Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018) Poster

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8/10
Very good cartoon movie about Luis Buñuel and the filming his third movie , the documentary : ¨Las Hurdes tierra sin pan¨
ma-cortes8 May 2019
This is the true story of how Luis Buñuel made his third film . In this movie director Salvador Simó deals with Luis Buñuel from his stay at Paris to voyage to Las Hurdes to shoot a documentary short . As his friend the anarchist and sculptor Ramón Acin buys a lottery ticket and he promises to him to finance it . They are lucky and with the money won at lottery they go to Las Hurdes in 1933 . It is a remote region of Spain which was connected to the outside world only in 1922 with the completion of a road. To reach Las Hurdes, it is necessary to travel through the town of La Alberca, which itself has some unusual sights and customs. The residents of the area - spread across several villages - lives in poverty and in isolation from the outside world. They survive mostly on a diet of potatoes and beans with meat available only a few days a week. In fact, they eat goat meat only when one of the animals dies. Inbreeding results in a disproportionately large number of people with mental disabilities. The title of the black and white documentary that Buñuel shoots ¨Hurdes , Tierra sin pan¨ refers to the fact that the residents did not know how to make bread , and the Spanish title ¨Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas¨or ¨Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles¨ regarding the maze of the homes built in tortoise-style .

This is a cartoon movie portraying Luis Buñuel and his journey to the region of Las Hurdes to film a documentary , it has surrealistic events , including dreams and weird happenings , as well as self-biographic elements , as Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education by his rigid , stiff father , which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and religion . The film also develops his childhood in Calanda with the famous ¨drums of Calanda¨ and the premiere of ¨L'Age D'or¨, after the film opened in Paris at Studio 28 on October, 1930, word spread about the film's bizarre content , on the evening of 3 December, 1930, halfway through the film, the fascist League of Patriots and other groups began to throw purple ink at the screen, they then rushed out into the lobby of the theater, slashing paintings by Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Man Ray , as producers soon withdrew the film from circulation and pulled the film from distribution for nearly 50 years and threatened with excommunication by the Pope . And the angry discusion between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí , as they had effectively fallen out by the time the film went into production to the extent that Dali refused to have anything to do with the actual making of the film , though they had previously made ¨Un perro Andaluz¨. In fact , Buñuel had financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, when he made his first film , 17-minute runtime "Un Chien Andalou" (1929) , and subsequently ¨Age of Gold¨(1930) .

The picture ¨Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles¨ mingles animated frames along with documentary , and it is perfectly blended . The cartoon images are made in traditional style , an almost primitive and naif drawing , but is enough agreeable and charming . Narrating life at a remote region of Spain in Extremadura , where civilisation has barely developed, showing how the local peasants try to survive without even the most basic utilities and skills . The Hurdanos themselves live in several dozen villages in the nearby mountains, near a valley that contains the ruins of a convent . The lifestyle of the Hurdanos is so primitive that, until fairly recently, even bread was unknown to them. The film was well directed by Salvador Simó who formerly worked in animation department of various films, such as : Midsummer Dream , Goofy and son , Howl , Las tres mellizas , El Cid : the legend , It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown , among others
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8/10
Rare To See Such Mature Animation Like This. Incredible!
rannynm22 August 2019
This is an incredibly unique film. It's rare to see such mature animation like this, and I've been wanting more mature animation for a while. So I was incredibly entertained.

The film is about the Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel and it follows him as he films his documentary, Las Hurdes, which is a documentary about the Las Hurdes region in Spain.

Now, I love animation. However, I am slightly peeved that 2D animated movies are not very popular anymore. So I was excited to learn that this film is 2D. Not only that, but it is incredibly stylized and beautiful 2D. I've always liked aesthetics pertaining to historical generations of filmmaking. So it's not surprising that I love this art style. One thing I find interesting is that many scenes in the film have clips from the actual Las Hurdes documentary, sliced in with animated recreations of the scenes. I can't really explain why, but I really like this detail.

Another interesting aspect of the animation is the imagery. Luis Bunuel is often associated with surrealism and I assume that's why the movie includes several strange and nonsensical sequences. There's also a consistent theme involving religion, which I didn't really understand if I'm being honest, but it is interesting.

