Everything falls apart

Do you even know what surrealism is? I don’t have a clue. All that comes to mind I’ve realized is Salvador Dalí. And the only thing that comes to mind when I think of Dalí is a melting clock. And of course like everyone else I grew up hearing about how Dalí, Lorca, and Buñuel met in Paris during the 20s and began the surrealist movement together.

     Do you even know what surrealism is in cinema? I don’t have a clue. Is David Lynch surreal? What’s the difference between weird and surrealist? In cinema, the surrealist equivalent of a melting clock is the last movie Buñuel made in Mexico.

 

The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Buñuel) is an elegant bourgeois chamber comedy. It’s pivotal in Buñuel’s career in that it concludes his savage animal infatuation brutality Mexican period and introduces the sophisticated, light, airy, mannered, masterworks of his late French films. Aren’t both periods separately and distinctively surrealist? 

     The premise is the genius of The Exterminating Angel and what makes it surrealist. It’s so simple. A group of wealthy dinner guests prepare to depart the home where their gathering took place and are unable to leave, but none of them can understand why not. 

     If you’re curious, the reveal is that LETICIA, “THE VALKYRIE” (Silvia Pinal), near the end of the film arranges everyone in their original positions they were in several days ago before this whole mess started. And if you rewatch it, you can see that 15 minutes into the movie when BLANCA says she’s tired and ready to go home, NÓBILE counteracts her wishes and says something like how can you be tired this is the most pleasant and desirable hour of the night. He violated the code of manners. And the only way to correct this unforgivable offense is to instead agree that yes it is late everyone lets go home. 

     Some of the Buñuel highlights are, for one, when Leticia goes in that closet with all of those fancy expensive looking vases, she’s going in there to take a shit right? And though pretty much most of the movie is how these aristocracy all fall apart, when the doctor says something about how at this point painkillers are as important as food, I mean it’s making fun of how desperate rich people are to use drugs they certainly don’t need. But this also points to in general, just how quick and how drastically they all fall apart. And another funny jab is the way the upper class's view on sexual promiscuity is backwards, as when the other ladies chastise the Valkyrie for being a virgin and perverse for holding onto that object.

     I love the sheep and the black bear spontaneously ascending the grand staircase, and especially the dolly past the entire group reaction shot. Is the closet dripping blood that turns out to be the adultery couple supposed to say something like the link between sex and death? And yes the coda is insanely perfect hilarious Buñuel. A Catholic mass, and the clergy in all of their finery are suddenly unable to leave, as one suggests to the group: should we wait for the faithful to leave first? And cue a flock of sheep to run in to the church from off the street where mass hysteria and some martial law agency fires off a storm of gunfire. Now that’s Buñuel going out with a bang. 

Game preserve

The Young One (1960, Luis Buñuel) is a little different from the Buñuel films that precede it in the sense that it handles social issues in an overt way that builds an increasingly disturbing tension, which results in giving it more of an exploitation feel. And it’s also set in America, specifically the Deep South. 

     The narrative begins in the first act by introducing TRAVER, a black man on the run, and EVIE, “the young one,” he meets along his attempt to escape. She’s an underaged, newly orphaned girl taken in by the game warden MILLER who grooms her to acquiesce to his advances. The second act sees Traver hunted by the racist Miller. The midpoint is the two men having a conversation, in which they learn that they both served in the US army in Italy together during WWII. But they don’t come any closer to resolving their conflict. In act three, around the point we may forget it’s a Buñuel film, the Baptist REVEREND FLEETWOOD pays a call on them and discovers that Evie is being victimized by Miller, along with additionally uncovering Miller’s unlawful plans underway to punish the now revealed to be completely innocent Traver. In the unsettling conclusion, Miller seems to begrudgingly help Traver to freedom as some bargaining tactic to cloak his long-term strategy to let the reverend take Evie, only so he can come back for her and make her his wife. This whole movie feels gross.

     Up until now Buñuel’s greatest strengths have been his subtlety, his use of the language of cinema through subtext, motifs conveying an art that communicates the hidden emotional nuances and moral conflicts embodied by individuals battling with desires, and motives they have trouble identifying. But not this movie. 

     However, there are plenty of attempts by Buñuel wherein he still brings his best efforts at heightening the material through his own cinematic language. I’m just not sure it matters. It’s set on a fictional island like a few other Buñuel films around this time. The island is always a place of despair with Buñuel. And because it’s a game reserve it does tend to feel like a garden of Eden with all its exotic creatures. And maybe I’m reaching, but Evie (Eve?) steps on a tarantula with her heavy boots on that could allude to Eve crushing the serpent under her heel. And yeah Evie and Miller being the only two people on this island. Also, when Traver meets Evie she has an apple, but he is the one who eats it—to show how she lacks any knowledge of the truth of man’s carnal nature? Following soon after, right after she’s taken a shower, there’s this insert of her in a towel adjusting her cleavage that causes Traver to inform her she should be more careful.

     It’s clear from early on that The Young One is no paradise. In this movie, even more disquieting is a scene where Miller dresses Evie up and has her put on a pair of high heels that are way too big for her. His whole thing is thinking if he takes her shopping enough she'll be cool with everything. At the break into act three, we also see a torrential rainstorm around when the reverend shows up, which may indicate some kind of condemnation. And finally, the film is bookended by Traver finding a steel animal trap that foreshadows him walking right into it near the end of the movie. 

     Why have all the Buñuel movies up to this point that depict such lurid, taboo, fetishized areas of man’s questionable morality in relation to his nature been so fun except this one? Is it just me? Like what about that sequence at night where a raccoon in a chicken coop preys on a live chicken, shown in all its gory detail? It starts out cute but turns into something else entirely. Yet as cynical as the movie is, and the way its ending points to the threat of Evie being pursued by Miller, the shot of her right before leaving the island, skipping in her giant high heels gives some hope. Like maybe there is the possibility that there’s enough of her innocence left that she’ll still be able to enjoy what remains of her childhood. 

Barbenheimer

Barbie (2023, Greta Gerwig) is the best film of the year. It’s an astounding work of genius. I didn’t know what to expect going in. The only thing that drew me to it initially was its plastic pink pastel dreamy commitment to an entirely artifice based aesthetic, which I’d only previously encountered in The Cat in the Hat (2003, Bo Welch). (But that time it was a lavender and green palette, and didn’t offer much else beyond that.)

     But it’s foremost a sympathetic and modern approach to gender politics, feminism, and finding one’s self, sense of purpose, and place in life. It’s also fun. And hilarious. Gorgeous. And works as a dazzlingly choreographed musical. Sure, its audience is little girls. Yet it speaks to youth culture in general, in fact ultimately with a Generation X sensibility.

     The midpoint, where BARBIE hopelessly wallows in the defeat of her existential crisis, 7 hours of looking at the pics of all of her friends engagements on Instagram, eating a whole family sized bag of Starburst, and watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice evokes a relatable truth. And America Ferrara’s monologue in the second act is an indelible feminist tract that rallies us to see the truth about the hypocrisies, perceptions, roles, expectations, and hardships placed on women in a way that’s not preachy or accusatory but insightful and progressively empathetic.

