The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

102 Alex Gibney
I would say that there’s a sequence that comes in a kind of roundabout way
to me from Buñuel. But The Exterminating Angel certainly got me interested
in pursuing movies as a career.
So how might this film translate for modern audiences?
Gibney: I think the first thirty minutes of the film hold up very well. I think
the back half of the film, when it gets darker, there are moments that are
very interesting. But oddly enough, the terror and the horror of this brutality
that these people are exhibiting toward each other doesn’t come across
as well as it might. He runs out of surprises after awhile, and that ends up
being a little disappointing.
So, in terms of it holding up, it’s really important to me because it turned
me on to Buñuel. But it’s not my absolute favorite Buñuel film. The opening
thirty minutes I think are masterful. After that there are moments of greatness
but also moments that are somewhat mundane.
Please, finish your thought. It’s not your favorite Buñuel film. Then
what is, and why?
Gibney: I guess my favorite is the one he won the Academy Award for, The
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. I have a lot of favorites for different reasons:
I love Viridiana, I love That Obscure Object of Desire, and I also love
Los olvidados, which is a very tough film.
But The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie found a tone that, on the one
hand, he does a kind of masterful job of making these people very amusing
and witty, and he also filmed it in a way that almost becomes an enjoyable
bourgeois French film. But what’s going on inside it is so [laughs] so wildly
funny and so subversive, that I think he mastered a style where he made
it glossily commercial and utterly subversive at the same time. And that is
really something.
And also, in terms of the way he did the dream sequences, there was none
of this sort of “dissolving.” They were dreams within dreams within dreams,
and it was all kind of artfully constructed in the scenario, but directed in
such a way that, visually, there didn’t seem to be any particular distinction
between the dream world and the world of everyday life. So I think it’s a
masterful film.