This is a film that very clearly Means Something, and I feel
stupid because I don’t know what that is.
It is to the credit of the director (Luis Buñuel) that the film is not
boring, and always seems to be moving forward, even though it does not have
that much of a plot. Essentially, it is
set in a mansion (in Mexico, where Buñuel was in exile from his native Spain
because of Franco), where a lavish dinner party is being thrown for a party of
musicians who are coming from a night at the opera. As the film opens, the servants at the house
are finishing preparations prior to cutting out. The loyal butler cannot understand why they
are all leaving, and, strangely, none of them seem to know why either. The last action of one of them is to fall
headlong with a plate of hors d’oeuvres,
to the amusement of most of the dinner guests.
The hostess warns those of the staff that she catches leaving that they
will be fired if they do so, but they politely insist. However, the butler handles the rest of the
meal, and the festivities continue until the small hours (ending with a piano
performance by one of them) and then… nobody leaves. They all bed down in the room they’re
in. They don’t even leave the room to go
to the bathroom or one of the (presumably) many bedrooms in this palatial
house. And… that’s the plot of the
film. They can’t leave the room. Why not?
Not because of some force field – just because they can’t. They can plan to, like the Butler, who, after
bringing the leftovers from the night’s meal for breakfast, is told to get
spoons for the coffee, and… can’t do it.
As you can imagine, they run out of food and liquid fast and things get
ugly. I think it’s implied that they’re
using some of the closets as toilets, and one couple is canoodling in there –
until they kill themselves in a suicide pact.
But that’s a while after one of the older ones just dies and his corpse
starts to stench so badly from the closet they put it in that they stuff rags
in the cracks round the door. They
eventually get water by smashing into the wall and exposing a water pipe, and
when they’re on the brink of starvation, a trio of sheep which were intended to
be part of the festivities (but the hostess decided against it after one of the
guests was so po-faced about the dropped hors-d’oeuvres)
and have been living elsewhere in the house in the indeterminate intervening
time (along with a trained bear, for some reason) unwisely hoof it up the
stairs and into the room. Meanwhile,
outside the house, crowds have gathered, but are equally unable even to get
close to the house. Things are coming to
a head when most of the trapped turn on the host who invited them to this party
and all that stands between him and death is a couple of brave, still-sane
friends of his (including the Doctor, who has been the voice of reason
throughout the whole ordeal). To avoid a
melee, the host is about to offer to kill himself (to “break the spell”) when
one of the women (to my shame, I couldn’t keep anyone but a few characters
straight, especially when they started to get all disheveled) points out that
everyone (except, presumably, the three corpses in the closets) is in the exact
position they were that night when the piano performance happened, just before
everyone found themselves unable to leave.
Somehow this breaks the spell
(and, coincidentally (?), all the staff who left before the meal show up
outside simultaneously) and they can get out.
All’s well that ends well, right?
Then we see everyone inside a cathedral with a solemn service that one
can only assume is to honor the dead, and, like the monster coming back to life
after the credits of a horror film, everyone finds themselves unable to leave
the cathedral… Cut to shots of the
military shooting people outside and…scene.
So what does it mean?
The proletariat know when to leave a dying country and the ruling class
turns on each other? Then the church is
the next institution to go? Only our
minds stand in the way of saving ourselves? But what was it with those apparent time glitches at the start, like when the guests come in the front door and then it happens again?
I dunno. Watch it and let me know.
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