Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:


Julio: The help becomes
more impertinent each day. 

Great director Luis Bunuel was born on this day in the year 1900. Does anybody else get this film and Bunuel's 1972 film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie mixed up in their heads? Angel is about a group of rich folks who find themselves unable to leave a party, while Bourgeoisie is about a bunch of rich folks who can't seem to get the party started. 

I suppose somebody's (probably a lot of somebodies) written a thesis about his different intents with these decade-spread flicks but not having actually watched either of these movies in several years I am not the person to do that right this second. But if anybody has any thoughts about them, feel free to share in the comments! I went through a big Bunuel phase, watching everything I could, but it was awhile back - somebody here in NYC needs to do a screening series.

1 comment:

Carlos said...

Well, I´m not a big Buñuel fan, but I can tell you there´s something very Spanish in all of his movies, even when he worked abroad. And that "something" is not easily translatable or explainable. El Angel featured a lot of winks to the political situation in Spain , it´s very obvious, but The Discreet is a more surrealist affair, less political IMO. One could say it was his version or interpretation of what a comedy was. But he always operated under the Surrealist rules and he used contradiction as a tool to express his ideas. Contradiction is one of the most prominent aspects of Spain´s culture: he said the Virgin Mary appeared in his room when he was a child but one of his most famous quotes was "Thank God I´m an atheist". Surrealism was about was laying behind our conscience and that is something we can´t understand. Greetings.