The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

 Luis Bunuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"

Perhaps in all of Luis Bunuel's filmography, his 1972 masterpiece "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is his most confounding. This is not because this film is more surreal that his other works. Actually, that distinction goes to his first two films, "Un Chien Andalou" and "L'Age d'or." Rather, the surrealism of "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is much subtler. So, what exactly is so confounding? 

The plot of the film centers on a group of bourgeois friends, who continuously attempt to dine together, but are continuously interrupted by various happenings. It starts off with getting the date of the dinner mixed up and continuously progresses to more and more absurd reasons, ending finally with a group of terrorists breaking into their home and executing them. All the while, Bunuel continues to pull the rug out from under the audience, revealing time after time that most of what we are seeing is a dream of one of the dinner guests. Or rather, a dream within a dream within a dream. 

The convolution of narrative and reality are perhaps what makes the film confounding. Despite these convolutions, none of what is happening seems too 'over the top' (except perhaps the final sequences). The real confounding nature of the film exists in what seems to be situations in which things don't quiet add up, or the nature of what we're seeing and their intentions are escaping us. If we look at the reasons why these dinner guests never actually get to have their dinner, and the subsequent notion that they are, in fact, nightmares, we begin to understand the subtle digs Bunuel is taking at the titular bourgeoisie class. 

The characters are continuously trying to simply enjoy their meal, have a drink, or have sex with each other and are constantly being interrupted and unable to get what they want. A husband and wife attempt to have sex at their mansion but are interrupted by their lunch guests. The ladies of the group go out for tea, but find that the restaurant are out of beverages. Two of the members attempt an affair, but cannot because the women's husband shows up. The notion that all of these instances turn out to be nightmares of the bourgeoisie lends to the idea that the biggest internal problem facing these people are only minor inconveniences for the normal person. 

To directly contrast these objectively insignificant problems of the bourgeoisie, Bunuel places side characters in the story with real trauma. The lieutenant at the restaurant interrupts the ladies' inability to drink tea to recount a story of his mother dying and being haunted by her ghost instructing him to murder the man he believes to be his father (as he is actually his real father's killer). When the army shows up at the bourgeois home, one of the members recounts a dream in which he was haunted by the ghost of his dead friend and the wife he is forever separated from. When they attend a restaurant a l'improvist, they come to find the entire restaurant grieving the death of its owner. In one scene, a man confesses to the bishop that, as a young gardener, he murdered his bourgeoisie employers because they treated him like an animal. There is even a scene in which the ghost of a strict torturer releases the dinner guests to atone for his awful behavior. All of these side characters have been placed in these scenarios by Bunuel to entirely contradict and make small the problems that the bourgeois characters fuss over. 

The more extreme examples of why the characters cannot eat (or satiate themselves), are due to their involvement in their own political or social corruption. For example, in one instance, the army shows up to be housed for an impending military maneuver. After leaving, the dinner guests can hear the sound of military exercises and are worried they might knock the house over. In another instance, one of the bourgeois members, Rafael - who is an ambassador to the fictional country of Miranda, is being defensive at a dinner party over the dinner host criticizing Miranda's poverty and crime rates. So, he shoots and murders the dinner host. In another dream sequence, all of the characters are arrested by police right before they dine. In the final example, the bourgeoisie's political involvement comes back to haunt them in the form of radical terrorists breaking in and murdering them all. In these scenarios, the dinner guests are unable to enjoy their meal due to political and social repercussions. In these examples, Bunuel is illustrating the more existential fears at the heart of the bourgeoisie. That is - that their corruption, amorality, and disregard for the people lower than them will come back to haunt them.

Despite these observations, the film remains confounding and elusive. While understanding the intention of the story (after a second viewing), I was still pulled in so many illogical directions and had the rug pulled out from under me time and time again. The world of the film is not logical. Even more so, these fallacies are entirely accepted by the characters. Bunuel is not only stringing along his bourgeois characters by using their own desire and sense of entitlement against them, but he continuously strings along the viewer, as well. As the film progresses, the plot begins to unravel. As it becomes more apparent that we are viewing dreams within dreams within dreams, it becomes clear Bunuel is using the audiences expectations of a clear narrative against them. In this way, Bunuel is comparing US to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie clearly expect to be pampered and spoon-fed what they want. We as audience members want the same from the film. Like the bourgeoisie wanting to enjoy their meal, we as viewers want to be entertained and enjoy our 'meal' as well. However, Bunuel continuously uses inventive ways to frustrate his bourgeoise characters and us as well. Bunuel is attempting to frustrate us and in doing so, compares our silly and selfish expectations with that of the upper class he's also insulting. Because of this, "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" becomes a confounding experience in which we are toyed with and our expectations are made null for the purposes of exploiting not just the bourgeoisie, but our own comparable fallacy.

I would like to connect this final point to one of the most iconic scenes in the film. The bourgeois dinner guests show up once again to enjoy a meal, only to discover that they are, in fact, on a stage. Curtains open to reveal an audience watching them. If "Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" points out the comparable fallacies between us and the bourgeois characters, then the rug that has been pulled out from under us, just as they were for the characters in this scene, reveals that the film is actually about us. Not only are we the spectators of the film, we are also the film's subjects. WE are criticizing the characters, but WE are also the ones being criticized. We are not unlike the film's characters in that our pretentions, our amorality, our disgust at minor inconveniences are all the subject of this mockery. We as viewers have seated to enjoy our meal (this film), only to be interrupted by the notion that the film is actually about us, leaving us unable to enjoy it. The scenarios in the film are dreams within dreams within dreams, all fever dreams of very privileged people. However, the film itself then becomes a fever dream in its own right, the fever dream of the privileged viewer.