‘I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain…’
My only previous experience with the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel came in the shape of his incendiary surrealist films Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or. Those two films marked the beginning of Buñuel’s continued criticism of the Catholic church and the upper classes. It’s heartening to know that time did not blunt Buñuel’s disgust. Step forward, The Exterminating Angel…
An upper-class dinner party hosted by the suave Edmundo (Enrique Rambal) unravels when the guests find themselves unable to leave. The mystery intensifies with the revelation that all the lower-class servants abandoned the building before the party began.
Buñuel’s depiction of the bourgeoisie here is typically savage. While the party rages, guests brazenly discuss a young woman’s virginity and laugh when one of the waiting staff trips and falls. When the guests realise they are unable to leave, their veneer of respectability is soon stripped away revealing the filthy, selfish animals underneath. Crucially, Buñuel and his cast work hard to ensure that his characters are authentic and human rather than caricatures. We must believe in the upper-class dinner guests to truly despise them, or pity them. Buñuel seems to be making the point the latter would be the most unbearable thing for the guests themselves. To be pitied by the likes of us would be a step too far.
Aside from the searing social commentary, Buñuel’s film looks purposefully ostentatious and opulent. The surroundings become more and more absurd as the film rolls on. The issue here is that even at 90 minutes, the one-room setting means that The Exterminating Angel often becomes repetitive – although with Buñuel that could very well have been his intention all along.
The Exterminating Angel is an important, influential film, and one that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in Buñuel or in surrealism generally.