Starting (and ending) in church, arising from and settling into the ornate stonework carvings of an impressive old cathedral's edifice, Luis Bunuel's declaration (or perhaps merely an escalation) of war against the bourgeoisie The Exterminating Angel foregoes most if not all of the crass satirical religious skewering that gave Viridiana such scandalous appeal. (But for those who get their kicks from eviscerating the more pompous aspects of organized religion and the Catholic hierarchy in particular - don't worry, Bunuel had plenty more scabrous mockery in store... but we'll get to all that eventually.) Here, in what proved to be nothing less than a resurrection of his status on the world stage as one of cinema's most daring provocateurs after decades of relative obscurity, the Spanish auteur is aiming at the comfortable and self-satisfied upper middle class. Though circumstances dictated that he filmed in Mexico with a cast of relative unknowns (save for his lead female Silvia Pinal, who just happened to be the wife of his producer and the main focus of attention in Viridiana), his whimsically withering critique extends well beyond the borders of that country and the time in which it was filmed. The Exterminating Angel, a character name derived from biblical sources (Exodus Ch. ?) though never explicitly introduced as such in the film, is a ruthless slayer of humanity, cutting without pity or hesitation through the pretensions and long-cultivated mannerisms of an entitled, overly pampered and thus well-deserving segment of humanity.
The conceit of the film is probably familiar to most people who would bother to read this, but just to be sure, here's my synopsis: a group of affluent couples are invited to a evening dinner party held in the finely appointed estate of a prominent citizen, Edmundo Nobile, and his wife Lucia. Prior to their arrival, all but a few of the servants hired to attend to the needs of their guests run away quite abruptly for reasons largely unexplained and probably not even well understood by the truants themselves. Nevertheless, the party carries on, enduring the usual volleys of petty backbiting gossip and smarmy innuendo that these erstwhile pillars of society routinely hurl at each other without ever quite bringing it to the surface and into open conflict.
Though the festivities are marred by the lack of adequate serving staff on hand, the guests do their best to maintain a brave face, faking their enjoyment of the stunts prepared for their amusement (including a spectacularly explosive pratfall in which a tray of hors d'oeurves is dropped and splattered across the dining room.) Other entertainments involving a domesticated bear and a flock of undernourished sheep don't fare so well, even though the animals are on hand and need to be dealt with, despite the fact that their trainers have fled the premises. Still, the evening grinds on, a formality observed out of a mixture of duty and resignation that this is simply how things must be in order to preserve and retain the privileged status that could just as easily be yanked away if any of them become too sloppy in observing the necessary protocols.
Bizarrity settles in at precisely the point when normal social cues dictate that, honey, it's time to leave. All the glad-handing, forced smiles, small talk and obligatory witticisms have run their course, there are no more expectations to be fulfilled, and no one at all would be faulted for heading to the exits. But there's just one small problem - an invisible, inscrutable, insurmountable barrier to leaving the dining room has been erected, for no plausible or rational reason. We see the tension hovering around that sealed but visibly undeniable exit gradually build. Guests make their way to the boundary, but are overtaken by a desire to stick around just a bit longer - a final cup of coffee, a desire to see what happens next, a shawl that needs to be retrieved. It's not until a butler is directed in the most unambiguous terms to leave the room and bring back some desired items, that we see just how stubbornly impassable that threshold has become. He looks up, surveys the plain dark curtain that extends a foot or so below the ceiling, and impotently sits back down with a distraught expression on his face. He may as well be pushing to slip through cast iron bars spaced a few inches apart. Try as he might, he simply... cannot... leave.
That dilemma of being stuck in a desperate, impossible situation with limited options, mounting tensions and the terrifying prospect of additional fatalities beyond what was initially experienced in the first cataclysmic disruption makes The Exterminating Angel a particularly weird forerunner (as is the earlier A Night to Remember) of the disaster film genre, especially as exemplified in its mid-70s heyday in films like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake. In each of these films, a large ensemble cast finds itself in an appalling predicament and has to figure out, based on their native wits and sheer determination, a way to survive, a path that leads to "The Morning After." The main difference here in The Exterminating Angel being, of course, that nothing has happened on a physical level to rock their world - no attempt is even made to explain why the guests cannot leave the room. You just see that it's not possible by looking at the fear in their eyes, how they each bend, yield and snap under the pressure. Tearing out hair, indulging in surreptitious affairs, chiseling into walls in order to find a source of water and sustenance, eavesdropping and gossiping, praying, smoking and unvarnished sabotage, wanton destruction, ritualistic superstition, drug abuse, hysterical denial, manic depression and suicide - the full spectrum of sublimating and maladaptive coping mechanisms are captured in an approximately 20' by 30' foot time-and-space capsule of preferred bourgeois attitudes and behaviors.
As diverse as those skills may be, they fail to impress Bunuel. His long term familiarity with such middle class foibles has merely earned his contempt, leaving most of his audience squirming uncomfortably in our seat as we realize just how accurately he has pegged us and how futile our retorts would be, if we even dared to raise them. And for those who stand on the outside looking in at The Exterminating Angel's disabling, though not fatal, jabs and thrusts, as much as they may be tempted to join in the scorning jibes that Bunuel casts at his protagonists, it's only a matter of time and experience before they too realize that they are not exempt. Even if it is only in our dreams that we dare allow ourselves to acknowledge our inherent identification with the so-called beautiful people that occupy Bunuel's comfortably appointed prison, the suffocating grip of his randomly wandering disembodied hand is sure to find us, once the door slides open and we find ourselves similarly gasping in astonishment and dread.
Next: Antoine and Colette