Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

SeaHorseMafia People stuck in a room where they can't leave, physically nothing keeping in them in there, but they just can't get out. Now, that's a weird idea for a film. But it's not about a plot at all. It's a social satire, a criticism of bourgeois lifestyle and about the condition of human psychology and cinema itself. There is one questions that nobody can really answer, why can't they leave? It's never explained, and if it would be explained, the movie would be dumb as hell. It's the kind of story, or idea, that shouldn't be explained. Some people have a hard time accepting that fact about surrealism. You shouldn't understand it, it's meant to absurd, it's meant to mysterious. In one way you could look this movie as a post-modernist, there's no real answers to life and such, but I tend to say that this is a criticism about the class wars, social satire and surrealist piece of art. I'm not sure that Bunuel knew why couldn't they leave the room. I'm sure he knew that it wasn't important. Maybe it's criticizing cinema itself, how everything always have to have on answer and a reason. When maybe it shouldn't. Life is absurd, that's a line in the film, isn't it? And it's not taking itself seriously, the premise is so outrageous that it couldn't be taken seriously. Or one could look at it as a self-parody. It's a possibility that Bunuel was making fun at himself and surreal film in general. Again, it's so absurd and it's so weird, but it's acted with a straight face. And the direction is somewhat serious. Maybe he was making a huge joke on cinema and his movies. Those are some theories I have come up with. I still think at it's purest this is a social criticism and satire. All the help leave the place, for reason unknown, and the bourgeois people are left helpless. They can't function without the people, who they so look down upon. They treat them horribly, but when they leave, they are left helpless, like fish out of water. Also just how idiotic these people are, the doctor is the only one who keeps he's cool and tries to talk reason. All the other ones start to fight. Bunuel is making fun at the bourgeois lifestyle and what happens when they will have to sacrifice their lifestyle and "ethics". It's kinda like Lord of The Flies, except children are replaces by rich adults and the island is placed by a room in a mansion. Kinda similar premise, they will have to survive in a place with limited amount of food and drink. And they will have to try to live with each other, even though they are savages deep down. You could easily make this a bad horror movie, just say there's a demon that forces them to stay and there you go. But Bunuel never goes for any kind of horror. Maybe that's because it's meant to be an satire and Bunuel doesn't want to give a reason. There are a lot of things I don't understand. Like how a lot of the things are repeated, I simply don't understand that. Is it to show how meaningless their lives are and how they never change their routines? I don't know, the trapped in a room thing, could be a metaphor on how they are all living in their own world, how they live in this box (or a room) and how they don't break out from that.I'm going to try to makes sense on why couldn't they leave... Well, interestingly the people outside the mansion, are trying to help them, but can't get to the mansion. Nobody can't past the gates. The servants left early in the film, with no real explanation, maybe one of them had a real reason to leave and then they all kinda followed him. When the quests after the night are discussing on why didn't anybody leave, one of them states that because he didn't see anybody else leave. Didn't the couple agree to stay after everybody else has gone, so maybe because there was no one to be the first one to leave, none of them wasn't. You know when your in a party and you want to leave, but you don't want to be the first one, so you just wait somebody to say "it's getting very late, I should leave now". Maybe because nobody said that, nobody left. Why didn't they leave in the morning? Maybe they were afraid, they were afraid of whats out there, the fear of the unknown. The people outside the mansion are afraid going there as well. Are they afraid going there, because they don't know why can't they leave. Maybe they think there's a ghost or something. In the end, they get out. But when they go into this church, the same happens. Then we see a massacre in the streets, what did that mean. I don't know, I'm too tired to analyze. Good night.10/10

Andrew Huggett A strange bizarre Mexican film – a bit like an extended episode of the 'The Twilight Zone'. Interesting, and fairly gripping to watch but leaves more questions than answers – why are some sequences repeated with variants in the first 20 minutes?, why did all the servants leave (and how did they know to leave when they did)?, what is the significance of the sheep and the bear and the chicken feet? and what was the final scene all about (when the police started firing shots at the crowd that have gathered outside the church)?. Very strange and surreal. It's an interesting central idea but I'd have liked a bit more of a hint as to what was going on. I'm probably taking it too literally and from too simplistic a viewpoint. Probably deserves another viewing.

