The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie directed by Luis Buñuel (France, 1972)
One of the guiding principles of surrealist artists like Salvador Dali, Max Ernst or Luis Buñuel was that ideas and images should defy rational explanation.
In his autobiography, ‘My Last Breath’, Buñuel linked this to his religious non-belief, writing that “my form of atheism leads inevitably to an acceptance of the inexplicable”.
This philosophy is evident in The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie, the second of a movie triptych he made near the end of an illustrious career spanning almost half a century. The movie shares themes of coincidence, mystery and the nature of truth with The Milky Way (1969) and The Phantom Of Liberty (1974)
The notion that things in his films should be understandable and explainable filled Buñuel with horror. He saw the inherent contradictions of reducing a work of the imagination to a formula or a rigid set of principles. He thus prefered to describe the events of The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie as “realism in the midst of delirium”. Continue reading