     And the ending is powerful. The whole act structure of Barbie is really well done actually. But the conclusion had me, entirely won over by its existential philosophical dialogues. When Barbie says she wants to be the thing that imagines, and not the thing that is imagined, isn’t that straight out of Schopenhauer? His refinement of the Cartesian? The subject that cognizes the object?  And its resolution: she’s the idea not a person—the idea, isn’t that what Plato means by the imperishable forms that, multiplied by way of space and time, are made partially visible in countless individual perishable things? Barbie as Cinema as the thing in itself.

 

Oppenheimer (2023, Christopher Nolan) succeeds in telling a narratively complex story about a complex historical figure. It took me a little while, but my conclusion is that the black and white scenes are from the perspective of STRAUSS (who wants to bet Robert Downey Jr. wins an Oscar for best supporting actor?) and the color stuff is from OPPENHEIMER’S.

     Seeing Barbie with its perfect trad three act structure, then going to Oppenheimer is jarring. Oppenheimer right away reminds you oh yeah no credits, no set up, no inciting incident—this movie doesn’t wait for you to catch up. Oppenheimer jumps around all over its timeline. It's a mosaic of vignettes. And it’s got a relentless energy that’s punctuated with loud explosive sound cues and wall to wall epic score accompaniment. Nolan’s movies sound like if you went to see godheadSilo live. He’s the loudest rock band of cinema. Another funny thing is if you see Barbie first, there’s an attack on the patriarchy and this running joke about how the manliest thing is to ride horses; and Oppenheimer is excessively patriarchal and yeah Oppy rides a horse in many a scene. 

     While the bulk of Oppenheimer feels like litigation, science, politics, and espionage, all told through a bunch of white guys talking, it’s a question of how cinematic are all of these facts? How does it all come together as a movie and does it work? I think so. It’s grand, and it’s grand because it’s about the biggest thing ever to happen in the history of mankind, and happened such a relatively short time ago. And maybe I’m too selfish self-centered for even asking this but all the talk about how the nuclear bomb is the end of the world, am I the only one thinking uhh I’m still here watching this right now so…? 

     I know no one wants spoilers, but worth mentioning the subjective cinematic interludes are truly inspired effective. And yeah the nuclear stuff, but also the sex stuff with Florence Pugh, especially. You know, from the point of view of Oppenheimer’s wife, I won’t say anymore.

Isle of Ojeda

It’s looking more like Buñuel views the world as full of systemic corruption, greed, and hate. And that no one finds happiness with their true love because either they settle for the convenient choice, or it turns out to just be another illusory sexual infatuation. 

     But how often he tests this theory against individuals full of hope, innocence, romance, and ideals. And in the end they come out either stripped of these virtues, and are all the stronger for it; or, they are destroyed. 

 

Fever Mounts at El Pao (1959, Luis Buñuel) is a political allegory set on the fictional island of Ojeda, where there is no escape from. This trap is seen geographically, politically, and embodied narratively/morally through the protagonist VÁSQUEZ who seems to be stuck in more of a circular than linear path. His arc is that he trades his scruples for political leverage, but to what avail?

     Along the way these other characters, INÉZ and GUAL are what really shape this film into more of a Buñuel form. Inéz and Vásquez get into this romantic affair and fall in love. She’s the widow of the former governor of Ojeda, this dude VARGAS, who gets assassinated early on. When Gual steps in as new governor, he thinks she’s easy, yet she doesn’t welcome his advances. So he’s insulted, and that’s what in turn leads to a struggle for sexual power that clearly underlines what’s going on politically.

     After his rejection, there’s this great imagery done with Gual and his pet birds. He starts playing dirty and forces Inéz to strip for him in his office. And as she’s undressed, he summons a clerical orderly type of his to humiliate her, instead of having sex with her. And this whole time he fondles his bird Carlota. Obviously the birds symbolize him needing to possess a delicate object of submission. But nice touch is he asks Inéz to keep her stockings and heels on.

     And there’s this other scene between Inéz and Gual where he’s going to interrogate her, and ready to go so far as to resort to torture techniques. But it takes place in his bedroom, and it’s dark, so he lights candles. There’s also that chair in there with ropes on it. He wants to break her. He wants to dominate her. As he overpowers her, she’s under him on the bed and she plays into it. Later were we to ask if it turned her on or if she was putting on an act, I’m not sure if it’s such a clear answer. Of course I think she has to be, if we look at it as potentially a reflection of her political character. Also after that night they go to a bullfight. A romantic pageant of man and animal engaged in a battle of wits where both get poked, prodded, and mauled, is there a winner?

     The ending with that car racing to beat Inéz’s plane is that perfect blend of location photography and studio effects rear projection along with the fun of cinema Buñuel has mastered at this point. For all of their prowess, cunning and sexual provocations against one another, in the end where does it get them? Did Vásquez ever really love Inéz? With Buñuel, as always, isn’t it the house that always wins?

Humiliation is good for the soul

Trivia question: How many of Buñuel’s films have a Catholic priest character? Answer: all of them.

Nazarin (1959, Luis Buñuel) is an examination of how one is to live a life according to the example set forth by Christ. And what does that even mean? Give up all earthly possessions. Stop caring about money or food. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Go out and speak the gospel to those who care to listen, for starters. Let’s see what that’d be like. 
     No, wait, even better, let’s see what that’d be like if Buñuel applied his style of we all hate each other and brutally hurt each other to this question. The main character in Nazarin is PADRE NAZARIO. And through him, we get a cautionary tale that is both tragic and pervasively hilarious. The film turns out to be all about the weighty consequences of Nazario’s choices. First, he chooses to live a life of poverty, among the poor. So, this places him in a poor neighborhood, boarding in a hostel full of prostitutes, who spit vile insults and fight amongst themselves, everyone around them, and yes even Nazario. He doesn’t last long here.

The rest of the narrative develops this conflict wherein Nazario takes to the road in exile and two women from his old neighborhood follow him, despite his exhaustive pleas for them to allow him to be left alone. BEATRIZ is a suicidal, psychotic woman suffering from epileptic seizures that she believes are caused by her being possessed by demons, and who has sex with men because she secretly wants to use her body as a means to have them desperately need her. And ÁNDARA is a mean, ugly, violent prostitute on the run for murder, whose ignorance conflates superstitions and magic with her religious beliefs. 

     Yeah, so these two women are symptomatic of people who don’t have any faith of their own but like parasites infest this guy who’s trying to find his own personal path to being a good Christian. When they relentlessly demand he perform a miracle to heal Beatriz’s sick niece, Nazario in vain keeps trying to tell them that he’s not a cudandero, and only God can heal. But by dawn the little girl gets better. So now he’s a saint to them.

