Bridging the Abyss to Luis Buñuel

We have to face the fact that Buñuel himself is not sure of his direction Un Chien andalou. He asks, “What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press and the inane herd that saw beauty and poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate call for murder?” (Bauche 9). But then in another interview he states, “The sources from which the film draws inspiration are those of poetry, freed from the ballast of reason and tradition” (Mellen 151).

Which statement are we to believe? Does Buñuel even know? Perhaps what he is trying to suggest is that the emotions that are “a desperate call for murder” are expressed poetically, “freed from reason and tradition”. Tradition is the key word here. Buñuel’s art is mired in a rejection of tradition, a rejection of the social and cultural force that shapes his world. Like so many poets before him, Buñuel uses his films to unmask the myths that society has placed on its members.

Finally, Buñuel’s films are universal and timeless in the sense that in every period of time, societies are struggling with the balance of power among its members, “the entrapment by the bourgeoisie” (Mellen 3). In a 1939 article for Cosmological Eye, writer Henry Miller has this to say about Luis Buñuel, “They have called Buñuel everything—traitor, anarchist, pervert, defamer, iconoclast. But lunatic they dare not call him. True, it is lunacy he portrays in his film, but it not of his making.” (Mellen 172).

As all great poets before him, Buñuel rises from the ashes, covered in ashes in hopes of a new world. He attempts to force open the eyes, to slice them open if necessary, of the masses of society who are destroying themselves in their deluded institutions. Perhaps Buñuel sums up his aesthetic the best with this quote from My Last Sigh, “Our imagination, and our dreams, are forever invading our memories; and since we are all apt to believe in the reality of our fantasies, we end up transforming our lies into truths” (Buñuel 5). Regardless of whether Buñuel’s aesthetic leans toward chaos and confusion, his art becomes a dynamic poetry alive on the screen.