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Watched "Discreet Charm" the other night and was NOT bowled over. I think if I had seen it in 1972 I would have found it unique--not so in 2004. The farcical nature was more educational to me than amusing--that cultural difference thing. What I will give it is the creative use of "dreams" through the last third of the movie, particularly when Rey is insulted by the Colonel and they duel at the dinner party. "Discreet" seems to be the first use of the "folded dreams" comedic device.And, what the hell was all that walking about?
Follow Ups:
see roger ebert's essay (linked)"How different to see it again in 2000, when affluence is once again praised and envied. The primary audience for the film in 1972 saw it as attacking others; the primary audience today will, if it is perceptive, see it as an attack on itself."
"HEY" - BIG A
***He sees that we are hypocrites, admits to being one himself and believes we were probably made that way.This is kaka. He needs to learn to apply that word, as it is by no means universal.
In some sense "hypocrisy" is akin to "beauty" - one has to learn its limits and proper use.
Of course one can always argue that one can see beauty in everything. And perhaps this is the trap Ebert is falling into.
But the dilemma repose in your phrase: " some sense "hypocrisy" is akin to "beauty" - one has to learn its limits and proper use. "I donīt get it! Hypocrisy is the same than beauty???
That is one thing you have to explain???
Before we can go on!PS: I think you got something wrong here...Or me??
What I meant was that all human beings posess most of the qualities - it is just the matter of degree.So to say "everyone is a hypocrite" is totally meaningless, as it is the degree of that that really separates the hypocrite from a non-hypocrite.
Ditto for beauty - is there a definite line above which a person is beautiful and below - ugly? Not really.
Therefore simply identifying some traits in a person that might be considered traces of hypocritical behavior - if put under a microscope - doesn't make one a hypocrite. After all, a hypocrite is probably one who displays great dose of that and regularly, so it is all in the degree as well.
I also didn't like the eating/defecation comparisson... it is way too shallow to have any interest... it is something a thre-years-old should struggle and discover, really.
But that goes to the strength of Bunuel as an artist and observer - it is NOT in making those trivial comparissons, like Ebert is suggesting, but rather in spite of those trivialities. Ditto for his surrealism - another shallow trait... he is successful not because he is one, but in spite of that.
...as he was one of the greatest teasers in his time: he was always provoking, and sending people towards empty alleys, always laughing at the grandeur, and systematically shattering their beliefs, showing us not just the other side of ourselves, but how ridiculous most of our assumptions about ourselves are..., and how hypocrisy grows fast and high wherever there are social relationships.Bunuel was a true anarchist at heart: he started his working life while at the Residencia de Estudiantes, in Madrid, where he met Dali, Garcia Lorca (he was mad at Bunuel, because he [Garcia Lorca] thought that "he was the dog at "Un Chien Andalou"), Alberti, Picasso (whom he deeply disliked, seeing him as selfish)..., in few words, he was a member of what has been called "The Generation of 1927", and he had to fly away from Francoīs persecution, taking shelter in Paris, where he dove deeply in Surrealist circles. He always showed his disgust with conventionalisms, with religion, and with psychologists, too: he was always making ridicule of all that, and of their followers, too.
And thatīs the key to many of Bunuelīs films: he mocked religion, and religious symbols ("Simon del Desierto", "Viridiana"); social conventions ("The Discreet Charm...", "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz", "The Phantom of Liberty"...), and both of them in "The Exterminating Angel". He mocked surrealism itself from inside ("Un Chien Andalou", "The Age of Gold"...), and he laughed at all of them, and at no few viewers, in a frequently ferocious mood. He frequently said that he was obsessed with sex and with death and religion, and both Eros and Tanatos play a crucial role in most of his films.
But Bunuel wasnīt a boutadier: he had a deep, warm heart, too. And he made films where he explored the despair and suffering of human beings, as he did in "Las Hurdes" ("Land without Bread"), a documentary on misery and hunger; or in "Los Olvidados", ("The Young and the Damned"), a portrait of misery and violence very much in the line of the best Italian Neorrealism, with a surrealist touch in some scenes; or in "Nazarin", with a young Paco Rabal playing the role of a deeply honest young Catholic priest, who, from his love to his human fellows, lives among thieves, whores, and beggars, following the command of his faith, and who is stolen, ridiculed, beaten, stolen and even denied by his own church, finally failing in his attempts to make their lives better...
About psychoanalitical implications, so frequently interlinked with surrealism, he used them in his usual mocking way, with fetishism in "Le Journal d'une Femme de Chambre", sadomasochism in "Belle de Jour" and in "Tristana" (based in a novel by Pierre Louys, the same guy who had written about Saphic love, and some other scandalous books)
He went into classics, too, with "Robinson Crusoe" and "Wuthering Heights"..., and he left only so few stones unturned along his career.
About hypocrisy, Iīd say that Bunuel was more interested in showing how it arises during social interactions, that it is the unavoidable fruit of the way bourgeois society goes, than about it being a part of ourselves: actually, he never said, or showed it to be, a part of ourselves per se. And yes, at the time he filmed "The Discreet Charm..." many stones in Parisīs streets had not been put back in their places, after that Revolution of May 1968, whose cry of war was "C'est Interdit d'interdire" (Itīs forbidden to forbide), the cry of every free spirit, both in Europe and everywhere: Bunuel was one of the freest men, even when he never got rid of his ties to religion, to sex, and to death.
And I think Mr. Ebert is basically right: bourgeois society accepted it in those days, in a way much different from the way it is seen today.
