NEO-NOIR’S NEW SURREALISM: SPLINTERED VISIONS AND DOUBLE IMAGES IN NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021) AND DECISION TO LEAVE (2022)

Abstract

This paper examines two films: Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley (2021) and Park Chan-Wook’s Decision to Leave (2022), and will make the case that both films offer unique reworkings of classic noir’s surrealist aesthetics, enabling them to retain their defamiliarizing powers even to spectators seasoned in the noir genre. Unlike classic noir, where these elements often take the form of a single, phantasmagoric sequence, the surreal elements in del Toro and Park’s films are diffused throughout their narratives. Embedded beneath their realist exteriors of verisimilitude and diegetic immersion is a tendency towards the self-reflexive and metatextual. As such, much of the surrealism of both films predicates itself on an uncanny degree of self-awareness: while we attempt to read its bizarre symbolism, it is as though the film absurdly reads us, literalizing our mental processes and offering us clues to read itself. Thus, both films advocate for a specific way of seeing which I will explore in their respective chapters. Two recurrent concepts are present in both films: splintered vision and the double image, which absurdly bears a metaphorical and literal dimension in the films’ narratives. Their origins can be traced to the quintessential Surrealist icons by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, whose discourses and creative work I will use as a foundation to unravel both film’s visual enigmas. Ultimately, this paper will demonstrate how del Toro and Park’s contemporary rendition of surrealism in noir generates a new consciousness in spectators when processing film.