A major aspect of this film is Luis's relationship with the anarchist painter, Ramon Acin. The film was made thanks to Ramon, so it's understandable that the film heavily focuses on their friendship. It's interesting to see their conflict on the purpose of the film, and in general it makes for some compelling drama.

In a way this can serve as an introduction to Luis Bunuel and his work. I never knew of him before this film. However, now I'm somewhat intrigued by him and his work. Although, there is something I should warn people about. Despite the film being animated, this film is absolutely not a kid's movie. There are lots of dark jokes, mature themes and a surprising amount of animal violence. It is important to point this out as many people assume all animated films are for little kids, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

I give this film 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it for ages 13 to 18. If you're a fan of history, the art of film or both, and you can stomach some uncomfortable subject matter, I highly recommend this.

Reviewed by Calista B., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic. For more reviews by youth, visit kidsfirst dot org.
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7/10
I hate animated feature films, but...
skepticskeptical2 February 2023
If you have already seen Las Hurdes, this is worth watching. If not, it will be largely incomprehensible (in addition to annoyingly animated). I always feel that I have been fooled into watching a cartoon when I press start for a feature-length film only to discover that there is no actual acting whatsoever and some graphic artist in fact created all of the visuals. But because I had seen Las Hurdes, it was interesting to watch, especially the critiques made by the director here of Bunuel's killing of the goats, and also his "theory" of what looks to have been Bunuel's autism.

I had heard about the goat killing before, and I know that directors do these things (apparently Almodovar tortured and killed six or so bulls in making of his film Talk to her). Of course, all meat eaters are perhaps hypocrites for criticizing these patent use of animals for purely artistic (not necessary) reasons, given that we could all just eat bugs, as some "people in high places" are now encouraging us to do.

Anyway, the use of a pistol to kill the animals involved a similar sort of hypocrisy, given that Las Hurdes was billed as a documentary...
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9/10
Catnip for film buffs!
Tryavna11 March 2019
Warning: Spoilers
By the early 1930s, Luis Bunuel was simultaneously one of the most famous avant-garde filmmakers in Europe and persona non grata in that filmmaking world. The controversial receptions of Un Chien Andalou and especially L'Age d'Or ultimately caused his patron, Charles de Noailles, to withdraw his support, and Bunuel found other producers similarly reluctant to court controversy by funding his projects. After months of getting nowhere, a French cinematographer named Eli Lotar brought a recently published ethnographic study of a remote region of Spain to Bunuel's attention, and an old friend from Spain named Ramon Acin won a lottery and offered Bunuel the money to direct a documentary based on that ethnography. The resulting film,Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (Land without Bread), became Bunuel's last credited film as director before moving to Mexico a dozen years later. Recently, Las Hurdes has come to be regarded as one of the most important documentaries of its time, seemingly deconstructing the documentary form itself and anticipating the mockumentaries of Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest by decades.

It's an unusual subject for an animated film, but it works wonderfully, especially if you're a film buff who reveres Bunuel's movies, as I do. Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles tells the story of Bunuel's efforts to make Las Hurdes, focusing extensively on the great director's efforts to manipulate what he was filming in order to get at a greater truth. In fact, interspersed periodically within the animated story are live-action excerpts from Las Hurdes itself, and part of the fun (if you've seen Las Hurdes) is noting how well the animators recreate the strikingly unusual faces of the people Bunuel chose to film. Director Salvador Simo and his team also take great pleasure in concocting their own surreal images when they animate several of Bunuel's own dreams. (To my mind, these dream sequences resemble the bizarre landscapes of Salvador Dali more than the straight-faced realism that Bunuel perfected, but the imagery is beautiful nonetheless.) What makes animation such an obvious choice for this movie instead of the documentary approach it could have taken -- and what makes the movie itself touching at times -- is the way it pays tribute to the friendship between Bunuel and Ramon Acin. Acin, an anarchist, was murdered early in the Spanish Civil War, and although early showings of Las Hurdes removed his name from the credits, Bunuel insisted that Acin's name be restored when new prints were struck in the 1960s. Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles ultimately contends that, after having soured on the very idea of collaboration due his tension with Dali, the process of making Las Hurdes taught Bunuel that filmmaking is an inherently collaborative endeavor.