About Beauty... I think itīs better to leave it to every one to define it in his own terms, as it usually "is in the eye of the beholder".
Regards
BF
First I can not follow you with Hypocrite and beauty, I can not recognize any connection, help me on this one....
I simply picked the beauty as one of the qualities that EVERYONE has... just like love, jelousy, pride... and hypocrisy. I think everyone has all of those qualities, just to a different degree - sometimes very little, but even then it is still there. Sometimes these are under automatic control (call it upbringing) sometimes it takes an effort (we all fight our internal demons), so in essence what he said about hypocrisy is trivial, and could be said about ANY human trait.
I will call Bernardo, as he is so much better elocutate as I am in the English language, and I wonder what he could bring in, to go farther in this discussion.
It was, and still is very difficult to find the right words for me, as it is subtil and more complex that it looks like, but now enough empy words, I will try to go to the core of this!
First the difference between our view on this critic, maybe be one of a cultural one, let me explain: " The bourgeois " as we call them in France have always been an easy & beloved target from the artists in my country, think of J. Brelīsīsong..Les bourgeois cīest comme les cochons...The bourgeois are like pigs..More they grow olders more they are assholes ( con ).
That has a long tradition!
Of course you are right everyone is at some degree an hypocrite, but the artist ( Bunuel ) is showing us the mirror and add " donīt worry I am not better myself " that is a way for trying to be..better and find more grace for himself to himself or vice versa. And THAT is want he want to let know us. We are all part of this...shit.
But that was just a detail, I just think you have shallow this critic in the wrong throat if I may says so.
The defecation..this image is not my prefered too, but art a la Bunuel is disturbing, let me remind you that the Romans us to sit on long banks...eating and defecalting in a row. The surrealist were masters for disturbing at any price, be it a frontal attack to our " good taste " with deliberate " bad taste " la fin justifie les moyens as we say...
But I still did not manage to have a real grip on our opposed views.I feel.
We must work harder.
This short critic is saying it all. Better than one million words.
A must.
I think that there are still a lot valuable for any time & any place in this film.
It was one of his best.
But if you did not like it, you will still have a lot to work...with you.
I wonder how do you will cope with " Beau Travail ? ".If I were you, I would check this page, after seeing a film, to see how you could get more out of every one of them.
"realist" films of youth.
Tristiana, Viridiana, Belle du Jour, Exterminating Angel...all are excellent.
His two satires (Discreet, and Obscure) I found boring, over the top messes---senilescence, perhaps?
and definitely not a good introduction to his work, a self indulgent snapshot of a society that by 1972 was going the way of the dodo, it was dated even then
Belle de Jour with Catherine Deneuve I would recommend as his best known and most accessible film, The Exterminating Angel and That Obscure Object of Desire his masterpieces but still an acquired taste; dont expect Hitchcock or Indy Jones in either
If you only ever watch one more Bunuel film, make it Belle de Jour!
Graham
I see what you are saying, but I am really not sure what makes things like Exterminating Angel hard to penetrate - besides just the willingnes to do so. I think it is immediately funny and absorbing, in addition to be pretty clear.I think one can always over-analyze instead of simply floating with the film's flow.
Ditto for the Desire... the walking scenes are sooooo well made one should simply enjoy them for what they are - sometimes things are as simple as they seem to be.
is my favorite Buenel film. The double casting of the girl, the casting of Rey, the terrorist background, etc-- all so very weird and so very Buenel.
May even be more accessible, for a start in his work, beside his wonderful " Le Chien Andalou " or " LīAge Dīor " who are still and more than ever fascinating pieces of early cinema.
And you still got Catherine on top..( or better said in the laid..)
Of course " Belle " is the better film.
Thanks Patrick, I had forgotten that one. Bunuel wrote a stunning autobiography; apparently the original printing is in French and the USA released English paperback is somewhat abbreviated
I had a copy of the English translation as a hardback which was available in the late 1980s, lent it out, and never got it back, if you read this you will see why its a book that once lent out will never come back!
Graham
You welcome Graham!
It is a bio I always want to read, but always forgot to...So now it was the right reminder...And just place an order at Amazon.fr...So in a certain kind..Thank you!
Lending things out is a terrible thing to do, at the moment I am deseperately looking for missing DVDīs..Years ago it was LPīs and books....Sometimes I am enraged at myself to do the lending...And every time I do it again..I must possede a weak character!
" Nazarin " was a film who left a profund mark in me too. Did you see it?
The reason I have a huge movie collection on laserdisc and DVD is freedom, freedom to watch whatever I want whenever I want. I can't tell you how many times I've gone looking for a film and can't find it because I loaned it out to someone and I even forget the someone. The same applies to CDs.So now I don't loan anything out.
I still do.
I can not manage to say " No. "
I feel some kind of " Pat, you can not keep this beautiful things to yourself " even at the danger to not retrieve them.
And boy am I tired to say to people...donīt forget to get them back to me...Until I have all, but forgotten myself.
...to have many friends, and a poor memory...It works fine with discs, videos, DVDs,...
Regards
BF
a
...then you borrow from them, while your poor memory doesnīt haunt you if you never return them...Easy, isnīt it?
Regards
BF
It takes TWO friends with bad memories to build up ONE biblioteca....
Good one..Bernardo!
nt
I, OTOH, never do. Or almost never.
That is what I always WANTED to do...But lazy as I am.....
No, I must confess thats one I have yet to see, but I will try and find it on laser disc or video
Graham
It was politically tainted ( marxism ) and not without // to Pasolini " Gospel of St Matthew, the first was made in 1958 the later in 1965, I think.
Strong films!
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