MovieChat Forums > Las Hurdes Discussion > Unbeliavable!

Unbeliavable!

posted 20 years ago by Dalmas
9 replies | jump to latest

I haven't seen this movie for a while, but when I checked out here on IMDd I found a couple of things that amazed me.

First of all: How can some of you really believe that Las Hurdes really is a documentary? Do you really think that a filmmaker/artist like Bunuel would include obvious set-up-scenes like the one where the donkey is shot (and you can see the gunsmoke), or the one with the dead breathing child, if he wanted us to believe that the movie is for real? And the story in itself, isn't that absurd enough? Do you really think Bunuel expected us to buy the story about the people who walk miles to collect leaves to SLEEP on?

But the most amazing thing is that there are people who believes Las Hurdes is a documentary, and STILL think it's fantastic. Come on people, how can you think that a documentary with a breathing dead child is great? (A rhetorical question of course, I know it's because you like to feel intellectual, understanding a movie by the great and complicated film maker Luis Bunuel.)

Las Hurdes is a brillant movie, just like This is Spinal Tap, as an absurd and humorous fake-documenary, not as a real documentary.

(And yes, I DO know that my English sucks, so you don't have to point that out.)

[–] phattyj 20 years ago

You seem to criticize this film not on it's artistic merits but for the fact that it is not a documentary...

Who cares if it's a documentary...only Bunuel could pull off the sarcastic tone he uses in the editing and narration....

excellent film...documentary or no

[–] icdedpeeple888 9 years ago

I don't think he's making a criticism about what the nature of documentaries should be. If I may be so bold, I think what he's trying to say is that it's a testament to Bunuel's skill that people are able to be duped by this movie, yet still enjoy it.

This film is truly an oft-overlooked masterpiece.

[–] tightjeansdude 16 years ago

"notice the attempt at interior decorating"

[–] BwlBoy 16 years ago

Plays like a public information film. What a surprise another critically overrated piece by Bunuel. Having seen Un Chien Andalou, L'Age D'or, Las Hurdes, Viridiana and El Angel Exterminador I can honestly say I don't know what all the fuss is about his work.

[–] slackdaemon 15 years ago

you'd "know what all the fuss is about" if MST3K had butchered them, eh?

[–] entej 15 years ago

Oh my, I watched it again and child really did breath... :)

[–] nycruise-1 14 years ago

There's a whole political bent to the making of this film that is lost now.

There was civil unrest in Spain at the time- and one of the government had marketed the region near Las Hurdas as being travel-vacation worthy.

I think this film is a sarcastic attempt by Bunuel to call the (then) Spanish Government on the carpet - but the problem is regimes changed before the movie was even released.

Surreal no matter when you watch it, though.

"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"

[–] ilpohirvonen 14 years ago

We and all the film historians are wrong - only you're right. Of course it is a documentary the whole philosophy of documentary is that: "Is this all just set-up?" Think of the first documentary ever made Nanook of the North. Do you really think they would let Bunuel film an actual dead child? I think the parents (or the people taking care of the child) would mind. But the point is, children die there all the time - so who cares is this one real or not? The picture allows us to get the point. It is a documentary, many film historians have listed it to their lists of the greatest documentaries ever made etc. A brilliant film.

Btw, I'm not saying film historians are always right, and we should only listen to them. That was just one way of showing that many people know it is a documentary. If I remember correctly it even was in an old documentary series, which played in a local film theater. Georges Franju's Le sang des betes (1949) is also a bit similar to this - a surrealistic, poetic documentary.

"I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle"

[–] 9 years ago

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