"L’age D’or" (1930)

Luis Buñuel was fascinated by human nature. He was also quite cynical about it, and he thought of the human race as a depraved bunch, hiding behind a mask of politeness and civility. His second film L’age D’or caused something of a scandal for its candid depictions of and views on sex, and it was heavily censored for decades. The film begins with a seemingly non-sequitur scene describing the nature of scorpions, but Bunuel is really referring to humans, and he intends it, as almost everything he does, as a bizarre, derisive joke. The film’s main story is about a man and woman trying to have sex, but how social forces keep getting in the way of this. When they do get into the act, they look as if they’re in a parody of what sex is. They’re clumsy, and they all but ravage eachother. And that’s just the foreplay that never actually goes anywhere. Besides this central story though, the film is almost without plot, capturing moments of human weakness and selfishness with a twisted sense of humor. Bunuel fills the film with odd jokes that feel like they are there simply because they amuse him. The man attacks almost every living thing he comes in contact with, including a blind person wandering by. The man does it out of sexual frustration and self-entitlement, or may be for no reason at all. In one surreal moment, we discover that the woman has a pet cow, and see it lying in her bed. The film also features Bunuel’s indifference to religion and the Catholic church. In the film’s final moments, Bunuel ties up Christian iconography with sexual debauchery, and he does it for the sheer perversity of the joke. Today Bunuel's messages and ideas don't affect us like they did upon the film's release. In stead, what remains surprising is Bunuel's forcefulness in presenting his vision. No would mistake a Bunuel film for anything other than a Bunuel film; the audacity still shines through.

Grade: B+