Possible spoilers. You've been warned.
Having previously seen Un Chien Andalou and Belle de Jour, I went into this second Bunuel-Dali filmic collaboration with high hopes, but this brilliant film exceeded my wildest expectations. I can say that I was moved, I can say that I laughed, and, without a doubt, I can say that Bunuel and Dali's gleeful willingness to offend still shocks some seventy-three years after the film was conceived.
This film is like Un Chien Andalou toned down (at least it gives that illusion for much of its length) and spread out over an hour, and even at scarcely over an hour the film has an epic feel that few films have ever captured. An early sequence in which a group of peasants attempt to scale a mountain in order to presumably kill a group of priests at the top must have been studied by Werner Herzog; next to the jaw-dropping final scene of Heart of Glass it is perhaps the most powerful portrayal of man's impotence ever captured on film.
After the bizarre, sad, and funny sequence with the peasants, a group of aristocrats move in to, I think, found Rome on the site where the priests have died, but are interrupted by an aristocratic couple trying to have sex, and much of the rest of the movie concerns this poor young couple's attempts to make love while all the world seems to be against it happening. The sequences with the couple get some of the movie's biggest laughs (cow? giraffe? maid on fire? I don't know either) but also provide some stunning moments; the sequence in which the man walks the city imagining his distant love underscored by Tristan and Isolde is brilliant (Hitchcock and Herrmann were taking notes, I am positive), and the scene of consumnation, complete with the couple whispering things to each other that are not said and crosscutting with an orchestra elsewhere in the garden, is strangely hypnotic and moving.
I had heard that this movie might offend the religious folk, and until the final moments I had no idea why. But then the last scene happened. In order to explain, I am a fairly religious person, and thus am usually offended when artists of any kind take stupid, short-sighted cheap shots at religion just in order for shock value. But the punchline of this cheap shot is so audacious, so improbably well-timed, that I had no choice but to applaud it. Does it really have anything to do with anything? I'm not sure, but somehow I doubt it. But funny is funny is funny is funny, and this last scene is hilariously shocking. I'll leave you to see for yourself what exactly happens here, because to take the surprise of this scene would be to take much of the movie's sick power.
For a movie running at 63 minutes, L 'Age d'Or has more memorable moments than any movie I've seen in the past few months. There are so many scenes in which are sickest fantasies are realized (for example, what will that father do with that gun? what will the protagonist do to this blind man? and what is she thinking about that statue's toe?), and so many where Bunuel and Dali provoke our deepest longings, that each scene plays like a glimpse into the most extreme emotions lying dormant in ourselves. The two main actors portray their animal desire for each other so well that they create scenes as erotic as anything in Mulholland Drive without even having to take off their clothes. If you're looking for a film that defies every formula you've ever seen and cuts into raw, bare emotion, then you can't do much better L' Age d'Or. But, if you're of a churchgoing disposition, beware of the last scene. It's a doozy.
Having previously seen Un Chien Andalou and Belle de Jour, I went into this second Bunuel-Dali filmic collaboration with high hopes, but this brilliant film exceeded my wildest expectations. I can say that I was moved, I can say that I laughed, and, without a doubt, I can say that Bunuel and Dali's gleeful willingness to offend still shocks some seventy-three years after the film was conceived.
This film is like Un Chien Andalou toned down (at least it gives that illusion for much of its length) and spread out over an hour, and even at scarcely over an hour the film has an epic feel that few films have ever captured. An early sequence in which a group of peasants attempt to scale a mountain in order to presumably kill a group of priests at the top must have been studied by Werner Herzog; next to the jaw-dropping final scene of Heart of Glass it is perhaps the most powerful portrayal of man's impotence ever captured on film.
After the bizarre, sad, and funny sequence with the peasants, a group of aristocrats move in to, I think, found Rome on the site where the priests have died, but are interrupted by an aristocratic couple trying to have sex, and much of the rest of the movie concerns this poor young couple's attempts to make love while all the world seems to be against it happening. The sequences with the couple get some of the movie's biggest laughs (cow? giraffe? maid on fire? I don't know either) but also provide some stunning moments; the sequence in which the man walks the city imagining his distant love underscored by Tristan and Isolde is brilliant (Hitchcock and Herrmann were taking notes, I am positive), and the scene of consumnation, complete with the couple whispering things to each other that are not said and crosscutting with an orchestra elsewhere in the garden, is strangely hypnotic and moving.
I had heard that this movie might offend the religious folk, and until the final moments I had no idea why. But then the last scene happened. In order to explain, I am a fairly religious person, and thus am usually offended when artists of any kind take stupid, short-sighted cheap shots at religion just in order for shock value. But the punchline of this cheap shot is so audacious, so improbably well-timed, that I had no choice but to applaud it. Does it really have anything to do with anything? I'm not sure, but somehow I doubt it. But funny is funny is funny is funny, and this last scene is hilariously shocking. I'll leave you to see for yourself what exactly happens here, because to take the surprise of this scene would be to take much of the movie's sick power.
For a movie running at 63 minutes, L 'Age d'Or has more memorable moments than any movie I've seen in the past few months. There are so many scenes in which are sickest fantasies are realized (for example, what will that father do with that gun? what will the protagonist do to this blind man? and what is she thinking about that statue's toe?), and so many where Bunuel and Dali provoke our deepest longings, that each scene plays like a glimpse into the most extreme emotions lying dormant in ourselves. The two main actors portray their animal desire for each other so well that they create scenes as erotic as anything in Mulholland Drive without even having to take off their clothes. If you're looking for a film that defies every formula you've ever seen and cuts into raw, bare emotion, then you can't do much better L' Age d'Or. But, if you're of a churchgoing disposition, beware of the last scene. It's a doozy.
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