Dorathen
Better Late Then Never
AnhartLinkin
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
gavin6942
The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave.Following the Viridiana scandal, Buñuel returned to Mexico, but kept his production team and decided to make another movie starring Silvia Pinal. The film, originally called The Outcasts of Providence Street, was renamed The Exterminating Angel after Buñuel picked it from an unfinished play his friend José Bergamín was writing at the time. The film was released in Mexico in 1962, and was just as controversial as its predecessor had been.Bunuel is a strange guy. Of course, he always was, really making his name on such crazy projects as "Un Chien Andelou" and "Age D'Or". In his later years, he seemed to really switch to a more Marxist outlook and was quick to satirize class and religion. Here he does that well. I would not say this is my favorite of his films, and possibly not top three, but it still deserves to be seen.
Vibhor Pandey
Another brilliant surrealistic work by Brunel, Though the plot is somewhat similar to Jean Paul Satre's existentialist play No Exit. This film is a rare fusion of black comedy, struggle and brutality. It is a commentary on the upper-class. A series of extraordinary and bizarre events takes place over the course of ninety-three minutes which leaves the viewers flummoxed. A group of people attend a formal party and when the party is over the unexpected happens, They can't seem to exit, for no perceptible reason. The scenes are full of campy humor, as all the guests are unable to go out of the drawing room. They stay there for another night and many nights after that. But as the basic necessities disappeared their mood became tempestuous and desperate. Illness started to spread, The group started disintegrating.Brunel cleverly shows that people no matter how high their status is in the society hides a beast within. Under dire circumstances the wealthy behaves like animals. The satisfaction of basic needs which they always took for granted becomes supreme for them, The sense of decency fades away. All the greed, lust and selfishness becomes glaringly evident on their hypocrite faces."Hell is other people" was the concept behind Jean Paul's play though this movie follows the concept that Hell is more than just other people. To know what it is you'll have to watch this movie!
bobsgrock
Is there any hope for the future of mankind? Fifty years ago, famous Surrealist director Luis Bunuel pointed his acerbic finger at the upper class in this incredibly focused satire of the bourgeois. Such a story as this depends on the audience's ability to look past little details such as a lack of growing facial hair on the men stuck in the living room and accept everything Bunuel throws at us.It seems the most vicious attacks are saved for the Church, which Bunuel seems to view as having similar rules and restrictions as the bourgeois does but with the added promise of eternal salvation in the afterlife. The final sequence of this film is powerful in the way it showcases the bourgeois's almost complete indifference to the struggle and pain of others, even after they have suffered similar conditions. Perhaps the main reason for this film's lasting impact, and the beginning of a whole new career for Bunuel, is its completely unflinching look at what lies at the root of all human beings. In taking away their physical freedom and psychological dressings, Bunuel exposes these people for what he believes we really are: slightly more intelligent, but still animals in every other sense. Our inevitable decline into savagery, incivility and pure selfishness can only be exposed in the most extreme conditions. However, who is to say this isn't possible in some distant future?
Gary Geiserman
Paraphrasing this guy Ripstein, a Mexican producer's son who got to hang around during filming, "Time is deleted and now represented as space. It's moving, a circle." Leaving us to consider what the 'actions' in the spaces are. "Instructions from and to the unconscious."–-- —It's as long as a feature film. It's not entertaining. It wasn't and wasn't expected to be a success. Bunuel had to compromise on a lot of things and 'make-do'. He invented/discovered as he made it; a man creates.--------I guess it's a trade-off—a lot of work on a long block of time making a singular thing instead of many things, many hits in the ether. But it's a film —a considerable 'event', more committmenting than the 'smaller' things, at least during it's time. A butterfly for essentially, all the days.--–Of course film is sights and sounds together, the same as our quotidian metaphysical phenomena we're all 'fooled' by. Maybe that's the allure, unless it's a control-fest army project they're addicted to. But not creatives like Bunuel. He's one of my guys.-—Different but probably influential to "Savages" (1972 by Ivory/Merchant), the Michael O'Donoghue ejaculant that's good for what's ailin ya. At least, O'Donoghue goes about it differently — so beautifully showing the rape of the Feminine through All of Civilization. "...they know not what they do". "'F' it!" Bunuel's probably doing the same thing; it's a 90,000 year roadshow.---—Just watch out for the fakers with their structures and trappings. Like a lot of Woody Allen's last 25 films or so — purportedly showing this battle royal but bogged down by Howard Stern-like narcissism and self- importance. Can't get near a sub-conscious for fear of losing 'me'. Thus the fakers miss the real action and merely pose internal antipathies which wind up right-wing status quo.----— Back to the universal knowledge — creatives must override their personal agendas to transcend. After all, creating means making something that wasn't there before. One stands up in their moment; as their truths are alive and touch, it prevails.--—–Bunuel used archetypes, O'Donoghue language (very entertainingly!) — both are 'regular guys' you'd want to have an espresso with.
