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.
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