I watched this Bunuel classic last night, and was struck by a few musings. Technically the movie seems rather old-fashioned: the camera work, for instance, is graceful and slow: none of the quick jumps, fast cuts of the modern directors. This gives the film an appropriately elegiac feel. To enjoy the film one's attention must be more than superficial. This, of course, would pose too great a demand on most viewers. Modern movies, like modern novels, are more flash than substance. They are designed for short attention spans and a kind of adolescent mentality.
The ending of The Exterminating Angel made me wince a bit (the gathering in the church, the flock of sheep), but except for these couple minutes the film explains nothing. The guests at the dinner party are unable to leave the room. No one tells us why: there is no Freddy in his mask and steel fingernails standing guard at the door, no special effects aliens with gore-dripping mouths. Everything is internal, I told Jacky, my wife's 20-something daughter, who was rather lost and bored. It is like a dream. It occurs beneath the surface of our normal life. The movie requires you to look deeper into yourself and deeper into the reality around you. Why cant these dinner guests leave the room? Well, why cant you leave a bad relationship? a job you hate? a life-style you despise? The guests slowly degrade. There are suggestions of savagry. Isnt that what happens to us, when we are trapped in a life we cant leave? We become brittle, angry, sour. Our shirts are stained with sweat, our collars dirty. We smell of defeat, rot, despair.
But this message is implicit, not explicit. We are told nothing. It is like life itself: there is no teleprompter, no narrator with a portentious summation, no easy solutions.
Art requires something, I tell Jacky. Art looks beneath the surface. There is a kind of archetypal reality lurking beneath our paved streets and gypsum walls. Something rather primitive, primal. The job of art is to suggest such things, whether in film, or novels, or dance, or music....
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6 years ago
Don, Ending this post with the requirements, the job of art. Ancient art is studied to reveal secrets about a culture, a common idea that held a people together. To me art today is a stylized way of ignoring people. Looking for a niche to mass produce. I'm not necessarily against that either. Their is a responsibility of the viewer as well. You have to be willing to take the risk to explore. Because what is on the surface is supposed to be deceiving. Having the ability to deceive is an important survival technique, without it fear would consume us. We take chances because we know we can rely on deception. It makes it impossible for people to know how other people experience them, unless they communicate in some way, even that can be deceptive.
ReplyDeletePatricia