Luis Buñuel's vision of inhumanity

Instituto Cervantes marked the 50th anniversary of Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana with a screening at Pelikula, the 10th Spanish Film Festival.  We learned that Viridiana would be projected on 35mm film, making it a mandatory movie nerd event, though in truth it doesn’t take much to drag us out of the house on a wet and slightly ominous day.

 There are many filmmakers we admire, but for Buñuel we hold a special affection. We love his movies—we cannot claim to understand them completely, but we will keep on watching them because each viewing is different from the last. The better we know ourselves, the more his movies make sense. Every time we watch The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie or The Exterminating Angel, we are already looking forward to the next time we put on the DVD or whatever media becomes the standard.

 Buñuel is the director we would enjoy having a drink with—a scene suitable for a Buñuel movie, since the man died many years ago. It helps that he included his recipe for the perfect dry martini in his autobiography, My Last Sigh. “The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients—glasses, gin, and shaker—in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about 20 degrees below zero (Centigrade). Don’t take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Shake it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, shake it again, and serve.” 

 We could’ve used the perfect martini while watching Viridiana, for it is a deeply upsetting movie. Bizarre, funny, powerful, and upsetting. The poor girl—What has she done to deserve this?

 Buñuel had been living in exile in Mexico when the Franco government invited him back to Spain in 1960 to make a movie. So he made one specifically designed to tick off Spain, the Church, and all the groups he loved to offend. His mission accomplished, he left Spain. In his autobiography he reports that the uproar over Viridiana was such that Franco himself asked to see it, and according to the producers the dictator didn’t see what was so objectionable about it. However the movie stayed banned, especially after it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Surreal señor: Director Luis Buñuel was born on Feb. 22, 1900, Calanda, Spain and died on July 29, 1983 in Mexico. He directed the movie Viridiana in 1961.

 Half a century later the film retains its power to offend not only its original targets, but just about anyone who harbors illusions about humanity. 

 Viridiana is a beautiful young nun who cannot refuse an invitation to visit her uncle. The old man is obsessed with her because she looks exactly like his wife who died on their wedding night. He begs her to live with him, and when that doesn’t work he orders the maid to drug her. Then he tries to have his way with the nun, but he can’t do it. When she wakes up he tells her that it happened anyway. Consumed with guilt at his lie, he hangs himself. There’s a joke about the rope he hanged himself with.

 The saintly Viridiana is freaked out by all this. She tries to restore order to her life through corporal acts of mercy. She turns her share of her uncle’s estate into a sanctuary for beggars; the rest goes to her cousin, his illegitimate son. But the beggars repay her kindness by taking over the house and trashing it, defiling the family heirlooms and having an orgy. In one famous scene, the 12 beggars pose as the “Last Supper” by Leonardo. The nun is raped while Handel’s Messiah blares from the dead uncle’s gramophone.

The film ends with Viridiana joining her greedy cousin and his lover, the maid, in a game of cards. 

So you have this girl who’s so pious that she sleeps in a scratchy shirt on the floor while wearing a crown of thorns, but she feels no pity for the sentimental old fool in love with her. The uncle tries to molest her, fails, and does the “honorable” thing, which is to kill himself. The girl feels guilty at having driven him to suicide, and seeks atonement through charity. 

 Like all naive people trying to be good, she is sentimental about the poor. She wants to believe that they are sweet, cuddly unfortunates who just need loving care. But these beggars are mean, devious and sleazy, not because they’re poor but because they’re people. Viridiana is punished for her good deeds. 

 Essentially Buñuel’s film says that the innocent and virtuous get screwed over. It is foolish to demand purity in an impure world.  The world is not populated by saints, nor is it made for them. All saints are dead.

 This is not the vision of humanity that we would like to have. Tell us this is not true.

We’re still waiting.