Plague Diaries #13: El ángel exterminador
Mar. 30th, 2020 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonofgodzillaSeñor Edmundo Nóbile and his wife welcome you to their home.
At first glance, you might be forgiven for thinking El ángel exterminador has little to do with plague narratives, with, again, works like The Decameron, and yet there is much that Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film shares with such works as Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and with older stories of quarantine and disease.
Taking place after an evening at the opera, Edmundo Nóbile (Enrique Rambal) and his wife, Lucía (Lucy Gallardo) host a gathering of friends at their stately home in the city, only to find that when it comes time to leave, all of them are prevented from doing so by a mysterious force. Trapped by circumstances they do not comprehend, Nóbile and his guests work through a cycle of decline, at first imploring one another to maintain reason, and eventually descending into barbarism and threats, rallying against one other, voicing nebulous explanations for the new reality they now find themselves in. Outside of the house, crowds gather, relatives arrive awaiting news, and yet no one can bring it upon themselves to cross the courtyard and enter the house. A yellow flag signalling quarantine is hung from outside, the people whisper of an outbreak of typhoid, and yet nothing is ever clarified.
Again, like The Seventh Seal, I first saw this film when I was a pretentious teen, watching it during a season on Channel 4 and thinking for many years after that I was the only person who knew of its existence despite the fact that, you know, it was on Channel 4. I had no idea who Buñuel was when I first saw it, nor did I really know what about dada or surrealism or even Un Chien Andalou despite its association with the lyrics of a Pixies song; all I knew was what was on the small television set in our living room in the dark, the black and white images of panic and despair, the fall of the aristocracy into primitivism and spitefulness.
Despite my original pre-internet beliefs, many people before and after have watched El ángel exterminador, and many people have voiced opinions on what the imagery of the film means, what it might be a parable for. For myself, however, I only ever read the film as exactly what was: a reminder of how fragile our notions of culture really are when we are desperate.
At first glance, you might be forgiven for thinking El ángel exterminador has little to do with plague narratives, with, again, works like The Decameron, and yet there is much that Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film shares with such works as Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and with older stories of quarantine and disease.
Taking place after an evening at the opera, Edmundo Nóbile (Enrique Rambal) and his wife, Lucía (Lucy Gallardo) host a gathering of friends at their stately home in the city, only to find that when it comes time to leave, all of them are prevented from doing so by a mysterious force. Trapped by circumstances they do not comprehend, Nóbile and his guests work through a cycle of decline, at first imploring one another to maintain reason, and eventually descending into barbarism and threats, rallying against one other, voicing nebulous explanations for the new reality they now find themselves in. Outside of the house, crowds gather, relatives arrive awaiting news, and yet no one can bring it upon themselves to cross the courtyard and enter the house. A yellow flag signalling quarantine is hung from outside, the people whisper of an outbreak of typhoid, and yet nothing is ever clarified.
Again, like The Seventh Seal, I first saw this film when I was a pretentious teen, watching it during a season on Channel 4 and thinking for many years after that I was the only person who knew of its existence despite the fact that, you know, it was on Channel 4. I had no idea who Buñuel was when I first saw it, nor did I really know what about dada or surrealism or even Un Chien Andalou despite its association with the lyrics of a Pixies song; all I knew was what was on the small television set in our living room in the dark, the black and white images of panic and despair, the fall of the aristocracy into primitivism and spitefulness.
Despite my original pre-internet beliefs, many people before and after have watched El ángel exterminador, and many people have voiced opinions on what the imagery of the film means, what it might be a parable for. For myself, however, I only ever read the film as exactly what was: a reminder of how fragile our notions of culture really are when we are desperate.
