L'Ange exterminateur

If you want an introduction into the anarchic, surrealistic, bourgeois-baiting world of Luis Bunuel 'The Exterminating Angel' is the best place to start. The initial premise is simple, albeit puzzling - the guests at a dinner party mysteriously find themselves unable to leave their hosts house at the end of the evening. There's no logical reason why, they just can't. They are confused at first, but as the days go by and the food starts to run out, they become increasingly more desperate and turn on each other. Bunuel makes the most of the idea and creates a complex, multi-layered movie, packed with fascinating small details, intriguing dialogue and surprising situations, most of which is left up to the viewer to "explain". Bunuel is one of those directors, like David Lynch, Russ Meyer or Coffin Joe, that viewers either "get" or they don't. His vision is original and uncompromised and not for everyone. Me, I think he made some of the greatest movies of all time, especially his fertile 1960s period which included some of his very best work like 'Belle De Jour' and yes, 'The Exterminating Angel'.

"The Exterminating Angel" is the ultimate COVID-19 pandemic movie.

A bunch of swells attend a dinner party. An offer made by the host to the guests to spend the night, an offer which everyone knows isn't supposed to be accepted, is, and, social codes being disrupted, calamity ensues. The guests become trapped together in the same room for four days, and their good manners and propriety gradually dissolve away until they're all acting like a bunch of savage lunatics.

Though made in the 1960s, "The Exterminating Angel," like all good films, is so astute about human nature that it feels as relevant now as it did then. The world seems full of a bunch of privileged people who have the luxury to go through life oblivious to the world around them. But then a pandemic hits, and they're freaking out about toilet paper.

I happened to watch this film a day or so after watching another Bunuel film, "Diary of a Chambermaid." Together, the two films serve as a withering denunciation of the middle class, whether it be in early 20th Century France, Spain of the 1960s, or the America of today.

Grade: A.

a satire. a bitter portrait of a too old reality. a parable. or only a story by Bunuel. like each of his films, a challenge. or more than one of challenges. because it represents more than a social critic. the motif - it is the story of contemporary realities more than one of the "60's. the isolation. the captivity, the need to return to old formulas for become, again, part of normal are traits of a film with virtue of warning. and this could be the cause for it remains, long time after you see, present in memory. as a dark picture of a world defined by fear and instinct.

I saw this film for the first time on TCM this week. It was really thought provoking. What fascinated me was that there were people in the room who had all sorts of skills to figure out the problem and become free, but did not. Another intriguing aspect was that nothing: marriage, love, death, children, jobs, or intelligence and logic was enough to solve the problem. The solution comes in a very interesting way and the least likely person. I hope you will watch and check it out. There was also a strong parallel between the catholic church and the people trapped in the room. I wondered if they were illustrating the socialist belief that 'religion is the opiate of the people.' The sheep were not eaten by the bear and all of these symbols were politically interesting. I have never written a review before and I hope I have not included any spoiler but this is a movie I would love to discuss over coffee: it is intelligent, mesmerizing, and a lesson for our time.

'L'enfer c'est les autres' (Hell is other people), wrote the French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, in his play, 'No Exit' (sometimes referred to - and has been performed - as 'In Camera'), that surmised the narrative of three deceased individuals locked in a room, one that they eventually realise they will be spending eternity together in. Luis Bunuel used this simple meta-narrative concept of people trapped, to create one of his finest satires, and his first explicitly surrealist film since L'Age D'Or (1930). After Bunuel's previous film, Viridiana (1961), was condemned by the Vatican and banned in his native country of Spain (and where it was made), he moved back to Mexico where he had been making films throughout the 1940's and 50's, and produced a scabrous attack on General Francisco Franco's Spanish fascist dictatorship, and the institutions, and bourgeois facets of the country that were founded on the destruction of the poor and the proletariat, during the civil war that ended in 1939.

Whilst the film works as political allegory, on a base narrative level, it functions as an irrational comedy; or farce. The guests arrive for a lavish dinner, but as they arrive, the maids leave, and progressively all the hired help leave them. Once dinner is complete, the guests congregate in the living room, but they all begin to realise that they are unable to leave the room at all. When this is discovered we observe that they attempt to go, but are either distracted or simply stop or break down at the boundary of the room. This continues through days, possibly months - the characters concept of time completely obliterated. The group falls into decay, primitive urges overwhelm them, and as this representation of Western Civilisation breaks down, the group become brutally savage, turning on the host of the dinner, demanding sacrifice. The group slaughter the lambs that were originally to be used in a dinner prank.

At first the guests seem to simply ignore what is happening to them, and continue with inane chat. Exterior to the "party", the grounds are surrounded, but not even the police are able to enter, given the same mysterious barrier that prevents entry. It's almost a perfect parable, illustrating the ignorance of the Spanish bourgeoisie, as they strip the rights and dignity of the proletariat (here the maids leave on their arrival), whilst divorcing their minds from the violence and corruption of a dictatorship. But with this, it also shows how even the "civilised" sections of society, once they are stripped of their social status, their inherited manners of "education", and their ability to use wealth, the fall into absolute decay, probably falling apart greater than the lower classes, with their lessened moral outlook, and an almost infantile inability to deal with regular obstacles.

Winner of the 1962 Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival, this was to begin what become (rather belatedly for the 62 year old) his most productive, celebrated and interesting period of his career, based in Paris, beginning with Belle de Jour (1967) and ending with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). This is the period that he developed and expanded his own style, and his unique vision on film. The Exterminating Angel has also given inspiration for others. It is a clear influence on Jean-Luc Godard's wonderfully bleak and satiric depiction of the bourgeoisie and the end of Western Civilisation, Week End (1967). The idea was also utilised in one sketch from Monty Python's Meaning of Life (1983), that saw the guests leaving as ghosts. This is by far, one of his greatest achievements, beautifully realised, with comic touches, and moments of surrealism that both bemuse and amuse.

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