D: Luis Buñuel
S: Alfonso Mejía, Roberto Cobo, Estela Inda
Emotionally devastating portrait of poverty seen through the eyes of the
inimitable Luis Buñuel, who proves once again that his social commitment
is as real as his determination to offend and outrage as many people as
possible in the course of his lifetime. After nearly twenty years in limbo,
Buñuel returned to film making with this powerful drama about the
lives of street urchins in Mexico just as Italian neo-realism was reaching
its final moments and European Cinema had begun to construct a new identity
for itself outside the Hollywood tradition, based on notions of nationality
and 'realism'. Typically, Buñuel went one step further.
The story concerns the descent of a juvenile named Pedro (Mejía)
from petty delinquency to accessory to murder under the unwanted tutelage
of Jaibo (Cobo), a member of his street gang recently released from detention.
His attempts to escape his destiny, his moments of human contact and his
psychological compulsion to anti-social action are explored with an unblinking
eye, and despite the many potential roads away from trouble which seem to
open up, his fate is as frighteningly inevitable and intractable as the
poverty which affects the land and people around him. Even those who do
try to escape find they cannot, such as the boy who is murdered as a suspected
informant or the young girl who has become a sexual object for men both
young and old and cannot avoid their attentions.
Though adhering to certain Hollywood generic conventions regarding films
about youth gangs (such as the 'Dead End Kids' cycle of the 1930s and 40s),
the film is as alien to the American tradition as the neo-realist films
were. But is equally as remote from the latter's smug left-wing posturing
and is ultimately far more crippling and despairing than the Italians ever
wanted their films to be. Los Olvidados offers no solutions to poverty
and points no fingers at root social causes, nor does it suggest that politics
offers any comfort. Its angrily obvious assault on the situation using the
mundanity of 'reality' as a surrealist's weapon of the absurd is statement
enough, and raises questions in the mind of the viewer which are no easier
answered than those facing the characters.
Social reformers and people who would profess moral order are present in
the film, such as the juvenile rehabilitation centre where Pedro resides
briefly, or the frightening old blind man who lectures on decency and order
in society. But their effects are muted at best and hypocritical at worst,
resulting in no better life for anyone concerned, and when the characters
reach their end, it is no more as a result of the actions of these social
forces than their predisposition to damnation is.
In true surrealist style, Buñuel creates a firmly psychological world
in the film, though it is rendered far more discreetly than either previously
or afterwards in his filmography. Characters are seen to be in the grip
of inner compulsions whose origins are not made clear, firmly linked to
society, yet existing beyond, above and outside of it. Sexuality and death
are the ultimate determinants of action, making all humanity as powerless
as psychoanalytic theory would have us believe, even in the face of social
realities such as those portrayed here.
There is an obvious pscyhological doppelganger dynamic between Jaibo and
Pedro which explores both their similarities and their differences, as Pedro
begins to see in him a shadow of his future self (and his present self -
Jaibo beds Pedro's mother (Inda), about whom Pedro has a surreal erotic
dream), and the film draws them into conflict with one another as it brings
the forces of law and order to bear on their lives (will Pedro inform on
Jaibo? Will the police get to Jaibo first and then arrest Pedro?) But as
damned as Jaibo is by his crime of murder, so is Pedro by dint of simply
being young and socially powerless, unable to escape the world of his childhood
(his oedipal attraction) and enter the world of adult responsibility (which
offers him no future anyway).
This is not to say that the film does not have a strong visceral impact.
It convincingly sustains an atmosphere of social depravation and addresses
the practicalities of money, labour and sustenance. The camera sometimes
assumes a similar observational stance to that of the neo-realists, but
does not abandon the psychological advantages offered by the Hollywood close
up and soft focus. It is a fusion of forms at a time when those forms were
becoming more distant, a bold and courageous cinematic experiment worthy
of one of the cinema's last great innovators. It also makes the film more
watchable than some of its European contemporaries, while evincing a strong
social concern largely absent in Hollywood at that time.
Los Olvidados is an unflinching and depressing portrait of human
depravation, with one of the most truly horrible endings seen in movies.
Its minor flaws are mostly technical, largely centred on the amateur performances
of its young cast and certain difficulties with sound. But these are not
important considerations in the face of such a powerful vision, and the
film demands to be seen by anyone with a serious interest in cinema.
Review by Harvey O'Brien copyright
1997.