The Interior of the Living Room – Interior of Hell? Luis Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel” (1962)

Krzysztof Lipka

Abstract

In almost every film the interior plays a part. However sometimes we come across a storyline in which the interior plays a special role, becoming in a way the main protagonist of the film, deciding the course of the action and defining the meaning of the work. It would be difficult to find a better example of such work that Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel, in which the “enchanted” interior of a rich, bourgeois living room traps a group of people, seemingly without any reason, cause or sense. The film is not totally surreal. It can be interpreted from a number of perspectives (political, social, psychological, philosophical), but it seems that these interpretations are obscured by the movie, and none of these interpretations is entirely undisputed (this is suggested by question marks in the text). It would be difficult to firmly maintain that the film is a masterpiece, but an opposing view is also of uncertain value. If the measure of a film’s greatness should be the possibility of diverse interpretations, then The Exterminating Angel would surely be among top films considered to be difficult, complex and over-intellectualised.