Luis
Buñuel is easily the most important surrealist in cinema history. You could
also say he was one of the early pioneers of the true-in-spirit
hybrid-documentary. Just like his previous films, the 27-minute Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan or Land Without Bread immediately stirred
controversy and was duly banned for years. Truth and artistic license jostle
each other while witnessing the depths of Spanish poverty in Salvador Simo
Busom’s animated making-of feature, Buñuel
in the Labyrinth of the Turtles, which opens today in New York, courtesy of
GKIDS.
When
Buñuel started developing the documentary that would become Land Without Bread, his reputation as a
filmmaker essentially rested on two films, Un
Chien Andalou, the short film that commenced his collaboration with
Salvador Dali and L’Age d’Or, the
hour-long satire that pointedly ended it. Both works generated explosive
outrage as well as reverence within avant-garde circles. There are frequent
references to Buñuel’s frosty relationship with Dali throughout the film, but
the psychological influence of his distant and domineering father will be more
significant.
Despite
his baggage, Buñuel can be charming, at least at this early stage of his
career, but also maddening. Just ask his anarchist friend, Ramón Acín Aquilué,
who jokingly promised to fund Buñuel’s proposed documentary exposing the
desperate living conditions in the Las Hurdes region—and kept his word when it
came to pass. However, Acín was most definitely not made of money, which
inevitably led to conflict with the not-so practical auteur.
Although
most of the film is animated, Simo periodically inserts archival footage from Land Without Bread, cutting back and
forth to show us what was happening on both sides of the camera. The way he and
editor Jose Manuel Jimenez marry the two styles of footage together is
enormously clever and visually striking.
Clearly,
Simo has a great deal of sympathy for Buñuel, but the film is not a starry-eyed
exercise in hagiography. Instead, he provides a complete portrait of the
artist, including his tendencies to be a bit of a user and a flake. Even though
Simo takes us pretty extensively into Buñuel’s head, it is still hard to decide
what to make of him. Look, geniuses are complicated.
Regardless,
Labyrinth of the Turtles (a reference
to Las Hurdes’ tortoise shell-like roofs) is an entertaining and erudite primer
on Buñuel’s early development as an artist. Simo’s animation is quite elegant,
in a style befitting the 1930s, but he mixes in some wild, Freudian flights of
fancy that are quite in keeping with the Buñuelian spirit.
In
fact, Simo and co-screenwriter Eligio R. Montero will probably motivate a lot
of intrigued viewers to take a deep dive into the Buñuel filmography. Yet, they
avoid getting bogged down in problematic politics of the era. Altogether, it is
probably the most fitting big-screen treatment of the larger-than-life auteur
you could ever hope for. Highly recommended for fans of sophisticated
animation, Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the
Turtles opens today (8/16) in New York, at the Quad.
