Critique: Bunuel’s Los Olividados
Though the persona in various fictional portrayals of human beings on stage or on screen tend towards having moral, ethical, or even psychological justifications for their actions, Bunuel’s non-fictional children of Los Olividados do carry the weight of all the emotional rancor one might expect of impoverished, paternally abandoned souls; nevertheless, there remains not the slightest indication of an interpersonal history within these kids deft with enough turmoil to actually give a reason to murder, brutality, and other acts of an abusive nature. Rather, the society to which the boys have been a part thrives as maliciously as the children themselves, from start to finish, from adult to animal, and retribution or justice there seems to be none.
Conversely, Bunuel’s statement alluding to the events in the film as actual plays a key role in understanding the film’s ruthless human enmity. Take for example, the old blind man who- after having been needlessly and brutally mugged by the boys- nearly forces a service girl into sexual submission later in the film’s progression. The blind man also exhibits totalitarian vehemence over “Big Eyes”- the only boy to have helped the blind man across the street. Finally, the old man has recourse to commit the final murder on Jaibo- the film’s corollary antagonist- entirely ignorant of the boy’s true identity. Viewing all this as biographical brings to light unforeseen challenges in the human capacity for ‘blind’ violence. Murder, bereft of sentimentality, factually existing, as much as propel an audience member to overlook any enthralling intertwining relationships cause viewers to abandon the vicarious expectations one might otherwise have had in a cinema.
All things considered, the unique threadwork of relations pervade the individual lives as much as it would the auditor of these lives. Such is the gift of a talented film-maker- to envelop the consciousness with images that repel the veneers of pseudo-reality. Although Jaibo confides to the friend who suggests a hiding-place, our realization of Jaibo’s lack of a mother or father fails to move us. Big Eyes sits in the very thrall of his father’s desertion once having been left in the village. We continue to follow Big Eyes as his sadness overwhelms him but gradually transforms into the neutral state of mind by which we identify Big Eyes: he gives up returning to the village square where he was told to wait for his father, he cries only once upon the end of his first day in isolation, he maintains a stolid reaction to the service girl’s kiss. He approaches opportunities to react violently towards the old blind man’s verbal invectives and physical aggression- he picks up a heavy rock after the man shouts at him, and he gestures to the service girl to ‘stab’ the old man as the old man begins to fondle her-, but in all scenarios he finds himself incapable of acting on his confused ire. Befittingly, he leaves town with the few pesos the service girl hands him; a one subtle ‘solution’ a person can use in a degenerate society.
Accordingly, Bunuel centers his work on the tumultuous ever-changing relationship of Pedro and Jaibo. At the start of the film, word goes around the group of boys that Jaibo has escaped from his disciplinary school. The boys seem to galvanize each other in preparation for Jaibo’s return, and once he shows up, all the boys are eager to learn about his experiences. Jaibo suggests he has beat up a few boys and frightened off those who threatened him. Here in the early stages of the film, we witness the mysterious authority Jaibo exerts hardly ever divorced from his brutishness. Once Jaibo requests of Pedro to fetch the ‘old friend’ whom Jaibo suspects of having reported him to the authorities, Jaibo persists to crush the boy’s skull once the boy’s turned his back (The marquee exhibits a frame of the boy with his back turned to the other two boys; all boys face the camera). Regardless of Jaibo’s incessant inclination to evade police and heatedly pounce the service girl, this moment foreshadows the inevitable murder of Pedro- the culmination of the once kinship. Alternately, Pedro goes through the struggle of attempting to win love from his mother who rejects Pedro- although it remains vague why- possibly for his malingering in the streets or due to the fact that she never knew Pedro’s father. As a result, Pedro envisions Jaibo as a big brother but later finds Jaibo incapable of affection. Last, after Pedro’s mother turns him in to the civil authorities out of cruel inhibitions, Pedro finds compassion in the least likely of manifestations: the school keeper. However, while Pedro runs an errand for the school master to purchase some cigarettes outside property bounds- a sign of the school keeper’s trust-, Jaibo encounters Pedro and steals the money the keeper gave him, all the while embroiling the nearly sober Pedro once more. At night, Pedro finds Jaibo sleeping in his bed; the ensuing fight between them results in the brutal murder of Pedro. Upon finding the massacred Pedro in their barn, the servant girl and her father decide to confiscate Pedro’s body in the sewer during midnight hours.
Of course, Pedro’s meeting with the school keeper offers the hope that Pedro’s life may be freed from all inward or outward violence. Nevertheless, one compassionate human being cannot change a society of vagrants. A person may only substitute order for the disorder within himself willingly- a possibility merely breached in Pedro’s relationship with the school master-, but what, if anything, can inspire such a person to do so? Of such an inspiration, Bunuel has yet to have seen.
