The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

10
Alex Gibney
The Exterminating Angel
When I asked Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney to choose a film
for this book, I expected him to choose, naturally, a documentary. I couldn’t
have been more wrong.
Instead, he chose a difficult film from a surrealist master, then eloquently
explained why the choice made sense. “One of the things that I
like about [Luis] Buñuel is that he seems to embrace the contradictions of
everyday life, even though he’s mounting them in a fictional way,” Gibney
says. “He did do a documentary once; it was called Las Hurdes, which was
interesting. It was very brutal and bitter, and doesn’t lend itself well to
simple, liberal solutions to the way life works. He chronicles it almost as
an anthropologist. There can be sort of a surreal quality to everyday life,
which I like to embrace.”
Alex Gibney, selected filmography:
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)
Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010)
Freakonomics (2010)
Magic Bus (2011)
The Exterminating Angel
1962
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Starring Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Claudio Brook, José
Baviera, Augusto Benedico, Antonio Bravo, Jacqueline Andere,
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