Viridiana

After reading Buñuel's biography, my interest in his films increased even more. After The Andalusian Dog, I chose the no less famous Viridiana, which surprised me immensely. The first part of the film is quite slow, serious, with a suffocating tension in the air, then the film starts to run in a slightly comedic spirit. I can always have a royal time with various human figures, which Buñuel must have surely searched long for this film. An outstanding film with the excellent Silvia Pinal in the title role. (06/11/2011)

Luis Buñuel's famous work has, of course, lost its edges in many ways. Yes, contemporary cinema can certainly be more shocking, but, with all due respect to it, contemporary cinema can hardly go straight to the essence and, without unnecessary exaggeration, reveal the misery of mercy and austerity to the bone. Buñuel is a great aesthete, and I hunt in vain in my memory for a film with such a magnificent and organically integrated composition of the image... The aforementioned scene of the beggar feast is one of the highlights not only of the film, but of cinema as a whole. The perfect pointing-out of the idea through the paradoxical combination of image, music and their overall composition (the paraphrase of L. Da Vinci is eerily cynical heresy!) creates an incredibly impressive whole, from which the character of Viridiana, a beautiful woman committed to God and the service of the "suffering", must necessarily come out foolish and doomed to defeat. No wonder that the Church was irritated by it... Viridiana attacks with sensitive and supremely artistic means, not to insult and shout angrily, but only to reflect on the absurdity and true face of human nature. The absurdity of human action. If you save one suffering dog, you'll miss out on saving another one in no time. If you help a beggar out of the mud, he'll try to smear you. I watched Viridiana with a strange tremble and tension that only the films of the great masters arouse in me. It did not come from a surface that was seemingly peaceful and sedated, but rather it was based on the heart of a film in which the tragedy of a woman who dedicated her life to a great idea and was endowed with one great emptiness and disillusionment is born. With some criticism, I only look at Buñuel's all-embracing skepticism, but it is every artist's right to be subjective... Actually, that's what he's expected to do, right? The thorn crown burning scene seems to me like a really strong ace for the time period... (18/02/2005)

The message of the film is strongly felt, but unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean it will truly captivate you. Some scenes are pleasantly different, and unreal in their realistic depiction, but some create a challenge to get into the film and its acceptance. The criticism of religion is indeed pleasant, no doubt about that, it's just somewhat detached. (09/04/2015)