     Near the end of the film, Beatriz’s mother confronts her with the accusation that she is in love with Nazarin as a man. Obviously the question at stake here is where is Nazario to draw the line if his obligation to Beatriz is to love her as his neighbor what does he do if she's in love with him as a man? Yet, it was Nazario who sought out the poor as his neighbors. This isn’t an easy question. And what about when Nazario intentionally avoids approaching the passengers of the stagecoach? Is that fair?

 

The end of Nazarin has another of these amazing allegorical Buñuel sequences. Nazarin is alone, being transported to prison by a guard in plain clothes, and they stop by this old woman with a cart selling fruit. The guard takes two apples and doesn’t even think to offer one to Nazario means the people of the world are selfish and don’t care about their fellow man.

     Then the woman offers Nazarin a pineapple. And he goes into something like shock. He refuses her. Because he’s used to being a martyr. Except he finally realizes that God is providing him with that pineapple. And by refusing God’s gifts his whole life now he’s going to prison. So he accepts the pineapple, but it’s too late. 

It's a jungle out there

Death in the Garden (1956, Luis Buñuel) is a fun morality tale set in the jungle. The moral is something like when there’s only greed and corruption, nothing really matters and no one has a chance. The film centers on five characters whose paths become aligned, when in the second half they all find themselves in a jungle while trying to escape. 
     The hero though is this character called CHARK. His entrance is really cool. He’s this stranger who comes into town with a donkey and the armed soldiers raise their rifles at him, but he flips them the bird and keeps walking to a well that just happens to be surrounded by a picture perfectly staged assortment of posing beautiful women. The army arrests Chark because he robbed a bank. When they bring CHENCO, an eyewitness to finger him, Chark yells that he’s lying. So, did Chark rob the bank or not? What do you think? I like that it’s unclear. I don’t want to know the answer. Because my take on the moral at play is finally that MARIA, because she cannot hear or speak, kind of represents peasants or like the common people. And ultimately she can’t rely on her father, or the priest, or government, but only this guy who goes off his instincts; and, although he may or may not be a criminal, he’s trying to do what’s right.
     This mixed up coterie is what makes up the dramatic material of Death in the Garden. The bandit and the prostitute turn out to be not all bad. And CASTIN, the kind old father, turns into a complete lunatic. Castin is the familiar Buñuel male who's infatuated with a woman. In the jungle, DJIN, the prosty whom he intended to marry, moves on and so he shoots her in cold blood—not a fantasy sequence this time. And in the climax of the film, Castin also murders FATHER LIZARDI, the Jesuit missionary; and the only reason I’m mentioning it is because there’s this shot that pushes in on the dark cavernous broken half of the fuselage of the wrecked plane as if it’s some cave he’s now hidden from us in. And the cave has this spooky feel of like how in the wild of the jungle he’s regressed to man’s primitive state. Also in the jungle, what’s up with Father Lizardi ripping pages out of his Bible? My guess is he’s using them to wipe his ass? I mean it fits with the way the story’s been heading. 
     There’s a bunch of cool Buñuel imagery too. Slicing the eyeball of the prison guard with that pen. The dying snake being devoured by swarming ants. And late in the film, the moment when Castin finally gives up all hope, there’s this exterior shot of traffic moving by the Arc de Triomphe that freezes to a still we see is now a photo he’s holding. Then he tears it up and throws it into the flames of a campfire.
     The jungle almost feels like this place where people’s true natures are revealed and they're somehow dealt with according to some ancient law. Except then why does the priest die? And what about the fifty casualties of the plane crash? Maybe an undiscerning system where everyone isn’t given a fair trial? And grace shown to only but few?

The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz

Ensayo de un crimen (1955, Luis Buñuel) uses the male ego and its infatuation with women to construct an elaborate system of illusion and confusion. ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ is as mixed up as they said he was. Time has proven so. But to what avail?

     The set-up of the story begins with Archibaldo as a child. He’s a spoiled brat whose governess tells him a tale about a music box that when you play it, has the power to kill whomever you’re thinking about if you wish them dead. He does. And she dies. We get a shot of her body lying on the floor, the frame cutting off her head above the neck—and emphasis on the thigh high stockings she’s wearing. This motif begins to illustrate how mixed up he is into adulthood. His sexual desire for women is linked with the impulse to murder them.

     The film pathologizes infatuation. Archibaldo defines himself as being unable to decide whether he wants to be either a criminal or a saint. And there are other references to this, like when he sees LAVINIA in the nightclub, and the shot of her is framed with flames in the foreground, he says she looks pretty like a witch at the stake or Joan of Arc—a criminal or a saint. This is the foundation of how mixed up he is because of how conflicted he is and confused about his desire for women.

 

The film isn’t meant to be read literally. If Buñuel is expressing through cinema a language of emotions, the urge to kill these women is code for his infatuation over these women. We don’t know what makes up his desire. There’s no inventory to categorize it. But it’s probably something like sexual desire, kink, vanilla, love, beauty, marriage, fear, loyalty, apprehension, jealousy, and paranoia, or something along those lines. 

     And what do we get through the emotional communication if murder is a way to express his conflicted infatuation? By planning the murders, he is willing to give up everything, risk going to prison, and he’s tortured with guilt. When he tries to tell CARLOTA about his drive to murder women (his inner feelings) he can’t. When he turns himself in to the authorities, they don’t believe him and laugh it off. Because this romantic infatuation with women only exists in his head, and he can’t put it into words in any way that anyone would understand and even if he could, they wouldn’t care.

     Because as Buñuel has shown, with infatuation there is no distinction between illusion and delusion. When I first started working on this claim I meant cinematically Buñuel uses illusions to symbolize the delusions his male leads are obsessed with. And one of the best examples in Ensayo de un crimen is Lavinia and the mannequin modeled after her. It’s not difficult to see that the reason the mannequin looks so much liker her in some shots is because it’s the real actress with effects make-up on, holding very still. The mannequin is important because it shows that Archibaldo objectifies women—especially the scene where he kisses the mannequin on the mouth and then kisses the real Lavinia on the mouth. But by using the real actress as mannequin it’s also as if it’s emphasizing the illusion that for us even Lavinia is fake because cinema is itself an illusion. The camera lies 24 times per second. Think about also in the wedding photo, once Carlota is framed by the camera within the frame, ALEJANDRO shoots her. In this film true love is an illusion, a lie.

     At the wedding there’s that conversation among the PRIEST, THE COLONEL, and THE INSPECTOR where they all agree the presentation is all that matters—this blatant hypocrisy. That there isn’t going to be a bride because she gets murdered, or that the bride doesn’t love the groom doesn’t matter, because what’s important for the priest is that the wedding was held in the Catholic church with its pomp like a blanket of poetry. And the other guys cry over the colors of the regiment as to prove their patriotism. The illusion of a wedding as sanctified institution. The illusion of a flag as patriotism. 

 

Oh yeah this film is also really funny. The ending is completely absurdist and seems to mimic commercial roms. Archibaldo sees that huge grasshopper on a tree in the park and wants to squash it with his cane. But Lavinia happens to randomly show up and they leave happily ever after. Because despite all that he’s been through and how mixed up he is, of course he still wants to fall in love. The illusion can exist in the movies. The illusion can exist in real life.

