Luis Bunuel took a certain glee in taking down the fanatics of the world; the rich and the powerful, and the religious and hypocritical. His movies alternated depending on his circumstance between Spanish, Mexican, French, effortlessly, though he never sold his own soul to make something he didn’t want to make.
He also had a kind of personal axe to grind. Previous to Simon of the Desert, he made ‘Viridiana’ in his native Spain, which was so scandalous that he was actively persecuted by the Vatican, sending him in exile to Mexico. When he decided to produce this film there, you can guess who he most intended to piss off with it.
Side note - his book ‘My Last Sigh’ is the best and funniest autobiography by a filmmaker I’ve read.
New trend among “apolitical russians” - touring the ukrainian cities destroyed by russian army in order to take “aesthetic” pictures 😍😍😍 and justifying it with “I can go wherever I want in my country” 😍😍😍😍 but also “I’m outside politics” 🥺🥺🥺
