I enjoyed the movie, however I didn't "get" the walking scenes. Several times throughout the movie the 6 main characters would be shown just walking along a paved road in the middle of nowhere. There was no talking, and they walked along looking around, scattered a bit, holding things or adjusting things (their purses, cigarettes, etc) Why was this in here? What is the prupose?
shareI wouldn't dream of claiming that I knew what was in Louis Bunuel's head, but if I had to, I would guess that he intended the walking scenes to be transitions between other scenes, but also to add to the air of dreaminess that he's aiming for. When I first saw the movie, it was a surprise, after seeing a scene involving four of them in the night, to then see the six of them walking in the day, and then he cuts back to four of them at night again. The scenes do have a sort of unnerving effect.
shareMaybe he's trying to say that no matter what condition that people find themselves in, they rarely get what they want. i.e. the people would always have food available and still not be able to eat for whatever reason, because of manners or if courtesy required that someone not eat or a given situation came up---- while if they were in the same situation in a desert, with no resources around them to eat or drink or whatever they'd have to walk a straight line (in this case a road) in order to survive and try and get to a place where there was sustenance. And nothing would be in their way except the fact that they had no resources. It might be a metaphor for society in which no one is happy; not the bourgeois for all their resources never had a clear opportunity to eat, and not the poor people without anything but the clothes on their backs. And the people walking in the desert shows that even when you are in the best or worst circumstances, you may never get a chance for satisfaction or easy sustenance. Take away the riches, and people are just a bunch of wandering idiots. I may be very very wrong, but this could be a reason.
shareIn response to your well expressed response, I would also point out the first dinner party scene where the guest arrive and discuess the "proper" ways of serving drinks, while the 2 house owners go outside to make love in the bushes. It seems that Bunuel is making the point that passion, love, romance, etc... it what seperates the bourgeosie from any "real" existance, that any social systems of experience are always a hinder to existance. and that the road scene ends the film give credit to such an answer for the reasons you have givenl
shareI always thought the walking scenes illustrated the aimless/pointless nature of their empty existence. To me it seemed like they never really will accomplish anything because they are constantly searching and are consumed with such shallow banality. Their station in life robbed them of any sense of humanity and or purpose so they constantly go in search of things they think are important without ever truly finding anything.
sharei think your various interpretations of those scenes is EXACTLY why they stand out
share<<I always thought the walking scenes illustrated the aimless/pointless nature of their empty existence. To me it seemed like they never really will accomplish anything because they are constantly searching and are consumed with such shallow banality. Their station in life robbed them of any sense of humanity and or purpose so they constantly go in search of things they think are important without ever truly finding anything.>>
That's what I got from it too. Their vapid, pointless lives have put them on a road that may lead them no where...then again it may lead them happily, luxuriously straight to hell.
"I'm not living, I'm just killing time"
Mista Yorke
A very nicely expressed interpretation, which I agree with completely.
shareI always thought the walking scenes illustrated the aimless/pointless nature of their empty existence.That's how I saw it. In the absence of any sense of direction, life is journey without purpose. The word direction has special meaning to a French speaker. THE direction, is actually a person. The one(s) in charge who gives the orders; the Bourgeoisie, in other words.
Yes , this is the interpretation Buñuel has agreed upon .
shareI just finished seeing to film and among (many) other scenes, I was thinking about the those with the walking. I very much appreciate your suggestions, I have an addition to the interpretation of the scences. I think that they try to put the bourgoies out of place; they are on the country-side (on foot!), nothing surrounding them for miles, all they can do is walk. I think the scenes illustrate how weak they are without their social/material structures surrounding them, they feel lost, they can't even interact with each other.
shareI think these are all interesting and valid interpretations, and mostly I agree with them in one way or another. But I think that ultimately the reason that Bunuel put those scenes in is because he knew that people would have conversations like this one about them. He loved the idea that any little thing he filmed, no matter how meaningless, would be dissected again and again by overanxious academics who searched hopelessly for some hidden deeper meaning. He all but cackled about this in his wonderful autiobiography.