Death

In middle school I used to think gangs were cool. Most of the kids in those gangs were Mexican. I never knew what they did exactly. They had cool names. CCG (Corpus Christi Gangsters), LE (Los Encinos), NSBS (Northside Bomb Squad), Sureños (13), Latin Kings, Piru. They wore Starter jackets with L.A. Raiders, L.A. Kings, or UNLV. Supposedly they fought each other. 

     I also knew some dudes who could defend themselves pretty good who would say gangs are stupid. I guess there’s always been an appeal to (along with an aversion to) prove your manliness through defending the honor of a larger group. From wars to wannabe gangbangers, it’s been a part of our nature. Apart from defending the colors of your nation’s flag or your set, there’s a separate honor that man can fight to uphold: the blood feud.

 

El río y la muerte (1954, Luis Buñuel) is a Western set in Mexico about the historic transition from savage to civilized. But it also deals with codes of masculinity forcefully conditioning a society of men awaiting the inevitable moment when it’s time for them to defend their honor with guns. El río y la muerte pathologizes the blood feud. It’s a tale of violence. Excessive violence. And it’s imagery is simple. A black canoe ferrying a coffin across the river (to the other side) is what this culture is based on. And tradition also dictates that the dead man in that coffin visit the home of his killer. So really what I mean to say is El río y la muerte is about death.

     The tone of the film is stark. Heavy. Foreboding with doom. And the narrative is told through flashback. The village of Santa Viviana is characterized by isolation, tradition, and ignorance. The framing of the plot is set in the present day and centers on the last two surviving descendants of a blood feud that’s over a hundred years old, between the ANGUIANOS and MENCHACAS. The present day stuff is weak. The bulk of the film is the flashback violent Western that follows FELIPE ANGUIANO. And Buñuel manages to pull it off.

     There are a few laughs though. Like okay there are a few scenes of a man backhand slapping another dude in the face. But in an early scene GERARDO ANGUIANO, this educated doctor, is in an iron lung in the hospital, and his blood feud nemesis RÓMULO MENCHACA pays him a visit and as they argue Rómulo backhand slaps Gerardo in the face; even though Gerardo is in an iron lung! Sorry if I think that’s hilarious. But another one that’s kinda silly is there’s a card game, in the flashback Western, and the pacifist CHINELAS fed up bemoans how the only two guys in the village who don’t own a gun are him and the PADRE, but the priest brandishes his pistol and is like what do you mean? No. Of course I have a gun.

 

Thematically El río y la muerte is totally a Buñuel film. If my main idea about Buñuel is how he depicts the way with infatuation there is no distinction between illusion and delusion; then next up I’d add something like as humans we all hate each other and there’s a brutality in us. Yet what Buñuel shows is that this brutality can range from emotional to homicidal. 

     As a Western, El río y la muerte has this unique quality going for it, in that instead of showing law and government as the civilizing agent (i.e. the Hollywood tradition), it places the onus on education. And okay typically I hate when movies have an overt message. And Gerardo has some speeches where he says stuff like the only way to end the cycle of violence is if the gates of education were open to everyone. Please. I don’t see Buñuel as the one who’d be striving to include these kinds of speeches. I’d imagine they were forced upon him. But anyway, I can accept it as showing the movie is trying to be slightly a little more than strictly a genre Western.

     And what matters most to me thematically is how the flashback Western ends. When the wise old TATA NEMESTO dies, Felipe and FILOGONIO actually squash their beef once and for all. They do it for him. And then some bratty little instigator just has to manipulate them through lies to reignite the hostilities. It's the youth that don't want to listen to the aged. That outweighs all the education slogans.

Wuthering Heights

 “For the ungodly have said, reasoning with themselves but not right: The time of our life is short and tedious and in the end of a man there is no remedy, and no man hath been known to have returned from hell or from the other world. For we are born from nothing and after this, we shall be as if we had not been. For the breath of our nostrils is smoke, and speech a spark to move our heart, which being put out, our body shall be ashes and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud and be dispersed as mist, which is driven away by the sun beams, and overpowered with the heat. And our name in time shall be forgotten, and no man shall have any remembrance of our works.”

Where on earth did Abismos de pasión (1954, Luis Buñuel) come from? And why do I feel like it’s the most moving love story I’ve ever seen? Abismos de pasión is about ALEJANDRO and his undying love for CATALINA. But really it’s about how all of us as humans hate each other and hurt one another. It’s about brutality. What else is there to make movies about?

     The backstory is Alejandro grew up with these rich kids Catalina and RICARDO. And this is where Buñuel gets ahold of the social class dimension to the story. Alejandro was treated as a slave growing up. He was an orphan taken in by Ricardo, who made him sleep in the stables and fed him scraps. Yet Alejandro and Catalina fell in love. And then Catalina married Ricardo. Why didn’t she marry Alejandro, if she loved him? Because everyone, including Ricardo’s sister ISABEL and Catalina’s brother EDUARDO, hate Alejandro. So he left.

     But plot twist, and where our story begins, one rainy night Alejandro returns, now rich, intent on taking back his true love Catalina, and desperate to seek revenge against all—including Catalina! Because in Abismos de pasión Alejandro and Catalina love each other so much that they want to die. But they also constantly call each other out for how much pain they cause each other and seem to be in some competition to prove who loves whom more.

 

Cinematically, no joke this is legit a Buñuel masterpiece. From the moment Alejandro arrives, in a rainstorm, and whose passion of course leads him to breaking and entering the house to find Catalina, cue the soundtrack blasting the Liebestod—oh yeah, get ready because on top of a wall to wall emotional underscoring musical track there’s mostly excerpts from Tristan and Isolde throughout. The tone of this thing is over the top melodrama moody pain romantic.

     But the image system is cruelty to animals. Returning to Buñuel’s fondness for entomology, Ricardo is introduced mounting a live butterfly for dissection. (We’ll see later his collection of butterflies, moths, and other insects in framed cases is huge.) And when Isabel walks up and asks him why he would torture them, it’s clear by his reply he doesn’t see it as torture. Throughout the rest of the film, there’s also the old man dropping the live frog into the incense he's burning; the excruciating slaughter of the hog in front of Isabel; and best of all the scene where Eduardo grabs the live moth and throws it onto the web and the spider emerges from its nest to eat it.

     There’s also a subtle thing going on with dead trees. The first shot is a dead tree full of buzzards that scatter at the sound of a GUNSHOT, offscreen fired by Catalina to scare Isabel. (Seriously, this whole movie is about everyone hurting each other out of hate, spite, love, or fun.) When Alejandro first kisses Isabel, it’s in a ditch and there’s a twisting fallen dead tree next to them. At Catalina’s funeral procession there’s a tall dead tree looming in the foreground.

