Woman in the Dunes (1964), PK (2014), Crna macka, beli macor (1998), The Executioner (1963), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), Brazil (1985), Harold and Maude (1971) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Absurdism movies.
Storyline: Jumpei Niki, a Tokyo based entomologist and educator, is in a poor seaside village collecting specimens of sand insects. As it is late in the day and as he has missed the last bus back to the city, some of the local villagers suggest that he spend the night there, they offering to find him a place to stay. That place is the home of a young woman, whose house is located at the bottom of a sand pit accessible only by ladder. He later learns that the woman's husband and child died in a sandstorm, their undiscovered bodies buried somewhere near the house. The next morning as he tries to leave, he finds that the ladder is gone - he realizing that the ladder he climbed down was a rope ladder which is anchored above the pit - meaning that he is trapped with the young woman as the walls of the pit are sand with no grip. He also realizes that this entrapment was the villagers and the young woman's plan for him to stay there permanently to be her helper in the never-ending task of digging out ...
Plot Keywords: existentialism, psychological thriller, surrealism, absurdism, isolation, human nature, survival ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: P. K. is a comedy of ideas about a stranger in the city, who asks questions that no one has asked before. They are innocent, child-like questions, but they bring about catastrophic answers. People who are set in their ways for generations, are forced to reappraise their world when they see it from PK's innocent eyes. In the process PK makes loyal friends and powerful foes. Mends broken lives and angers the establishment. P. K.'s childlike curiosity transforms into a spiritual odyssey for him and millions of others. The film is an ambitious and uniquely original exploration of complex philosophies. It is also a simple and humane tale of love, laughter and letting-go. Finally, it is a moving saga about a friendship between strangers from worlds apart.—Abhijat Joshi
Plot Keywords: science fiction, comedy, drama, social satire, alien, bollywood, human nature exploration ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Matko is a small time hustler, living by the river Danube with his 17 year old son Zare. After a failed business deal he owes money to the much more successful gangster Dadan. Dadan has a sister, Afrodita, that he desperately wants to see get married so they strike a deal: Zare is to marry her. But none of the two care much for an arranged marriage: Zare is in love with Ida, Afrodita is waiting for the man of her dreams.
Plot Keywords: black comedy, crime, romance, drama, absurd, violence, fate ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: An old executioner in early-1960s Spain, who is a very gentle, nice, caring man proud of traditions, is approaching retirement age. As his profession isn't the most popular, he worries about who might take his place. He worries about his daughter too; she seems doomed to spinsterhood because as soon as any prospective groom learns what her father's trade is, he flees in terror. Enter the local undertaker, a handsome young man with exactly the same problem: no girl wants him given his profession. So, you have the woman whom almost nobody would marry and the man whom almost nobody would marry. Obviously, they are meant for each other. But here the old executioner has something to say: He does not object to his daughter marrying the young undertaker; he seems a decent man--but he will only agree to the marriage if the prospective groom agrees to take the executioner's job when he retires. Father tells the worried fellow: "Don't worry, they sentence people, but they pardon them at the last moment!"—Jose Beltran <pepe@prince.pe.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Plot Keywords: black comedy, satire, spanish cinema, social criticism, bureaucracy, moral dilemma, absurdism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In prison awaiting execution the next morning, Louis, the 10th Duke of Chalfont, puts down on paper the events that led him to his current situation. His mother has been banished from her family, the D'Ascoynes, after she married Louis' father, who was considered far beneath her. After her death, the D'Ascoynes refused permission for her to be buried in the family crypt. Louis then plots his revenge, and kills all those ahead of him in the succession until he becomes the Duke. Along the way, he becomes involved with the married Sibelia who, when spurned, makes sure he ends up in prison. The day before his execution, Sibelia recants her testimony, saving him not only from the gallows, but also sets him free. Once outside the prison however, he realizes he's forgotten one little thing.
