Sometimes I'm not sure what I really think about a movie until I try to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Then, occasionally, the dam bursts, the fingers fly, and the vitriol or praise bursts forth. I knew about this movie, and Bunuel, before I watched it - any movie fan/buff worth his or her salt does, and so I approached it with an open mind, figuring that, at 40 years of age, I should at least be able to get the message, even if I didn't appreciate the way it was put across.
Well, I got the message but, dear God, did I really have to sit through such a relentless barrage of clever-clever surreal clap-trap in order to do so?
I'm not an intellectual man, and don't aspire to be one, so I don't feel particularly excluded by movies like this; each to their own, and all that. But, having said that, I can't help thinking exclusion is perhaps Bunuel's intention when he loads his film with such inaccessible and baffling images (and sequences) in order to deliver what is (apparently) quite a simple message. As far as I'm concerned, Bunuel was simply making movies for the small band of intellectual elitists of his own ilk, which makes him both a snob and the cinematic equivalent of the young child beseeching his friends to 'come and see what I've made!'. Either that, or he was so impressed with his own cleverness that his inflated self-regard blinded him to the fact that his choice of style immediately and irrevocably alienated the majority of his potential audience.
I can confidently say that this is one film I shall never watch again.
Well, I got the message but, dear God, did I really have to sit through such a relentless barrage of clever-clever surreal clap-trap in order to do so?
I'm not an intellectual man, and don't aspire to be one, so I don't feel particularly excluded by movies like this; each to their own, and all that. But, having said that, I can't help thinking exclusion is perhaps Bunuel's intention when he loads his film with such inaccessible and baffling images (and sequences) in order to deliver what is (apparently) quite a simple message. As far as I'm concerned, Bunuel was simply making movies for the small band of intellectual elitists of his own ilk, which makes him both a snob and the cinematic equivalent of the young child beseeching his friends to 'come and see what I've made!'. Either that, or he was so impressed with his own cleverness that his inflated self-regard blinded him to the fact that his choice of style immediately and irrevocably alienated the majority of his potential audience.
I can confidently say that this is one film I shall never watch again.