Viridiana - Criterion Collection
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Movie Reviews of Viridiana - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: A Bu?uel masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
The day after this film won the 1961 Palme d'Or at Cannes, the reaction of the Catholic church prompted Franco's Spain to ban it and burn most copies and all outtakes. Just prior to its release though, Bu?uel scandalized his republican friends by returning to the country ruled by the fascist Generalissimo, to work on Viridiana.
The film is as full of its own paradoxes, so it casts only a splintered light on Viridiana to see it as an anti-Franco tract, through the prism of the director's atheism, or, for that matter, in terms of struggles between rich and destitute, simple and sophisticated, backward vs. modern, etc. Bu?uel is not a straightforward leftie, an outright atheist, or a simple anything.
[If you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to skip the next 3 `spoiler' paragraphs]
Viridiana dislikes Don Jorge, her uncle by marriage: she disapproves of his past and spurns his unexpected proposal. When he relates his great tragedy - his wife's death just after their marriage - she is unsympathetic, even brutal. Yet he (Fernando Rey, The French Connection, Belle de Jour) is in fact starved for love, which takes him to the verge of a desperate act. Thinking he has drugged and raped her, Viridiana abandons her wish to become a nun. His suicide does not visibly soften her, although she asks a band of paupers and mentally-unhinged outcasts to join her in restoring the finca she inherits, which has lain fallow for too long. Her invitation is presumably meant to atone, although it is not clear if it's for her uncle's sin of suicide or for her part in prompting it.
This attempt to lift the poor through their work requires a discipline they don't want, yet her request that each contribute "according to their abilities" expresses a naive socialism that backfires on her. For all her vagabond guests' down-to-earth joy and exuberance, they are depicted as petty and prone to malice. They see her as a saint (and she does not mind), but they betray her noble intentions, showing her faith to be disengaged and empty.
The tensions that afflict Don Jorge make him one of the richest characters ever put to screen, undercutting any view of him as merely a randy lecher or some symbol of a corrupt ancien r?gime. Jorge, his philandering, illegitimate son (Paco Rabal), believes the estate he inherited with Viridiana can be restored through hard work - while she and the paupers pray in the fields and work like dilettantes. Like his uncle, Jorge is kind but practical, even wily, and this saves her from rape. In the end, she comes around to his earthy ways, with a heavy heart.
This Criterion DVD includes a restored version and interviews with the leading lady (Silvia Pinal) and Bu?uel, who got top-rate performances from everyone, including mentally-challenged vagrants he recruited off the street - who, in fact, very nearly steal the show. This may be Bu?uel's least surreal movie, and it is far richer than I've related: there is outstanding, eerily moody cinematography; various allusions to Poe, the spiritual mentor of Surrealism; melodrama leavened with subtle humour (the uncle cross-dressing, the vagabonds who inherit the earth, various double-edged religious symbols, including a mock Last Supper); and much more besides. Even the music plays a central part: Don Jorge takes solemn delight in Handel and Mozart, to which the revelling vagrants jig; he also plays the organ, dreadfully yet lovingly; later on, the radio plays a vacuous pop song while nobody listens - suggesting that something has been lost, after all, as well as gained.
An intriguing film that's aged very well, providing an excellent introduction to one of the great directors.
Movie Review: ...and to think, none of this would have happened if Viagra has existed at the time...
Summary: 5 Stars
Viridiana (Luis Bunuel, 1961)
Most people seem to consider Viridiana Luis Bunuel's magnum opus. I still hold out that La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie holds that title, but there's no denying Viridiana is an amazing piece of work. Banned in both Italy (and denounced by the Vatican to this day) and its native Spain, Viridiana is a bluntly apostatic film, nasty in every possible way, and funny as hell.
I just tried for fifteen minutes to write something approximating a plot summary that would both be comprehensive and not contain any plot spoilers, and it's just not possible. This is a pure slice-of-(very-weird-)life film; everything that happens here builds on what comes before, and it's all well integrated enough that taking no slice of the film to summarize is possible while keeping any sense of the whole. All I can say is there's a nun, and there's an old guy, and there's a beggars' banquet and a number of love triangles (one of which involves a ghost) and a lot of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus." There is work, there is prayer, there is a crown of thorns. There are attacks on religion, attacks on nostalgia, attacks on the myth of the noble savage. Through it all, there is Viridiana herself, idealist, naif, the closest thing to a saint the movie has (and, perhaps, the closest thing to a saint to be found in Bunuel's entire catalogue). She wants to help those she meets, but how much of herself is she willing to give to do so?
