Luis Bunuel

Last night I watched Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie from 1972. I had seen it many years ago and remember I enjoyed it very much. Last night I remembered why. Bunuel brilliantly deconstructs bourgeois pretensions using metaphorical and ironic imagery that render this a brilliant surrealist film and a powerful political commentary. Today it is as relevant as it must have been in 1972. The police, the church, state and corporate power are dissected with poetic metaphors which leaves them bare, devoid of power and venerable to critique. The Bishop who becomes a gardener to a corrupt drug dealer, the ambassador who believes his own national propaganda and is stalked by the beautiful terrorist with fluffy toys, the police who torture people by shutting them in piano's full of cockroaches, the dinner party that never happens but is always about to, the group from dinner party walking down the rural highway never arriving. Dreams, audio over dialogue (planes taking off, traffic, typewriters), food, clothing, time, drugs, death, cars, and dinners are layered in a complex kaleidoscope the both pulls apart rationalist constructions of time and the evil emptiness at the heart of the bourgeois condition.


'Cinéastes de notre temps' (April 4, 1964). Focuses on Luis Buñuel, surrealist filmmaker, his exile and his early career.