Exploring Time, Death, and Identity through Surrealism in Cinema: A Study of Palermo Shooting
Exploring Time, Death, and Identity through Surrealism in Cinema: A Study of Palermo Shooting

Summary/Abstract: Surrealist cinema has historically explored fluid temporality, subconscious imagery, and existential themes, yet the ways this aesthetics reappear in contemporary European cinema remain underexamined. This article investigates Wim Wenders’ Palermo Shooting (2008) as a cinematic text that fuses surrealist visual strategies with existentialist philosophy, particularly in its portrayal of the protagonist’s confrontation with time, mortality, and fragmented identity. The study combines close reading of film sequences, comparative visual analysis of Salvador Dalí’s and M.C. Escher’s artworks, light thematic coding of visual motifs, and philosophical hermeneutics informed by psychoanalytic and existentialist theory. The analysis shows how Wenders employs dreamlike landscapes, distorted reflections, and labyrinthine spaces to depict Finn’s fractured psyche and his struggle with temporality and death. Death is framed both as an external force and an internal psychological presence, echoing Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “Other,” Freud’s theorization of the unconscious, and the existential concerns visible in the works of Ingmar Bergman. By situating Palermo Shooting within the continuum of surrealist cinema, the article demonstrates how Wenders reanimates surrealist aesthetics to articulate contemporary existential concerns, offering a multidisciplinary contribution to film-philosophy, surrealist studies, and the analysis of cinema’s engagement with mortality.

• Details
• Contents