piffle or art?
Is this stuff piffle (pseudo-intellectual nonsense) or great art? If it is art explain why.
share[deleted]
MovieChat Forums > L'âge d'or (1979) Discussion > piffle or art?
Banana.
shareI'm watching it now and leaning toward piffle.
About as subtle as a high-schooler's film class final project. Religion bad! Middle class bad! Sex good!
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a high-schooler's film class final project
Fine. I'd like to see that high-schooler with a camera in her hand and arranging and filming such impressive scenes. Good luck! share
Wait. You are asking two questions. First you ask whether it is great art, then whether it is art altogether (which it would be regardless of who thinks it's great art or "piffle".)
If you think it's pseudo-intellecual, well, then I would say the ideas behind Surrealism have eluded you. It seems people throw around the term "pretentious" or "psuedo-intellectual" for things they don't like that are considered great in academic or critical circles without questioning whether those terms really fit. L'Age d'Or doesn't try to be anything more than what it is. It was never supposed to be some complex critical theory, just a subversive Surralist attack on the contemporaneous society, a society which pretty much proved the film's point in the aftermath that followed its debut.
The last post is very well written and I fully understand what you are saying but it still doesn't change the fact that what we are ultimately presented with is something that is utterly mediocre. If it was presented to a mainstream cinema audience today I would guarantee there would be at least a 95% walk out and the film would have been withdrawn. That is its reality.
If any artist makes a piece of art be it a film or writing or painting or music then there will be people who will in turn react to the reaction. Often if an artist is criticizing an element or multiple elements of society people who do not see the same elements of society as needing critique and in fact hold those very elements that are being critiqued dear then those people may very well say the art work it bad or meaningless or some other negative term.
It seems that many years after Bunuel's classic critique of contemporary culture that there still are these negative sort of reactions to his artistic statement.
Mainstream audiences today have Inception 3rd all time with EVERY Bunuel flick nowhere in the top 250, I doubt anyone on this board would care much for the 'mainstream crowd'.
shareThere is nothing even remotely intellectual about Bunuel or Dali. In fact their two films together along with their individual career works offer some of the most anti-intellectual and non-analytical art ever created, particularly this film. Surrealism at its best completely defies such terms.
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.
I wonder if something that is anti-intellectual is actually ultimately super intellectual in the best sense of the word.
On Wikipedia intellectual is described thusly:
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence (thought and reason) and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity. In socialist theory, it is necessary to explain how a "workers'" movement can be led by those who have never held jobs. As such, intellectuals are an adjunct to the working class.
With those description I would say perhaps Buñuel used his intelligence for his professional work in films, but in a sociological way perhaps it would mean something different if Buñuel were being used as an intellectual. I would argue that sociologically Buñuel's work as a whole shows hypocrisies and concerns of upper class, bourgeoisie, lower class intellectuals and non intellectuals. This seems like part of the brilliance of Buñuel. He addressed these elements in a poetic way that can be interpreted by the viewer in multiple ways. In a certain way reading his autobiography "My Last Sigh" and conversations with Buñuel "Objects of Desire" give great insights in to these topics. "My Last Sigh" is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.