Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Justina
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Francene Odetta
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
elvircorhodzic
VIRIDIANA is a comedy drama about hypocrisy, public morality and mercy through strong criticism of religion.A girl named Viridiana is about to take her religious vows. However, her uncle invites her to visit him. She has agreed to a quick visit. Her mother superior has approved her visit. When an old recluse sees his niece, he is struck by her strong resemblance to his deceased wife. The attractive girl has excited old man's passions. He admits that he wants to marry her. Viridiana is horrified and emotionally hurt. Her uncle has the intention to rape her. At the last moment, he decides otherwise. However, that night has remained an unresolved enigma between his lies and her uncertainty. Viridiana leaves his house in tears. Her uncle has hanged himself, leaving his property to her and his illegitimate son. Viridiana will come back and begin to take care of local beggars...Weaknesses, vagueness and inefficiency of a religious dogma is the essence of this film. Mr. Buñuel has managed to cause a conflict between public morality and religious hypocrisy in a grim story. Sarcasm, which is directed towards religion and pious mind is perhaps a little distasteful, but is justified. Therefore, love, sentimentality, lust, remorse and morals have received grotesque label.Mr. Buñuel has, some of the features of high society, like greed and indecency, assigned to beggars. It is the perfect contrast in this film. He has inserted some provocative and perverted scenes in which the protagonists steal, cheat, abuse and finally kill every segment of human dignity. The generosity and concern of a young girl for the weak, the poor and the sick is a powerful and ironic punch to the society.Silvia Pinal as Viridiana is a charming and somewhat depressed girl. She is torn between the traditional religious ideas and her concealed libido. Her character is trying to free from clutches of anxiety and remorse. Fernando Rey as Don Jaime, her uncle, is confused old man, who convincingly shows his desire for his niece. His inner conflict ends tragically. Francisco Rabal as Jorge, his illegitimate son, is a dominant man, who has a realistic view of the world. Margarita Lozano as Ramona is a bit clumsy maid who will adapt to any situation and get out from it what is best for her and her daughter.The end of the film, although sexually suggestive, describes the most normal life situation, of all things in this film. A little masterpiece, which has, with philosophical reviews to uselessness of religion sparked controversy.
Jackson Booth-Millard
From director Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou, Land Without Bread, Belle De Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), this was a Spanish film that I found in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and I knew nothing about it, but was willing to watch. Basically young novice Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) taking her final vows as a nun, when her only living relative, uncle Don Jaime (The French Connection's Fernando Rey), invites her to visit him, she is pressured by her Mother Superior into accepting, as she is reluctant having only met him once before. Don Jaime lives in seclusion on his farm, with his servants as company, Ramona (Margarita Lozano), Monco and his daughter Rita (Teresa Rabal), and he is haunted by the fact that his niece has a strong resemblance to his dead wife, and he has oddly requested her to wear his deceased wife's wedding dress, she reluctantly complies because of his financial support. Ramona informs Viridiana that her uncle wants to marry her, she is shocked, but he apparently drops the idea, but then Ramona drugs her, and while she is unconscious he was intending to rape her, before he changes his mind, but to make sure she stays he lies to her that he took her virginity, meaning she cannot return to the convent, he eventually confesses, but she still questions what happened that night. She is later prevented from leaving by the authorities when heading for the bus stop, her uncle hangs himself and the property is given to her and his illegitimate son Jorge (Francisco Rabal), she is disturbed and does not return to the convent, she instead helps beggars and creates a place to educate and feed them, Moncho leaves in disgust. Jorge starts renovating the house and moves in with his girlfriend Lucia (Victoria Zinny), she senses that he has feelings for Viridiana, and after she leaves he makes a pass at unwilling Ramona, later while the house is empty and paupers break in and there is drunken and riotous party like behaviour, and when the owners return they find it in shambles. One beggar who threatens Viridiana pulls a knife on Jorge, he is struck on the head with a bottle and goes unconscious for a few moments, eventually after the wannabe rapist is stopped in his tracks the police come in to calm the situation, in the end Viridiana is changed, it is a question whether she feels for Jorge, especially after she catches him in a suspicious way with Ramona. I will firstly admit that not all the description is my own input, but I followed enough of the story to almost agree with critics giving the film five out of five stars, the leading performance of Pinal is absolutely the best as the innocent, vulnerable and declining former nun, the scenes I found most watchable were certainly her relationship with the uncle and her work with the homeless people, and there are some good small moments mocking religion that work well too, an interesting satirical drama. Very good!
lreynaert
While 'Viridiana' contains some well known aspects of L. Buñuel's movies, like fetishism or voyeurism, its main target is, like in 'L'Age D'Or', religion and more particularly Catholicism with its gospel of pity and altruism. This gospel is personified in an aspirant-nun, played sublimely by the Mexican actress Silvia Pinal. But, faced with utterly disgraceful behavior on the part of the poor people she wanted to help, she becomes on the tones of Haendel's music an anti-Messiah.For the Catholic Church this movie is fundamentally a blasphemy, symbolized by its hellish parody of the Last Supper (the picture by Leonardo Da Vinci) with the apostles painted as vile and vicious paupers and beggars. Another of L. Buñuel's more controversial viewpoints is his misogyny expressed by Don Jaime's illegitimate son, Jorge: 'all cats are grey at night'.With a formidable casting, Silvia Pinal being the jewel of the team, this movie didn't lose even a shadow of its subversive bite at Christian morality. A must see for all lovers of world cinema.
