Watched: January 05 2019
Director: Luis Buñuel
Starring: Silvia Pinal, Jacqueline Andere, José Baviera, Augusto Benedico, Luis Beristáin, Antonio Bravo, Claudio Brook, César del Campo, Rosa Elena Durgel, Lucy Gallardo, Enrique García Álvarez, Ofelia Guilmáin, Enrique Rambal, Patricia de Morelos, and just a bunch of others…
Year: 1962
Runtime: 1h 35min
A dinner party is being thrown on Providence Street for twenty people. And some sheep. And a bear.
As the party progresses, the servants keep leaving. But the guests eventually realise that they cannot do the same. They are stuck.
As the hours and days go by, the upper class dinner guests deteriorate and become more and more desperate, eventually contemplating murder to break their curse. But what is really going on?
Like all of Buñuel’s movies, The Exterminating Angel requires some thought and interpretation. Which is not our forte. But we get the impression this is probably a comment on how high society deteriorates to the level of animals once the luxury and the societal structures they cling to are taken away.
It’s a difficult movie to describe, but you should definitely watch it if you like any of the following:
- Surrealism
- Weird people
- Herds of sheep
- Strange conversations and non sequiturs
- Chaos
- Sacrifice
- Baby bears
- Impending doom
- Comments on class, societal rules and human nature
We thoroughly enjoyed it! We understood absolutely nothing! You should watch it!
What we learned: You know, we would probably learn loads from this film on repeated viewings as it strikes us as the sort of movie you should really study. However, we still have 785 movies to go, so we’re gonna have to get back to you on this…
Next time: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
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