Owned release: The 2000 Criterion DVD release of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie includes this on a separate disc as an extra.
Acquired: June 14, 2010 - bought the disc from Criterion shortly after the announcement that it was going out of print.
Seen before?: No.
One of the things about this project that I'm looking forward to is re-watching a lot of Luis Buñuel. Buñuel was the first canon director I became obsessed with as a teenage cinephile. I spent a good portion of my teen years trying to watch all the major works of his and got to most of them (Viridiana eluded me until the Criterion release years later, and Los Olvidados came soon after when I realized that my library system at the time still offered VHS tapes - a luxury that, as I found recently, is no longer). I spent one summer reading My Last Sigh. I had a Belle de Jour poster tied to the Scorsese-sponsored Miramax re-release in my room in high school. I was the only one in my college Intro to Film course who had seen Un Chien Andalou prior to it screening in class. (To this day, one of the greatest in-unison reactions I've ever heard from an audience.) I spent years considering him my favorite filmmaker of all time, and if pressed I probably still would hold to that notion.
And the last time I saw a film of his was March of 2011, when my local arthouse theater showed Belle de Jour. That's no way to treat an old friend.
With all that as a foundation upon which I've set a good deal of my cinephilia, it then seems appropriate to start this off with a documentary about Buñuel. Buñuel, who has meant so much to me over the years, serving as a lamplight for this new thing of mine. It's like it was meant to be.
I wish I could say the documentary was deserving of the man, but it is ultimately the kind of basic talking-head documentary that seems all wrong for such a unique and unclassifiable figure. The film even admits this more or less immediately, when Jose Bello says, "With Buñuel, it's difficult to look for the explanation because most of the best things about him had no explanation." The project is undercut before it even begins, really, yet it doggedly goes on anyway. Because... well, what else would you do? What would a properly Buñuelian documentary about the man himself look like? A hall of mirrors, a pile of half-truths, a series of dreams, a disconnected parade of fetishes? Would it simply be an adaptation of My Last Sigh? And would there be cows?
The condition of the film's release, maybe, is telling. If A propósito is relegated to supplemental material status, unable to earn a release on its own, that seems strangely appropriate - consider it also a supplement to the man himself and his work, a conventional adjunct to the much richer and more fanciful Sigh (passages of which are read at various junctures during this film). There is the occasional interesting piece of information (the midfilm passage where several interviewees reflect on Buñuel's strangely conservative stance on sex and eroticism is engrossing - "Love is a secret ceremony to be performed underground"), and stories about the man never get old even as they've been told before. There's also a demonstration of Buñuel's signature cocktail, which as a booze nerd makes me indescribably happy and I can't wait to try it. (Three parts gin, two parts Carpano Antico, one part Cinzano sweet vermouth). Plus, it's made me want to dig up my old copy of Sigh and re-read it - it's been too long for that, too.
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