I'm not really a Luis Bunuel fan. I actively enjoyed only one of his films I'd seen before The Exterminating Angel (which marks the 6th Bunuel film I've seen). That film, should you be curious, is That Obscure Object of Desire. Quite frankly, I think his films are a bit over my head. The culture he is often lampooning is foreign to me in country, era, and class. I'm a big fan of surrealism, but Bunuel's particular brand is somewhat mystifying. None of that has stopped me from watching Bunuel's other films. I'm curious about nearly anything that gets the Criterion treatment and he is considered a master of surrealist filmmaking. Since I already enjoy one of his films, it's safe to assume I'll enjoy another.
Two things struck me about title, The Exterminating Angel. The first is that it sounds like it should be a Kurosawa film (and even after seeing it, I still picture Toshiro Mifune as the eponymous angel). The second, and last, came in relation to the film being (generally) about a dinner party. The Exterminating Angel + dinner party =
Well, the title is a bit of a non sequitur. A number of upper class twits (to keep with the Monty Python references) get together for a dinner party but find that they can't leave. Some mysterious force is keeping them in and everyone else out. As the days pass, hunger and desperation sets in. These well-to-do gentle folk devolve. Tempers flare. Arguments break out. Hunger and thirst take control. Some die. Some lose reason. The most "civilized" of us turn to animals. Of course, all of this happens after the servants leave.
I wouldn't really call it a comedy, though it's very amusing. It's too absurd to be a drama. The Exterminating Angel is pitched at just the right level to be realistic and surrealistic. Bunuel (apparently) considers it a failure of sorts and wishes he'd been able to push it a bit further (I definitely expected some cannibalism, implied at the least), but I feel the film still works. Keep your ears and eyes open for the many instances of repetition (which will be much easier with the subtitles this trailer lacks, unless you speak Spanish).
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