And to what director depicted surealism the best?



Mulholland Drive is almost certainly the most surreal I've seen in the cinema. I wandered around the city for the next hour feeling vaguely discombobulated...



Eraserhead made spend quite a lot of time wondering over what the film actually meant

For directors that best depict surrealism, the only correct answer is David Lynch
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Originally Posted by Iroquois
To be fair, you have to have a fairly high IQ to understand MovieForums.com.



You can't win an argument just by being right!
Hannibal (tv not movie) for me, followed by El Laberinto del Fauno



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
It's abstract. Not surreal.
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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.



This might just do nobody any good.
Deeper cut:



Dislocating film, in my experience. Chilling too. Might be my favorite horror from the 10s.



Fully agree with Eraserhead as many have already noted. But also:

Jan Švankmajer's Alice (although I guess technically almost any version of Alice in Wonderland could be considered surreal as a rule, but this one takes the cake)
El Topo (as well as Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre)
House
Black Moon



Eraserhead made spend quite a lot of time wondering over what the film actually meant

For directors that best depict surrealism, the only correct answer is David Lynch
Nah Luis Buńuel, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Wojciech Has, and Andrzej Żuławski do surrealism better. Lynch's best was Elephant man and thats not surreal.



thing that gave you the level of kafka nightmarish dream...
And to what director depicted surealism the best?
The film that's coming to mind particularly is the Quay Brothers' The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.

David Lynch is great though.



Actually im never sure when people ask this are they refering specifically to films haveing a surreal atmosphere or does it have to be abstract?



I think this wonderful cheesefest deserves to be mentioned:

The Boxer's Omen / Mo. Sort of a campy Jodorowsky wannabe.

... and they may not have the best overall output, but I love the Quay's style of surreal. I'm a huge Svankmajer fanboy, but his flicks don't capture the odd beauty that the Quay's do. Jiri Barta is also a MUST for any that like the aforementioned stop-motion surrealists. A few other names are popping into my mind, but I want to stop before I commit myself to an essay.

Maya Deren deserves a big mention too. One of the luminaries for sure.
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“I was cured, all right!”
Lost Highway
This film scared the hell out of me. I couldn't get the film off my head for almost two months, I went back 11 times to quench my will. Mullholand Dr. it's another one. Both are amazing experiences!



mulholland drive for sure the most surreal experience, nothing comes close



I was thrust into a weird place after watching "A Field in England". It was a great experience but totally off the wall.

See also:

Uncle Boonmee
The Mirror
The Zero Theorem
Dead Man
Maelstrom



Fully agree with Eraserhead as many have already noted. But also:

Jan Švankmajer's Alice (although I guess technically almost any version of Alice in Wonderland could be considered surreal as a rule, but this one takes the cake)
El Topo (as well as Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre)
House
Black Moon
Wow. I have seen every movie on your list and I own three of them.

However, for me, it must be "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Tideland". Both of them are insanity on film, but absolutely great.



Vanilla Sky is really underrated in this regard. In starting as a typical romance movie, it is able to more seamlessly introduce the more surreal elements by slowly blurring the line between reality and fantasy. The viewer may first have suspicions and then ignore it, only for it to creep up on them at all once. It sort of comes and goes in waves like an LSD trip.



Taxidermia (2006) really spun me around from beginning to end. It wasn't just what was depicted on the screen, it was how it made me feel while I watched it. Quite indescribable.

Special mention was while I was watching Mama (2013) in the theaters. This wasn't really because the movie was surreal in and of itself, it was actually because there was a family (with children) watching it, and very few others. They were acting very strange the entire time, like standing up and shifting around in the theater. Also, there were odd people coming in and just looking around. To this day, I still feel as if we were being messed with the entire time.

Now, I recognize that it sounds as if I was overreacting a bit. However, my girlfriend at the time was the one that mentioned it before I could, and weird things would seemingly happen during key points in the movie.