I suppose there are a number of ways that this film could be defended, and while it's not my place or purpose to anticipate all of them, I will guess that the first line of attack is to say "you didn't understand it" or the second if that failed would be "you are politically pre-disposed to dislike this film." So I just wanted to establish right away, not so much that I necessarily "understood" the film, but that I consider one of the film's greatest weaknesses to be the fact that it must be intellectualized in order for value to be derived. There is a constant filter between the audience and the film, caused by the film's all too transparent surrealist technique.
I suppose a good example would be the scene with the people sitting around a table, each on an individual toilet doing his/her business. One man retires from the table to go to the seclusion of a small compartment to eat. The audience is immediately taken out of the film while an intellectual process takes place by which the audience member will analyze what he's seen and figure out its "meaning". Which is pretty easy to discern I suppose, as he's basically talking about the arbitrary nature of social convention, which seems to be part of a larger critique of social manners and behavior. The entire movie is full of "clever" skits like this.... sadly this scene seems to actually be considered a highlight of the film. It's not unintelligent necessarily, and I can see that Bunuel has a "point" -- but the film has very little or no actual cinematic value. The film's humor is not very appealing to me, there are no sustained characters, and the cinematography is reminiscent of a Jess Franco movie.
Bunuel apparently thinks that his social satire -- such as it is -- will sustain the entire film despite the lack of story and logic. But even satire has its own internal logic, whereas this film does nothing but debunk and present evidence for various ideas that should already by painfully obvious to most thinking people while providing nothing in the way of an alternative value structure. It's thoroughly deconstructionist and I just do not believe that process has much intrinsic value. I found myself sitting through so much garbage -- for example sustained shots of a bird's head looking at the camera -- that would need to be deciphered or translated through a mental process before they would have any value at all, that's what I'm trying to say.
There's a whole section of the film where there is a search for a "missing" girl -- even though the girl is right there in front of the parents and police. Yes, the scenes made me think about the fact that some people out there somewhere -- presumably aristocratic folks who the director and writer dislike -- probably don't pay much attention to their children even though they would probably throw a fit if the child was gone. But what a painfully drawn-out and pretentious way to make such a statement!
I suppose a good example would be the scene with the people sitting around a table, each on an individual toilet doing his/her business. One man retires from the table to go to the seclusion of a small compartment to eat. The audience is immediately taken out of the film while an intellectual process takes place by which the audience member will analyze what he's seen and figure out its "meaning". Which is pretty easy to discern I suppose, as he's basically talking about the arbitrary nature of social convention, which seems to be part of a larger critique of social manners and behavior. The entire movie is full of "clever" skits like this.... sadly this scene seems to actually be considered a highlight of the film. It's not unintelligent necessarily, and I can see that Bunuel has a "point" -- but the film has very little or no actual cinematic value. The film's humor is not very appealing to me, there are no sustained characters, and the cinematography is reminiscent of a Jess Franco movie.
Bunuel apparently thinks that his social satire -- such as it is -- will sustain the entire film despite the lack of story and logic. But even satire has its own internal logic, whereas this film does nothing but debunk and present evidence for various ideas that should already by painfully obvious to most thinking people while providing nothing in the way of an alternative value structure. It's thoroughly deconstructionist and I just do not believe that process has much intrinsic value. I found myself sitting through so much garbage -- for example sustained shots of a bird's head looking at the camera -- that would need to be deciphered or translated through a mental process before they would have any value at all, that's what I'm trying to say.
There's a whole section of the film where there is a search for a "missing" girl -- even though the girl is right there in front of the parents and police. Yes, the scenes made me think about the fact that some people out there somewhere -- presumably aristocratic folks who the director and writer dislike -- probably don't pay much attention to their children even though they would probably throw a fit if the child was gone. But what a painfully drawn-out and pretentious way to make such a statement!