Of course, as a good Surrealist, he also believed in leaving the spectators to their own individual interpretations, and this is my own impression of the "walking scenes": I think that these scenes are exactly the same as, say, the scene in which they learn that a wake for the owner of the restaurant where they're eating is being held in the next room; if you strip away all the affectations, all the politeness, all the dialogue, all the bulls__t this is what you get: a group of well-dressed nobodies wandering silently down a non-descript path, forever, toward nothing more climactic than the end of the movie (and beyond to... nothing!). I think Bunuel was saying, "This is what they are really doing; everything else is a joke, or a dream, or a story". Why do you think the characters are constantly telling those weird stories, or waking up from those absurd dreams? It's all illusion, all nonsense. The scenes where the characters walk down the deserted road are the only ones in which we are shown the (existential) reality of these characters' lives.
God, how I love this movie! I'm gonna make good use of my off-day and go watch it right now.
I don't want some renegade necrophile princess as MY roommate!
I think the Beatles did similarly with (some of their) lyrics?
shareI saw a connection with the walking scenes and the scene where their chauffeur drinks the martini. To me, I saw a possiblity that if the chauffeur got drunk, it's possible that he could have gotten into an accident. Without their transportation the bourgeois characters are left to walk the road. It kind of says something about how without the lower, working class, the bourgeois are left useless. This was just my immediate interpretation.
shareYou know, tugboats, that's actually a very, very interesting (and brilliant) interpretation! And here I am, waxing poetic! Nicely done... it's simple, elegant, meaningful, Bunuelian; you may have actually gotten closer than anyone else to hitting it right on the head. Bravo, good man (or good woman...?)!
I don't want some renegade necrophile princess as MY roommate!
I agree with the several comments that Bunuel would laugh (and delight) at all the attempted interpretations. But I for one did view the walking scenes as suggesting the aimlenessness of the characters' lives. All they do in the movie is concern themselves with carnal desires -- eating, drinking, fornicating. I view it as a very existential movie which Camus would have loved. There's just no real point to their lives. And they don't exactly have much sympathy for those who don't have the luck of being able to focus only on luxuries and extravagances (which is why it's more a Camus movie to me than a Sartre movie. I detect a tinge of social consciousness beneath the existentialism; after all, the implicit message is that this class of people is aimless, not that all of humanity is aimless). But then, that could be all wrong too. All readings are misreadings, right?
shareI was going to make a similar point, tugboats. Watching the film again last night it struck me how many scenes there are involving cars, all chauffeur-driven. The opening involves guests arriving by car, then they use the car to go off to the restaurant, then off again. Repeatedly we see the banalities of their comfortable social existance being served by the chauffeur-driven car. If you consider all that it makes your point even stronger and (dare I say it) more likely to be a deliberate device.
shareI would defintiely agree that that the walking scenes represent their lack of direction and focus to anything. They are also alone which could mean that they are not really a part of society. There is also often a fair amount of distance between the characters while they are walking; this shows that even though they are best friends, they are not really concerned with each other's company.
shareI think it means nothing. Remember Buñuel is a surrealist artist, and this is a surrealist movie. It may just have been a dream Buñuel had of people walking with no direction and no point. And that's exactly the point of the Dada movement and surrealists as well.
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While others seem to believe the walking is simply a comment on the bourgeoisie who cannot exist without their society I take these walking scenes to translate literally to my own existence. I mean how can any of us exist without our own individual societies? Aren’t we all just as foolish as these six people? Look at us we are all people who have gathered around boxes of light to discuss with strangers our personal interpretations of images that we have separately observed from within other boxes of light. What could be more pointless, more surreal? The charm of such things which may seem only a satiric device to some I believe is very real. The characters dreams are funny and that gives them this charm which we cannot help but accept despite its uselessness etc. In this sense I believe the walking scenes serve to connect us to the characters. At the end of my first viewing I was left to wander aimlessly through all the socio-political-philosophical nuances of the film with no clear meaning. I was in fact on the road with those characters who I had formed a kind of bond with, albeit a very tenuous one. As human beings how can we not claim ignorance, who of us can claim to know definitively what matters in life and why must certain things even seem to matter for that matter? Even asking these questions is somewhat foolish and still something about it brings us together despite our obvious socio-economic-etc barriers. We all have our discreet charm, our own foolishness and slanted views of happiness, such is our strength and weakness.
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AMLCG
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