If you're knowledgeable about Bunuel's body of work, then you'll see pretty much the blue print for his future films, with all of his views on religion, unrequited lust and love/hate for the bourgeoisie. I agree with those who loved it yet, at the same time, I feel people missed Bunuel's point. Bunuel wanted a complete affront to the senses of that audience. If that sounds childish, well... Anyone could argue the easiness of taking shocking images and filming them and then claiming to be a genius is really dumb. But there is a sense of flow and rhythm to the images; this is not just a disparate collection of things to look at.
Yet still one does not have to scratch his/her head in bewilderment as to what it all means. Does anyone complain about a Dali painting and his skewing of reality? Maybe, I don't know. But it's the same thing here. There are lots of grotesque, funny and sublime sequences. And though it doesn't necessarily flow as a cohesive narrative which has a straightforward, underlying message, it's clear which social mores that Bunuel/Dali are criticizing. If you're versed in Bunuel, he'd be the first to tell you that his images are not supposed to be symbolic. If you see a peasant on a horse and carriage riding through a Marquis De Sade castle, then that's exactly what you're seeing.
As such there is an image of man executing his son, an image of another man brutally kicking a blind man, a cross with human scalps, a toilet making sewer noises cut between images of a man rolling in mud, which looks a little too much like...
Yet still one does not have to scratch his/her head in bewilderment as to what it all means. Does anyone complain about a Dali painting and his skewing of reality? Maybe, I don't know. But it's the same thing here. There are lots of grotesque, funny and sublime sequences. And though it doesn't necessarily flow as a cohesive narrative which has a straightforward, underlying message, it's clear which social mores that Bunuel/Dali are criticizing. If you're versed in Bunuel, he'd be the first to tell you that his images are not supposed to be symbolic. If you see a peasant on a horse and carriage riding through a Marquis De Sade castle, then that's exactly what you're seeing.
As such there is an image of man executing his son, an image of another man brutally kicking a blind man, a cross with human scalps, a toilet making sewer noises cut between images of a man rolling in mud, which looks a little too much like...