I suppose I could quibble with some of Simo's choices. For instance, Bunuel was not nearly as isolated in the early 1930s as this movie suggests. He spent some time in Hollywood, employed by MGM, and he was already engaged to his future wife. In the mid-1930s, Bunuel produced and may have directed several movies for Filmofono; he wasn't just editing Las Hurdes alone in his own home. Perhaps most problematic is the fact that Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles presents Las Hurdes as a sincere effort on Bunuel's part to provoke social and political action. Drawing attention to the pompous narration and music that Bunuel added to the soundtrack (albeit several years later), many critics have persuasively argued that Las Hurdes is something of an inside joke, poking fun at travelogues and the ethnographic documentary tradition in general. I wish that Simo had at least acknowledged this line of argument, but it's churlish to criticize a filmmaker for having a point of view and presenting it so well.

A final point: as someone who knows and loves Bunuel's movies and as someone who enjoys animation for adult audiences, I am probably the exact audience the filmmakers had in mind for this movie. The relatively obscure story it tells may not excite everyone the way it does me. But it truly is a beautiful and thought-provoking movie, and it looks like GKIDS has picked it up for U.S. distribution, so please check it out if you get a chance. (I also really hope that, when it's eventually released on Blu-Ray, it will be accompanied by Las Hurdes itself, as well as appropriate special features that provides even more context for appreciating this lovely little film.)
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9/10
This is a very good film!
SmileyMcGrouchpantsJrEsqIII24 September 2019
I was pleased. Still, I remember how "Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread" was a formative viewing experience in my life (after "Un Chien Anadlou," "Raising Arizona," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," David Lynch, Pixies' "Doolittle," etc.), given the way Buñuel whipped out the butter knife and slathered on a parody of ethnographic film's bourgeois mentality by overdoing it (the VHS version I saw, in its translation, pulls punches here; the 16mm version I saw in film studies class does *not*). Already compelling material made for riotous viewing by a teenager tickled by "The Simpsons" and not aware yet of who Thomas Pynchon was at the Ivy League caliber school he was attending. Regardless, this film has a lot to say -- if that means "take you through," ground to cover -- and just settling back in and watching it will mean you'll be rewarded. Like "Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" and "Cezanne et Moi," this is one of the more pleasant and rewarding walks through a time and place you *shouldn't*, like, necessarily have *known* about to begin with, but we can slow down and catch up with ourselves now. Recommended for anybody in Western Civ. who's trying to still figure out what in the hey has been going on for the interval since, arguable, people've been living, maybe, past 35 (see the illuminating "Teenage" documentary for further details -- not everybody got Clara Bow's shot at life!). A worthwhile trip through an era involving a very willful man and one of the wittier presences of the 20th Century. Think like most big figures, but not a jerk. Think like Stanley Kubrick, but not Stanley Kubrick.
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9/10
Buñuel in His Labyrinth
Rectangular_businessman31 December 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Considering the many visual possibilities the animated medium, I kinda was expecting this movie to include far more of Buñuel's trademark surrealism: While there are a couple of elements which could have been considered surrealistic in a couple of scenes (Particularly in the sequence referecing Dali's Elephants), the movie is rather down to earth, being also more than willing to show the flaws Buñuel had as a person rather than exalting him. (Though he is still portrayed in a very sympathetic manner)

It is also very entertaining to watch. While officially this isn't a comedy (At least, it isn't labelled as such here on the Internet movie database) all the humorous scenes made me laugh a lot, being very well-balanced with the serious and emotional moments.

The animation is a bit uneven in a couple of scenes, but I personally liked a lot the aeasthetic of the character designs, which are simple, but very appealing and very expressive.

I have to wonder how much of the events depicted here are true and how much is fiction. If at least half of it is true, then working with Buñuel in a film must have been an almost unbearable task.
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