     Also more having to do with a thematic cinematic touch, early on there’s a line of dialogue Catalina says that’s something like: “…because I say the things I feel.” And it hit me this is another instance of what Buñuel does best. It’s also what he does as a surrealist. It’s what cinema should aspire to do: communicate through the language of emotions. Emotions exist outside of cognition. It’s a contradiction of terms. It’s the greatest strength of art and why we need it so much.

 

My main idea about Buñuel is his depiction of something like with infatuation there is no distinction between illusion and delusion. And in the ending of Abismos de pasión I found exactly that. When Alejandro breaks into the crypt, prybar ripping the chains open, and he descends below to open Catalina's coffin, once he reaches towards her body and touches her his hand is full of dirt falling away through his fingers—so much meaning in that image. But as he realizes she’s gone forever and so is the only love he’ll ever know, he turns around and sees her behind him. The ghostly apparition of her, as his bride, calls his name. And as he recognizes all he’s ever wanted more than anything, a jump cut flickers and replaces her with Eduardo aiming a rifle firing a full round into his face. The illusion of true love. The delusion of true love.

 

Thoughts on Books I Finished, June 2023

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Julie Phillips

Dang, what an incredible read. Many years back, somewhere before 2008, I remember finding a hardback copy of the longish short story Houston, Houston, Do You Read by James Tiptree, Jr., at the NE Broadway Goodwill, and having it rewire what I felt about science fiction in general. I picked this biography of that author up a few years ago, and have felt guilty about not reading it every time I looked at it on the shelf. Having now finally read it, I now want everybody to read it, in particular me, years ago.

Among the things I liked most about this book:

• The incredible portrait of a life lived largely through correspondence
• Some of the self-descriptions, which really made me think and feel

There's a few things I find powerful about the idea of spending a lot of time reading and writing (sending and receiving) letters (a major minor interest of mine, particularly in the person of C. Wright Mills). One came to me while I was jogging and listening to Rebecca, around the same time I finished this: think about the endorphin hit simple pleasure of a single like on Twitter, or an interesting reaction on your post to the friend Slack or in your fandom Discord; now imagine the rush of returning home ... to a month's worth of letters.

Another is the perspective Tiptree / Sheldon takes on his / her life. There's an interest in that life, but also an enthusiasm for it, that I found very inspiring—the tone Tiptree / Sheldon takes in describing that life is so unlike the tone I ever take here, or elsewhere, usually, describing my Vim projects, or my running, or my drawing, or whatever... I have a sense that this kind of enthusiasm is something that could be—my first thought was "fabricated", or "manufactured" but why not simply say "created"?

Another interesting aspect of writing a lot of letters that comes out in this book is honesty. Here's a couple quotes that hit me hard on this front:

[328, from "On Reading Other People's Thoughts"], "I am a peculiarly transparent person—perhaps 'flat,' lacking some dimension.
[329], ... I am gloomy—perfectly natural. 'Man is in love and loves what vanishes.' I will die, I age. Unpleasant. Man is a member of a species whose triumph is built on the disappointment of the individual. The individual's doomed drives. WE are not descended from the satisfied. Ergo, I hurt. No mystery.
[329, from a letter to Joanna Russ] It's odd, at my nearly-60 age—I feel everybody else, I mean everybody who counts, has Been Through Experience, has lived, while I have only, what, fumbled through unsuccessful apprenticeship, got ready to begin to start, and stand eagerly upon the brink of figuring out How to Live—just as hook from shadows is snaking out to yank me off scene.
(I also have moments of believing I am transparent, something that did not jell. Everyone else seems to have so much density, self-organization. Personality. If asked who they are, they know. I asked myself that the other day—could I write an autobiography just for my own amusement, Ok, who you? And all that formed in my throat was, uh, well, I guess just the something peering out from this totally random manifestation. Something small peering out. [...])

Clearly I don't compare myself with Sheldon / Tiptree, a genuinely great writer, but still, this book made me look at myself, and the little I do, the little I have done, and it made me feel the lack. I don't labor under ambitions, but I do labor under illusions: that I have something to say; that I should say it. Wonderful book.

trans girl suicide museum, hannah baer

Interesting, occasionally irritating account—part memoir, part polemic, part struggle session, part war story, part theory, part part part etc. etc. etc.—of one woman's living as a very dressed, upper-middle-class, political, ketamine-happy person who's had sex, by the way...

The master

On the surface Robinson Crusoe (1954, Luis Buñuel) is the heroic tale of a castaway surviving being marooned on an island for 28 years. But when have I ever cared about what’s on the surface? Before I get into it though, I will concede this movie is entertaining even if viewed merely as a survival adventure.

     On the macro level, this movie is about imperialism. When FRIDAY speaks in his foreign tongue and with hand gestures points to his heart and mind, this shows CRUSOE’S success in subjugating him. That’s the macro arc. The English hero whose ship encounters a storm as he’s on his way to Africa to buy negro slaves for his fellow planters in Brazil, then becomes governor of a foreign land appears noble here.

     Throughout the movie, when savages shore up on the island, Crusoe’s first instinct is to murder them. And in the third act, when preparing to do so once more, he finds that instead there are now armed white men on the beach—so he reacts with diplomacy.

 

Whereas on the micro, especially the first half of the film, Robinson Crusoe actually is Buñuel material. The standout has got to be the extended dream sequence as vision of Crusoe’s father appearing to him in his quarters. We get the character contextualized through social class when his father describes to the son his middle state between low: misery/labors/hardships; and high, pride/envy/luxury/ambition. So the film is about Crusoe’s trial through experiencing both.

     But this dream sequence also features the same actor playing Crusoe and his father. And as his delirium is induced from dying of thirst (perishing from lack of knowledge?), we get all this surrealist imagery like his father bathing a wild boar, and himself drowning or possibly also a form of baptism/rebirth. The whole first half has a dreamlike quality, then when Crusoe first encounters other humans the second half begins. The fantasy sequence where Crusoe imagines detonating a bomb and we see the explosion with projectile body pieces and limbs of the savages thrust into the air is wild.

     What seems most at stake here is Buñuel’s specialty in depicting not only Crusoe’s increasing suspicions, jealousy, and objectification of Friday, but also his selfish fear of abandonment. Buñuel is a master at illuminating this dark side of a man they’d never allow anyone to see. This is man’s confusion when in pursuit of love, be it romantic or in this case towards that of a friend. In the second half it becomes clear there’s no way you can take anything Crusoe says as noble, and it becomes a matter of how stubbornly his values are based on self-deception and hypocrisy.

     The nature of this dynamic is evident in the scene where Crusoe succumbs to his paranoia that Friday has conceived to betray him. Crusoe goes to retrieve some manacles and chains he recalls originally having obtained with the original intentions of using on some slaves he was going to buy—it even seems as he’s like fondly bemoaning this missed opportunity.This is how man can be betrayed by his heart. When he sees no difference between owning a slave, or a dog, or a friend, what can be done for him?

     I think this film is scary. And again, as so often, Buñuel shows how resonant a line of dialogue can be: that same dream sequence Crusoe’s father’s ominous chagrined lament “God will not fogive you. You will die like a dog,” could be read as a key to the more truthful ending that’s not shown for the hero.

