I had a mini breakdown last night because I wanted my husband to tell me that we could definitely move to the UK or Prague in two years so I could do a film school and live somewhere else for a while. I like LA, but I'm itching for a genuinely new part of the world. I like my apartment and my job and my routine, but it's been pretty similar over the last three years. I'm in my thirties but I don't want that to mean I can't have a major life change other than having a baby. The weather doesn't even change here.
I'm excited, lately, about running the lab's Twitter feed. I'm a low-key science communicator! I might accidentally make the lab look stupid. I plan on avoiding any scandal or controversy. It's just fun tweeting when it's not from me. Not about my life and the whole push/pull of my intentions of looking cool or interesting and the possible failures of those attempts. It's just like nah, Here's what's going on. Here's something kind of interesting.
Mlog Time!
THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE
1972
Directed by: Luis Buñuel
Written by: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière\
Watched: 8/9/21
Six bourgeois friends keep trying to get together for dinner, but something always interrupts them. The first time it’s a miscommunication on the date of the dinner. Then it’s a wake at a restaurant for the manager who died only hours before. It’s that one of the couples wants to finish making love and their guests thinks they’ve fled the house in fear. Another time they’re interrupted by a military brigade who’s then called away to do alarmingly close military maneuvers. (Copped a little bit of that text from Wikipedia because it’s a good description and made me laugh.) There are also a few subplots – one of the men is a diplomat from a fictional south American country and he’s smuggling in a bunch of coke. He thinks terrorists are after him, including an impoverished young woman. There’s a corporal with sad eyes who had a vision of his late mother who told him that his father was not his father and that he killed her. The son then poisons the “father.” A bishop takes a gardening position at one of the rich friends’ houses. He’s an orphan from rich parents who died by arsenic poisoning. They never caught the guy. The bishop/gardener is called to the deathbed of a farmer/gardener who confesses to killing his employers with arsenic. The bishop/gardener tells the dying man that those were his parents. He forgives the man of his sins and then shoots him with a shot gun. The latter half of the movie is a bunch of dreams – fears of the characters, says Wikipedia. Dying, dueling, being on stage and not knowing your lines. Also from Wikipedia: “Buñuel did not attend his own press screening in Los Angeles and told a reporter at Newsweek that his favorite characters in the film were the cockroaches.”
I watched this movie to try to get inspired for the rewrite I’m working on. I liked the first half quite a lot. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the dreams. The movie’s primarily a comedy… I think, with the rich people barely reacting to all these bizarre happenings. I think I’d like it more if I were better watched/read/whatever in the surrealist movement. As I’m watching, I’m trying to make sense of things, and it seems like the answer is It doesn’t make sense. It feels unsatisfying. As a viewer, I’m not sure how to come at something like this.
There was one part near the end when the maid explains that her fiancé left her. He left her because he thinks she’s too old. When asked, she says she’s 52. The man of the house agrees that she’s worked in their house since he was a boy. The actress playing her is probably 19. It made me laugh.
Rating: ★★★
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