Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles

I was pleased. Still, I remember how "Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread" was a formative viewing experience in my life (after "Un Chien Anadlou," "Raising Arizona," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," David Lynch, Pixies' "Doolittle," etc.), given the way Buñuel whipped out the butter knife and slathered on a parody of ethnographic film's bourgeois mentality by overdoing it (the VHS version I saw, in its translation, pulls punches here; the 16mm version I saw in film studies class does *not*). Already compelling material made for riotous viewing by a teenager tickled by "The Simpsons" and not aware yet of who Thomas Pynchon was at the Ivy League caliber school he was attending. Regardless, this film has a lot to say -- if that means "take you through," ground to cover -- and just settling back in and watching it will mean you'll be rewarded. Like "Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" and "Cezanne et Moi," this is one of the more pleasant and rewarding walks through a time and place you *shouldn't*, like, necessarily have *known* about to begin with, but we can slow down and catch up with ourselves now. Recommended for anybody in Western Civ. who's trying to still figure out what in the hey has been going on for the interval since, arguable, people've been living, maybe, past 35 (see the illuminating "Teenage" documentary for further details -- not everybody got Clara Bow's shot at life!). A worthwhile trip through an era involving a very willful man and one of the wittier presences of the 20th Century. Think like most big figures, but not a jerk. Think like Stanley Kubrick, but not Stanley Kubrick.