Plot Keywords: black comedy, crime, revenge, aristocracy, murder, british film, classic ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In the Napoleonic wars, an officer finds an old book that relates his grandfather's story, Alfons van Worden, captain in the Walloon guard. A man of honor and courage, he seeks the shortest route through the Sierra Morena. At an inn, the Venta Quemada, he sups with two Islamic princesses. They call him their cousin and seduce him; he wakes beside corpses under a gallows. He meets a hermit priest and a goatherd; each tells his story; he wakes again by the gallows. He's rescued from the Inquisition, meets a cabalist and hears more stories within stories, usually of love. He returns to Venta Quemada, the women await with astonishing news.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: surrealism, psychological drama, mysticism, black comedy, absurdism, historical setting, dreamlike ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Sam Lowry is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle, Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has fingered him responsible for a rash of terrorist bombings, and both Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger.
Plot Keywords: dystopian, black comedy, science fiction, bureaucracy, surrealism, social satire, absurdist ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Young adult Harold Chasen, solitary and friendless by choice, is obsessed with death, this fascination manifesting itself in he staging his own fake suicides, driving a hearse and attending funerals, even of people he doesn't know, all to the chagrin of his exasperated wealthy mother with who he lives. Mrs. Chasen is determined for Harold to be "normal", including she sending him into therapy to deal with his issues and finding him a girlfriend through a computer dating service. It is at a series of funerals that Harold meets Maude, on the cusp of her eightieth birthday, she who too attends funerals of strangers. Unlike Harold, Maude is obsessed with life - her own life to be more precise - she doing whatever she wants to please herself, damned what others may think or how they may be affected. Since she can't take material possessions with her, she is more interested in experiences, with whatever material possessions she has - often "borrowed" without asking - only to further those ...
Plot Keywords: black comedy, existentialism, meaning of life, rebellion, dark humor, counterculture, coming of age ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful people, each representing a planet in the Solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide's assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.
Plot Keywords: surrealism, religion, symbolism, cult film, psychedelic, mysticism, experimental film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A Madrid housewife (Carmen Maura) tries to retain her sanity in a household full of difficult and odd relatives.
Plot Keywords: black comedy, family drama, social satire, spanish cinema, female protagonist, working class, family conflict ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: With a strange and powerful obsession stemming from a pampered childhood during the tumultuous years of the Mexican Revolution, the affluent bachelor and suave ceramist, Archibaldo de la Cruz, oscillates effortlessly between fantasy and reality, desire and hallucination. Compelled to taste again and again the delicious fruit of depravity that triggers an intense dark satisfaction, Archibaldo won't shy away from using one of his many shave-ready straight razors, bent on going to great lengths to quench his lust. Undoubtedly, death encircles the scheming Archibaldo, and the targets are always innocent women; however, is he truly capable of murder?—Nick Riganas
Plot Keywords: black comedy, psychological thriller, crime, surrealism, murder, fantasy, psychoanalysis ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Neddy Merrill has been away for most of the Summer. He reappears at a friend's pool. As they talk, someone notices that there are pools spanning the entire valley. He decided to jog from pool to pool to swim across the whole valley. As he stops in each pool his interactions tell his life story.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, existential, midlife crisis, suburban life, social satire, identity crisis, american dream ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Three stories, all set in Treviso. Various couple experience adultery at a party, a bank clerk abandons his wife for his mistress and all the men in the end are prosecuted for having intercourse with an underage girl.
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, italian cinema, 1960s, social satire, marriage, sexuality ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1941, New York intellectual playwright Barton Fink comes to Hollywood to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Staying in the eerie Hotel Earle, Barton develops severe writer's block. His neighbor, jovial insurance salesman Charlie Meadows, tries to help, but Barton continues to struggle as a bizarre sequence of events distracts him even further from his task.
Plot Keywords: black comedy, psychological thriller, surrealism, existentialism, absurdism, confined space, mental breakdown ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The second part of Aki Kaurismäki's "Finland" trilogy, the film follows a man who arrives in Helsinki and gets beaten up so severely he develops amnesia. Unable to remember his name or anything from his past life, he cannot get a job or an apartment, so he starts living on the outskirts of the city and slowly starts putting his life back on track.
Plot Keywords: finland, comedy, drama, black humor, social outcast, amnesia, rebirth ...
Movie Details Click Here !