bobsgrock Is there any hope for the future of mankind? Fifty years ago, famous Surrealist director Luis Bunuel pointed his acerbic finger at the upper class in this incredibly focused satire of the bourgeois. Such a story as this depends on the audience's ability to look past little details such as a lack of growing facial hair on the men stuck in the living room and accept everything Bunuel throws at us.It seems the most vicious attacks are saved for the Church, which Bunuel seems to view as having similar rules and restrictions as the bourgeois does but with the added promise of eternal salvation in the afterlife. The final sequence of this film is powerful in the way it showcases the bourgeois's almost complete indifference to the struggle and pain of others, even after they have suffered similar conditions. Perhaps the main reason for this film's lasting impact, and the beginning of a whole new career for Bunuel, is its completely unflinching look at what lies at the root of all human beings. In taking away their physical freedom and psychological dressings, Bunuel exposes these people for what he believes we really are: slightly more intelligent, but still animals in every other sense. Our inevitable decline into savagery, incivility and pure selfishness can only be exposed in the most extreme conditions. However, who is to say this isn't possible in some distant future?

tomgillespie2002 'L'enfer c'est les autres' (Hell is other people), wrote the French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, in his play, 'No Exit' (sometimes referred to - and has been performed - as 'In Camera'), that surmised the narrative of three deceased individuals locked in a room, one that they eventually realise they will be spending eternity together in. Luis Bunuel used this simple meta-narrative concept of people trapped, to create one of his finest satires, and his first explicitly surrealist film since L'Age D'Or (1930). After Bunuel's previous film, Viridiana (1961), was condemned by the Vatican and banned in his native country of Spain (and where it was made), he moved back to Mexico where he had been making films throughout the 1940's and 50's, and produced a scabrous attack on General Francisco Franco's Spanish fascist dictatorship, and the institutions, and bourgeois facets of the country that were founded on the destruction of the poor and the proletariat, during the civil war that ended in 1939.Whilst the film works as political allegory, on a base narrative level, it functions as an irrational comedy; or farce. The guests arrive for a lavish dinner, but as they arrive, the maids leave, and progressively all the hired help leave them. Once dinner is complete, the guests congregate in the living room, but they all begin to realise that they are unable to leave the room at all. When this is discovered we observe that they attempt to go, but are either distracted or simply stop or break down at the boundary of the room. This continues through days, possibly months - the characters concept of time completely obliterated. The group falls into decay, primitive urges overwhelm them, and as this representation of Western Civilisation breaks down, the group become brutally savage, turning on the host of the dinner, demanding sacrifice. The group slaughter the lambs that were originally to be used in a dinner prank.At first the guests seem to simply ignore what is happening to them, and continue with inane chat. Exterior to the "party", the grounds are surrounded, but not even the police are able to enter, given the same mysterious barrier that prevents entry. It's almost a perfect parable, illustrating the ignorance of the Spanish bourgeoisie, as they strip the rights and dignity of the proletariat (here the maids leave on their arrival), whilst divorcing their minds from the violence and corruption of a dictatorship. But with this, it also shows how even the "civilised" sections of society, once they are stripped of their social status, their inherited manners of "education", and their ability to use wealth, the fall into absolute decay, probably falling apart greater than the lower classes, with their lessened moral outlook, and an almost infantile inability to deal with regular obstacles.Winner of the 1962 Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival, this was to begin what become (rather belatedly for the 62 year old) his most productive, celebrated and interesting period of his career, based in Paris, beginning with Belle de Jour (1967) and ending with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). This is the period that he developed and expanded his own style, and his unique vision on film. The Exterminating Angel has also given inspiration for others. It is a clear influence on Jean-Luc Godard's wonderfully bleak and satiric depiction of the bourgeoisie and the end of Western Civilisation, Week End (1967). The idea was also utilised in one sketch from Monty Python's Meaning of Life (1983), that saw the guests leaving as ghosts. This is by far, one of his greatest achievements, beautifully realised, with comic touches, and moments of surrealism that both bemuse and amuse.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com