jzappa
Buñuel didn't intend Viridiana to be sacrilegious. Just an uncompromising view of a world that can't be saved. The film's quite unmistakably partitioned into two halves. The first half begins with the eponymous young woman, played by the stunningly beautiful young Silvia Pinal with a marble sheen of purity and innocence, and the depth of an all-too-relatable psychosomatic susceptibility to all that act upon her, such as her unpredictable uncle played with off-putting sincerity by Fernando Rey, whose tragic self-delusion causes him to fetishistically associate Viridiana with his late wife. Much like The Virgin Spring, another religiously themed 1961 masterpiece, Viridiana's journey is portrayed so serenely, sensually and gracefully that when we face incredibly powerful, uncomfortable or enigmatic moments, we haven't even seen them coming, and when we have, they've already pounced on us. With every quality of every production specialty, the effect is sheer simplicity, no instability despite whatever viciousness or emotional tremors, making them all that much more inherently poignant.That's vital to its thematic consistency as well as its sensory impact. There is a scene near the convergence of the two "acts" that involves an intended rape foiled by guilt, a tormented attempt at blackmail that results in a muddle of confessions and guilt-ridden fabrications, and ultimately, an offense taken so deeply that even a figure of such pious naivete and self-punishing reverence cannot grant forgiveness. Offense and forgiveness seem to be the film's central preoccupation, embodied by well-intentioned people, ill-equipped for life. Throughout the second half, Viridiana instigates goings-on brought about by her feeling of guilt, one detached from any methodological or ceremonial sense.This half explores Bunuel's commitment to change as Viridiana gathers a group of local vagabonds to care for and shelter on the uncle's estate: a daunting blind man, a scuttling jester, a woman with two babies, a pregnant woman, a gimp, a prominent-seeming old guy from another sort of movie, a singer, a dwarf, and a leper. The drifters epitomize an array of human potential that Buñuel wants neither to reject nor commemorate, but to challenge, which is why the film, despite the dismay of several of its moments and the devastating chaos of its later scenes, is invigorating instead of just disheartened or dismal. What we are seeing is both horrible and droll, and we're the better for not having turned away.The film's thoughtful and measured. It's gracefully shot; each image communicating something distinct and particular, which is to be anticipated from an alleged fetishist. It makes no patent, clear-cut assertion, but rather delivers Buñuel's view that our animal natures are invariably waiting to spring. The lecherous uncle is not portrayed as a horrible man as much as a forlorn and despondent one, who longs to indulge a sin but lacks the required impropriety. Nor is the eponymous nun's cousin a lecher, nor is she a fallen women, and the beggars merely act as they've been acclimatized by the social order.Left with the estate to themselves for a day, the tramps search the main house, eyeball the paintings, the linen, the silver, and opt to have a banquet. In a magnificently cynical cut, Buñuel goes right from an early moment of this searching to a late point of the feast: the main course demolished, bottles everywhere, and everyone inebriated. One of the babies cries, two women have an atrocious wrestle, the leper puts on Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," to which a succession of small subsequent actions lead to utter chaos. The screenplay, possibly suggesting the sensation instead of the reality, mentions "carnage" and an "absurd orgy." In the film's most notorious moment, everyone assembles along one side of the table for a "photograph" of a scene that unmistakably mimics The Last Supper.It's very likely that Bunuel knew more about irreverence than the pope did. But the sacrilege is not hostile to God and Jesus. It's against the trust in improvement, at least in its traditional implications, whether in the guise of a character's ideas for civilizing the estate or of Viridiana's mission to enrich the vagabonds' lives. The beggars are not vile or evil. They're the disorder of life itself, a keepsake that bliss, curiosity and desire can at any time resort to devastation and brutality. This is not an case against those unquestionably positive things, or an demand for rules and doctrine. It's a portrait of a civilization that doesn't value its own needs. Buñuel's cynicism and indignation embroil the miniaturization of our idea of change and improvement, our limited efforts to reach it through reasonable or didactic preparation, and our eager contempt for the disorderly influences without which no civilization would be human.To me, the most special and important scene in this film is not entrenched in religious controversy but in the hopelessness of existence, and it encapsulates Buñuel's view of life: It's the scene with the dog tied to moving carts by ropes that'd choke it if it stops hurrying. Viridiana's cousin buys it to save it from its running distress, yet he doesn't see, as he turns away, another cart with another bound dog coming the other way. This is the man who's about to disparage Viridiana for her endeavors at generosity. A film like this is invigorating. It's helmed by a sharp, idiosyncratic brain. It's not another reductive rendering of reassuring feel-good fabrications. All the time, there's another cart and another dog bound to it.