     

Goin' down underground

In real life conspiracy theories have never interested me. I could just never trust the sources. Nor could I ever feel like I could trust any evidence enough to buy it as truthful. I do believe the CIA tested LCD on some people in the 60s and I do believe the US government gave some black dudes syphilis—that’s enough to disturb me enough to not want to know anymore. 

     But in movies it’s different. Still, why am I more likely to engage in a fictional story about white people perpetrating some heinous conspiracy against black people? Well, there’s history for one reason.

 

They Cloned Tyrone (2023, Juel Taylor) is a black conspiracy comedy that feels like when Hollywood makes a genre film that reminds you how fun they're supposed to be. When people talk about a good story, that’s stupid—story could mean so many different things. But I really enjoyed the way the first and second acts of They Cloned Tyrone take on a Nancy Drew format. YO-YO’s even got that full collection of Nancy Drew books and SLICK CHARLES says something like damn how many adventures does this bitch go on? Okay a minor possible gripe though is maybe there’s a little too many pop culture references. The number of them is staggering. But they’re mostly all funny.

     And so the best thing about how They Cloned Tyrone does the conspiracy genre is that it doesn’t have a message; instead, it utilizes its subject matter through its plot. The movie is about the white man doing mind control and experiments only on black people in the hood. And through its tone we get this midpoint where we feel how helpless and defeated FONTAINE is. That lottery ticket he scratches says it all: you lose. Also I don’t think this is giving anything away (the movie is about clones) but early on in that drive-by I couldn’t get over how cinematic the set piece became when they gun him down. The way the camera uses an open frame and we don’t see the other car or the gunman, how suspensefully and scary it is to see the glass shatter and the body stagger, struggling in its final throes of death.

 

The three main cast also do so much for why They Cloned Tyrone works. Because despite what they do for a living and the dirt they do, they’re friends. And they do right by one another. So we got a great Nancy Drew premise, protagonists we love, some sci-fi, but more than all—comedy. When I see new releases in the theater, I’m always asking myself why don’t I ever get to see more comedies?

     I found myself letting myself laugh at some stupid shit. Like when ISSAC pulls that gun on Slick Charles in the hair salon, and he shows the piece but gets tripped up because Slick Charles doesn’t react—then he realizes it’s because he’s still got his smock on from getting a haircut. And as messed up as the mystery gets, it only proves to be that much more conducive to all of the race humor. How many ways does Slick Charles have for describing white skin? And way funny when the trio discover the conspiracy and Slick Charles mentions other cover-ups by the white man like the Berenstein Bears.

     They Cloned Tyrone handles its story elements simple but well. And something that I left the theater with was the disturbing memory of those black dudes down in the lab that were subjects of some experiment that turned them white (but they still had a fro). That’s what sci-fi means to me. Relevant. But not overt. And again of course imaginative.

7/14/2023 Midtown Art Cinema

Atlanta, GA

DCP

The discreet charm of the proletariat

Can La ilusión viaja en tranvía (1954, Luis Buñuel) be read as an allegory of Buñuel’s travels through the film industry? If the streetcar is Buñuel’s art cinema, then it can be seen as having to hijack the tracks so it can travel its route, because the authorities wouldn’t otherwise allow it to do so. And even though this movie is Buñuel lite, it still really works as a comedy.

     Back to the metaphor. Okay so, the first really big laughs for me are when the streetcar stops at the slaughterhouse and the huge crowd of poor passengers board. These are like Buñuel’s people. All of these Mexicans packed in this space, beggars, butchers, and the shit talking, and slabs of meat and pigs heads hanging from hooks along the aisle is Buñuel’s populist cinema, fondly affectionate towards them. The very next stop, when they pick up the two women in black with their religious icon is of course his criticism of Catholics—they’re full of fear, sorrow, and self pity.

     And later on when the streetcar picks up the kids, it’s Buñuel’s youthful imagination. And here I’ll segue into a perfect example of the kind of Mexican humor at the expense of others I’ve been trying to describe. Yeah there’s a kid calling another kid corpse because he’s skinny. Yeah there’s a kid calling another kid chocolate because he’s dark skinned. But what about the scene where the kids make fun of the boy named LORENZANA for being an orphan; then their teacher is having a conversation with CAIRELES and she mentions an orphan, but looks for the word and spontaneously uses Lorenzana as example of the word she was looking for! And Buñuel films a reaction shot of the little boy perplexed in recognition, pobresito.

     To close, there’s also a lot of talk in this movie about inflation—the scene where the two drunks discuss economics is brilliant. And there’s the masa gouging revolt. But when the streetcar happens upon the smuggling black market maíz, if you think about it, what does the label used to disguise the sacks say? “US fertilizer.” Is this Buñuel saying that the commercial film industry is monopolized by Hollywood shit mediocre product, and he’s taking back what belongs to the people? Okay, and then just gotta mention the Christmas pageant play is such a treat in this movie, especially the angel Lucifer as a Mexican drinking beer and firing a single action rifle at a dove, the Holy Spirit, in heaven. Don Luis with what imagination again delivers some comedy glory.

Poison arrow

The only rule in movies is that they have to have a story. Why? To varying degrees films have proven adept in character, dialogue, genre, setting, and tone; but they can get away with lacking in any of these categories and still work as long as they have a plot. Audiences don’t want cinema for the sake of art. They want a story. Because some part of them is so afraid of the possibility that their own life doesn’t follow a clear path that gets resolved in the end with a specific purpose that they need reassurance, and to buy into these little simulations of meaning to numb their own existential dread.

     What do audiences call a movie without a discernable plot? An art film. What do they call a film that otherwise neglects to tell a clear story with a satisfying resolution? Unreliable narrator. The audience doesn’t have the capacity to process these kinds of narratives. Nor should we be expected to—because they’re always off-putting, conceptual, tedious, or from the perspective of a character losing their grasp on reality.

     But what if there were a film that communicated an emotional truth, while despite breaking these rules nevertheless maintained a cohesion of order through a storytelling that corresponded to its own internal design, and was easy and satisfying to follow? Is to communicate through emotions an impossible contradiction?

 

Él (1953, Luis Buñuel) concisely depicts the masculine ego in relation to its intense sexual desire for a woman. Whereas domestic melodrama, sometimes referred to as woman’s picture, expressionistically utilizes heightened emotion, Él expresses its own delirious reasoning from the perspective of the male genitals. And what makes this satire so much fun is Buñuel puts a bourgeois Catholic who doesn’t have a job or any family—a character who only exists to capture a woman—at the center of this work of art that uses cinema to prove through analogy that with infatuation there is no distinction between illusion and delusion. 

     The image system used in Él is set up in the first scene. During a Catholic mass, PADRE VELASCO is anointing the feet of a queue of altar boys, adoringly, bestowing each with a soft lingering foot kiss. As DON FRANCSISCO assists him with the holy water, we get a camera dolly of the feet of congregants that halts and doubles back to those of a woman in high heels. The rest of the film will hinge on Don Francisco’s conflict between guilt based repressed sexual desire and its resultant confusion with what to do with GLORIA as object of his amorous lust. 