Viridiana was the beginning of what would become the most phenomenal stretch of Bunuel's career, where almost every film he made can be labelled a masterpiece-- this, The Exterminating Angel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Obscure Object of Desire, Tristana, Belle de Jour... the list just keeps going. Any of them is just as good as any other (save Discreet Charm, which towers over seventies film rather as Napoleon towers over twenties film). A treat for the senses, a workout for the mind, and, as Derek Malcolm has said, a shock to "people one is quite glad to see offended." As long as you're not one of those people (and here's a simple test: do you, like Viridiana, wear a crown of thorns and have a cross large enough to crucify a good-sized dog above your bed? If so, you are), you're bound to have a whale of a time enjoying this movie. **** ?
Movie Review: movie excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
is a great movie for the master BU?UEL, this product (DVD) is fantasticMovie Review: "That Obscure Object of Desire meets Nazarin"
Summary: 5 Stars
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
The controversial satire was banned by the Spanish government for obscenity and blasphemy after it had received the Golden Palm at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. Viridiana of the title is a young nun (Mexican actress Silvia Penal) who is assigned by her mother superior to visit her widowed uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey) on his farm just before taking her final vows. Viridiana reluctantly agrees to meet with her uncle whom she never knew but who has supported her financially all these years. Don Jaime is obsessed by her cool virginal blond beauty and he sees her as reincarnation of his bride who died thirty years ago on their wedding night. Bunuel gives some of his own sexual fantasies, fetishes, and dreams that he freely admits to Don Jaime thus making him more human. Viridiana winds up as a farm owner along with her uncle's illegitimate son, Jorge (Francisco Rabal, humble and spiritual Nazarin of "Nazarin" here plays absolutely different man). Viridiana, following the great traditions of mad Spaniards, originated by Cervantes and continued by Nazarin, takes seriously great ideas and tries to live accordingly when she attempts to make the farm a heaven for local homeless beggars. Viridiana is a woman of virtue but all her good intentions lead nowhere. I am not surprised that the film was banned and all copies were ordered to be destroyed (Silvia Penal in her interview recalls the dramatic story of two copies of the film that were saved and buried, so they could wait for the better times), I am surprised how Bunuel was able to make this super dark dramedy about the inability of the Catholic Church to deal with the realities of the world at all in his native Spain when Franco was still in power.
Technically, Viridiana is a perfect film, odd and enigmatic behind the seeming simplicity. It's power lays not in the set decorations, stunning locations or the colorful costumes but in a way people interact. When asked what were his ideas behind his films, Bunuel answered, "I have no ideas, it is all instinct".
It took 17 years to bring "Viridiana" home to Spain where it was first shown at the theaters in 1977. It took another 29 years to transfer it to Criterion DVD. Now it is available with several interesting bonus features that include interview with Silvia Penal from 2006, an interview with Richard Norton, the Cineaste editor, and the best one, the parts of the film about Bunuel that was made back in 60th and the man in the documentary is as enigmatic, odd, charming, brilliant, and sinister as his films are.
Highly recommended.
Movie Review: Did Bunuel know any poor people?
Summary: 2 Stars
This movie draws you in. There's no doubt about it. But you soon sense that something is wrong. And what that is is both a sense of impending and overwhelming evil and a gross caricature of the poor. Apparently Bunuel imagined himself as a realist in assessing human nature as essentially corrupt and irreformable. But this is simply not true, as anyone who has worked with the poor and suffering can tell you. Yes, the lives of the suffering can be turned around with charity, especially charity informed by faith in Christ. I've seen it myself many times.
So one has to ask, did Bunuel ever try helping others, or is this movie just one long excuse for his own failure to love his neighbor as himself? The deconstructor should not be above deconstruction, and his psychological motivation for producing this film should be subject to scrutiny by his own method for analyzing human behavior.
Regardless of his clumsy attempt to deride religion and virtue, the main character, Viridiana, comes across as a heroic woman, and the anti-hero comes across as an amoral lout, so much so, that most people will sympathize with Viridiana and religion.
For this reason, the movie merits a couple of stars. The movie also has value for its place in the history of cinema and modernist thought, and as a warning against the latter.