Spain

The Exterminating Angel Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Ever had a party where the friends you invited just don’t go home? They’ve stayed for dinner, stayed the night, and even though you’ve fed them breakfast in the morning, they’re still here! Well that’s what happens in Bunuel’s Exterminating Angel. It’s intriguing, entertaining, and Bunuel-level absurd. You’ve got to love it!

Why Watch the Exterminating Angel?

• See more of Bunuel’s dark view of human nature (watch Viridiana for more)
• To laugh at the aristocracy just like Monty Python’s Twit of the Year
• For surrealism at it’s finest – there are bears and sheep wandering through the house, floating hands, and chicken legs in purses!
• To learn how to small talk and ditch someone you don’t want to speak to anymore onto someone else

The Breakdown

The film starts with guests arriving in their fancy cars at the gates of a mansion in Spain. As the guests are entering the house, the servants are trying to leave like rats from a drowning ship. But what is the problem with this house?

Well it’s full of the aristocracy that’s why. The guests have their fancy dinner, and continue to have drinks, and then coffee, then go to sleep. At this party, the guests just don’t leave.

In the morning, the host tries to get them to leave after breakfast, but his plan fails. None of the guests leave. In fact, in a surrealist twist, none of them can leave. They are somehow all confined to fight for survival in the morning room of this giant mansion.

Yes, this film is absurd. But it’s also intriguing and entertaining enough to keep on watching. As for the political allegories, Roger Ebert puts it best:

“The dinner guests represent the ruling class in Franco’s Spain. Having set a banquet table for themselves by defeating the workers in the Spanish Civil War, they sit down for a feast, only to find it never ends. They’re trapped in their own bourgeois cul-de-sac. Increasingly resentful at being shut off from the world outside, they grow mean and restless; their worst tendencies are revealed.”

Conclusion

This is vintage Bunuel. Just like in Viridiana he subtly makes fun of Franco’s Spain. In this case he makes fun of the aristocracy who are trapped in their upper class bubble (their own oversized mansion).