 

The greatest strength of Él is that each aspect of its form that’s intentionally ambiguous is so in order to convey a sexual/emotional truth. Illusion/delusion. None of this film is meant to be read literally. Of course, there is clearly the possibility to read it as none of it ever even happened. As early as the honeymoon in Guanajuato, in a scene where Gloria snaps a photo of Don Francisco in front of some antique architecture, when it’s his turn to take her picture, he declines. How far would I be reaching if I said maybe it’s because in the diegesis of the narrative he has a picture of himself in front of that building but not one of Gloria because they never actually went there together? Or maybe they did. Intentionally ambiguous.

     Él speaks to me. The scene in the belltower when Don Francisco takes Gloria up there to reconcile after a nasty fight, then looks at the crowd below and tells her they’re all worms and no one would see him if he strangled her and threw her body off the top is so much already, but when he adds “I was only joking,” that’s the Buñuel touch on full display. Él is like one big joke you shouldn’t be allowed to laugh at. And how about when Don Francisco is at his wit’s end, a broken man, crying to his confidante butler PABLO, desperately asking what he should do about his wife Gloria and Pablo says divorce her. Don Francisco replies “What about kill her?” That is the funniest dialogue in the movie for me. That’s what surrealism is for me.

     Él isn’t subject to the healthy morally right way women should be treated that’s deemed fit and approved by society. It’s about the opposite. It’s about how there can be a man who everyone sees only through his public persona, and the difference with which he shows himself to be in the privacy of a woman who entices his sexual desires. Yeah it’s wrong. But Él dares to make a comedy out of it. Maybe it’s okay to laugh at how scary it can be to know the penis wants what the penis wants as long as we know it’s wrong?

Slaughterhouse noir

Film noir is not a genre. Neither is surrealist cinema. Too often, audiences label anything in a movie that seems weirdly incongruous as surreal. It’s not at all the same thing.

     What both of these styles have in common is a way to visually express any parts that a film is constructed of in ways that go beyond any intellectual cognition. The language of emotions. A lexicon of textures. Speaking through the senses.

 

El bruto (1953, Luis Buñuel) depicts the brutality of how it feels to lose your true love. In cinema, a home can signal the image system of one’s heart. It’s an outward manifestation of our willful resistance against our own mortality. We’re here for such a short time, but much like our very identity, we build something to last. Something that we rest assured in knowing will be with us for the rest of our lives.

     The community of poor blue collar wretches being evicted from the barrio slum are an emotional transcription of what it’s like to lose the love of your life. That home was where their inner life was nurtured and safe. And then all of the sudden, without any reason, without knowing what they did wrong, they can be kicked out on the street never to return. When they fight the eviction in that first scene, desperately pleading for any kind of answer as what they’re to do now, think about how their landlord ANDRÉS answers them: “That’s your business. There are plenty of other houses.” After having your heart broke isn’t that all your friends really can offer: there’s someone else out there for you.

     And like the most cynical of film noirs, here humans are no better than cattle, despite any sensitivity, optimism, hope or love they may aspire to. BRUTO works in a slaughterhouse. When he has to leave that job, he goes to work with PALOMA in a butcher shop. The tenement building is too small and has too many people packed in there. And when they finally put him down, it’s fittingly by “one to the head.”

 

El bruto is the first film through which I’ve really fully appreciated the genius of Buñuel’s talent with visual motifs. Most obvious a burning flame as sex. One could read something into the three instances of Bruto having sex as follows: (1.) He could have raped Paloma or at the very least it was rough, not shown at all of course, but what is shown is him putting the candle out by smoldering the wick between his fingers, i.e., through force. (2.) When Paloma visits Bruto with the full intention of seducing him, when they go off to the bed, what is shown are the two raw steaks sizzling on the grill and could be read as more like an animal lust. (3.) When Bruto brings his newlywed bride MECHE back to their hovel, we see the candle melt down to nothing on its own—something like purity.

     The whole length of the narrative where Bruto and Meche fall in love is tenderly romantic. The scene on their wedding night is so simple. She’s a virgin. She’s chaste. She’s shy. And offscreen as the candle melts down we only hear their voices, and she starts crying after they’ve finished. And when Bruto goes to sleep on the floor, leaving her to have the small bed he made for her she adds one last comment: “good night.”

     But most of the film is brutally disturbing. One more note about visual motifs that could be deciphered from the chickens is like, Bruto kills Meche’s father and when Bruto flees the mob of carpenters and unwittingly hides at Meche’s house he kills her hen with his bare hands to keep it from making any noise. But Bruto later brings her a new hen along with a bunch of baby chicks. And the last scene of the movie, after Andrés has been slain, when Paloma is confronted by that ominous apparition rooster of course it feels like Andrés in a scary as shit way.

 

Brutality is the theme of this movie in many ways. Bruto is the beast who takes advantage of his size to intimidate and assert his will through oppressive dominance. But Paloma is his double. She’s emotionally brutal and takes advantage of her sexuality to assert her own will in the same way. She’s cold to her husband Andrés and fends off all of his sexual advances. She manipulates Andrés by making him think Bruto assaulted her. She wants to own and control Bruto, not love him.

     But whereas Bruto internally fights his oppressive nature, Paloma does not. She’s the worst. Another evocatively coded image is how when she puts the idea into Andrés’ head about eliminating the agitators she does so by decapitating the flowers from their stems.

     And just a few scattered notes in closing: the slaughterhouse location is obviously real, and filmed with such a photographic quality it adds so much to the noir canvas, along with the chase scene through the lumberyard with its geometric dark shadowy world. The scene where Meche removes the nail from Bruto is an overt reference to Catholicism, or at the very least a vague allusion to the crucifixion. After Meche’s father dies and she pawns his toolbox with his name on it (Carmelo González), what a tearjerker moment, it can also be read through a Catholic lens in that an innocent carpenter was sacrificed for leading the people of their barrio to salvation.

A cruel picture

Most of the Mexicans who put up such a macho front are also momma’s boys. The foundation of Mexican society is the longsuffering mother. Why do you think they’re so obsessed with their venerable Virgin Mary? 

Una mujer sin amor (1952, Luis Buñuel) is a bourgeois melodrama that centers on how sad it is ROSARIO has to endure the stifling obligations of her domestic role; except for a quick affair she indulges and its long-ranging consequences that her shitty sons rub her face in.

     It’s supposed to attack the hypocrisy of society. I guess. There isn’t much going on here. It’s like a kitten whose claws haven’t grown in yet. I do like the scene early on in their house where the husband’s dinner in the fancy house in the fancy dining room is just tamales on his plate and nothing else on the table.

The seven year itch

Are Mexicans so lusty because the climate down there is so hot? Do Catholics have a thing for forbidden fruit? One thing that’s for sure is part of being macho is cruising a sidepiece.

