El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel). 1962. Mexico. Directed by Luis Buñuel. Screenplay by Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza. With Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Claudio Brook, Jacqueline Andere. In Spanish; English subtitles. 35mm. 95 min.
Back in the news because of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are, based on this film and Buñuel’s 1972 Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Exterminating Angel is a brilliantly open-ended allegory, set in an unnamed European capital where the guests at an elegant dinner party mysteriously find themselves unable to leave the living room. Social relations break down quickly as the servants disappear, the food supply runs out and basic human needs become impossible to fulfill. As tempting as it is to reduce the film to a metaphor for upper class decadence, Buñuel shakes off simple political interpretations by introducing a stream of undecipherable, dreamlike images while time itself seems to hiccup, as situations recycle and, at the climax, the film resets for a new beginning.