So, there wasn’t a new film recommendation from Mark this week, but fortunately there is a large back catalogue for me to go through. This saw me land on Luis Bunuel’s ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ (1972) a film that I have been wanting to watch for a while. Now that I have watched it I’m struggling to think of how I am going to approach this review for it so it may be a shorter one than usual. The film follows an upper-class group of friends who consistently are unable to sit down for a meal due to arrange of events and circumstances.
If you think that is a vague and short synopsis of the film you would be right, but the films plot is really that thin. It isn’t a film interested in providing a plot either. This is Luis Bunuel after all and if you have seen some of his other films you will know it is often not his main focus. And while this film does not go to the surrealist extremes of ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929) or ‘L’Age d’Or’ (1930) it still fits into the world of the surreal, especially in its narrative structure and the world it builds for itself. The world of the film doesn’t make logical sense for the audience, but for the characters they take all the obscene and ridiculous scenarios they find themselves in straight faced and unfazed and this is where the films comedy kicks in. There are a couple scenes in particular that are really funny in just how absurd the scenarios that stop our characters from having their meal are, and the longer the film goes on the more bizarre these get. There are also a couple other plots which are introduced by the film that are either unimportant on the whole or completely brought up out of nowhere and dropped instantly. There is a whole plot point of a terrorist trying to kill one of the characters that has two scenes devoted to it, and a scene involving a priest finding his parents killers and killing him comes out of the blue with no set up, but there are fun to watch and fit in with the surreal and non-sensical style of the film.
The surrealist nature of the film mostly sticks to the narrative structure. The imagery and the way the film is shot stays mostly conventional which helps add to the comedic value. When the ridiculous scenarios do occur the fact that they are not hugely surrealist means that they seem all the more ridiculous. Does that make sense? It does in my head. There is one thing that the film does in a technical sense that is a bit more surrealist which is in its use of sound. This is mostly used conventionally also, but there are moments where characters will be having conversations which will be drowned out by another noise, a plane engine, siren, typewriter, etc. All of these sounds are seemingly diegetic (although in the case of the plane and siren this may not be the case) but the severity of the noise means that it feels other worldly rather than existing within the world of the film. In acting terms everyone does a good job. They all capture their characters well and having a good sense for comedic performance while never going overboard in selling a scenario to us.
I find surrealist cinema quite hard to review mostly because I am not very well versed in the style. I also have a hit and miss relations with surrealism. There are several surrealist films that I would happily say I dislike or even hate, but for the most part I love surrealist comedy which is why I enjoyed this film. It is also one I would recommend. It is weird and I don’t think it is for everyone, but it is conventional enough that I think it is good first step into the surreal and if you can buy into the lack of narrative there is a lot here to enjoy.