     Also, when it comes to what Mexicans think is funny, I can’t overemphasize how much mileage you can get from making fun of other people’s misfortune, flaws, and personal appearance. It’s different for Mexicans. I don’t think it’s seen as mean spirited as it is to wokesters.

 

Subida al cielo (1952, Luis Buñuel) drips with all the hothouse eroticism its tropical climate and surrealist imagery can evoke. The Eve in this garden is Lilia Prado, as RAQUEL. And if you’ve ever heard one of those gender inequality discussions where someone suggests that what were to happen if genders were switched between two people or characters in question would be either unacceptable or acceptable—the opposite of the source the comparison was based on—you’ll have an idea of how Raquel can stand as ideal of a male unabashedly racking up a list of all the women he’s bedded. You know, like what it means to one who plays the field—a sportfuck.

     In other words think of it sounding something like: why is she perceived as a slut for making sexual advances to OLIVERIO and ELADIO but if a guy did it he’d be seen as virile, or at the very least free of condemnation. (Also it bothers me how in that early scene when Raquel is trying to get Oliverio’s attention and he flees from her the other men in the saloon cackle like a pack of hyenas.) But the magnificence of the plot of Subida al cielo is how well it playfully subverts genre conventions—so much so as to be to the point of feigning innocence.

     Raquel wants to get laid. When she wants. With whom she wants. Forget all that crap about Oliverio’s terminally ill mom having her kids chiseling away at their inheritance on her deathbed; that’s boring and inessential. Although it feels like in a way this movie has to concede to deceptively be about Oliverio. Even better. It’s like because he’s a guy who just got married and is trying to do what’s right by the estate of his mother he’s noble or something.

The twist ending is a stunner. In a way it’s such a subtle twist I’d never noticed it before. But, that scene where Oliverio has that vision of Raquel eating of the apple and she says “I got what I wanted,” it’s as if she ate the forbidden fruit of the garden but irl gets away clean. And as if that weren’t thrillingly mischievous enough, Oliverio doesn’t suffer any punishment either—aside from him feeling swindled of his faithfulness to his newlywed bride.

     Buñuel’s cinematic artistry is on full display, with say, starting with the intoxicating eroticism of Raquel hiking her wet skirt up as she exits the bus to wade in the shallow river and going for a dip in her swimsuit. And then foremost a whole giant chunk of the movie gives way to a full on surrealist dream sequence. What is essentially a sex fantasy Oli has about Raquel becomes charged with a moral gravitas as his desperate struggle against the will of his libido to submit to his faithful wife turns on him, revealing her face to now be that of Raquel as well. But visually, so much to appreciate. The tropical jungle in the bus! Eating his mother's knitting! What are those sheep doing there running around while Raquel and Oli are having sex? Oh, Don Luis. What a master.

El infierno

Mexican society is male dominated. And among these men, the most highly esteemed values are being macho, having money, and protecting their women and children. The lowest values are being a coward, and poverty. Does this sound so outdated?

 

La hija del engaño (1951, Luis Buñuel) is a throwaway commercial assignment with very little to offer cinematically. It relies too heavily on its plot about the inevitable reconciliation between a father and the daughter he abandoned when she was an infant.

     But it still packs a wallop of a caricature of hombres sinvergüenzas. While La hija del engaño is a broad comedy that suffers from too often indulging uninspired instances of hamming it up, it nevertheless includes domestic abuse toward spouse and child from a belligerent alcoholic guardian, and a fair amount of gun violence. 

     Two scenes had me hollering with boisterous laughter. The first takes place in DON QUINTÍN’S casino, when a short fat Mexican gambler named EL JONRÓN repeatedly threatens the staff that if they don’t cater to his beck and whim he’ll give them a “homerun” (his slang for firing his pistol?!). The gunman is confronted by the bouncer, another short fat Mexican. This conflict escalates into a duel of monosyllabic grunts that is the most effectively perfect epitome of idiot Mexicans desperately trying to prove their masculinity in public through violence I’ve probably ever seen; guns drawn, they yell at each other like children daring each other to shoot first, because each of them know the one to shoot first will be the one to face criminal punishment from the law. 

     And operating on a similar code of conduct, the scene later when Don Quintín and his men throw food at MARTHA and PACO’S table slays just as hard. For me what is so effective about this olive throwing business is how effectively I felt the humiliation and its rising tension. There were higher stakes between these two tables and some breadcrumbs than I’ve encountered in some of the hugest Hollywood action sequences.

Le Journal d'une femme de chambre

Before you let misogynist be the first thing that pops into your head, don’t be in such haste as to judge the old-fashioned Catholic value system upheld by Mexicans without attempting to at least appreciate it as just being different, and hopefully maybe even admit that their sexual politics and hierarchies mirror how life really is. Ongoing my further investigation into Buñuel’s films he made while in Mexico, I find even more cogent proof of how compelling it is to get to watch movies with the kinds of characterizations of aspects of the cultural identity of Mexicans that I’d always known from first-hand experience but never so adequately found depicted in cinema.

     This time it’s spiteful, vindictive, vengeful personal attacks aimed at someone with loose morals. Sure, throughout history there’ve been tons of examples of religious persecution, but with Mexicans it’s so vivacious, so gleefully mean-spirited it’s fun. Our closest counterpart to what I’m describing is John Waters. 

 

Susana (1951, Luis Buñuel) has as its titular heroine a conniving, wantonly manipulative, 20 yr old sexpot sociopath who's morally rotten; yet soo cute, perky, and fun as to bring a defiant radiance to any scene she’s in. Take that Hayes Code. 

     She’s actually hot too. I love this actress. That she’s also blond is an especially nice touch. The opening of the movie sets her up as being incarcerated in the state reformatory, for what we can only presume is being slutty. She gets thrown into solitary (one can only imagine what she did to elicit that punishment) and prays to God, and the god of prisons, that she be set free—and instantly she’s able to rip the barred window from her prison cave.

     Okay as I write this I realize this could sound like cheesy bad sexploitation but Buñuel eschews any semblance of shabby sleaze by polishing this melodrama with prestige. One of my favorite images from any Buñuel movie is the iconic shot when Susana escapes and the pious family sit for supper as she appears outside their window drenched by a rainstorm. And here it is when the old crone hardcore Catholic head servant FELISA warns that this apparition is a devil.

     Yeah sure Susana seduces all the men, causing them to sacrifice everything they are because they're enamored with her. But that’s not anywhere near as interesting as the battle between the women of the household and Susana. It gets so ugly. The rancor with which Susana exclaims that the men will take her over them because she’s young! I don’t see this film as misogynist. And I don’t see Susana as evil. I just think she’s empowered, and resorting to what she has to in order to survive, and fuck it.

     And lastly, did anyone else notice the scene with ALBERTO and the dragonfly he’s studying? This might be I wanna say one of the earliest appearances of etymology in a Buñuel film, which will of course be a recurring motif throughout the rest of his work on into France in the 60s and is one of his lasting trademarks. (Listen, I know there was already that Silence of the Lambs moth in Un chien andalou alright.)