Luis Buñuel | La mort en ce jardin (Death in the Garden)
two
moved on
by Douglas Messerli
Luis Buñuel and Gabriel Arout (screenplay,
based on the novel by José-Andre Lacour), Luis Buñuel (director) La
mort en ce jardin (Death
in the Garden) /
1956, USA 1977
Watching Luis Buñuel’s 1956 Mexican-produced
film, Death in the Garden the other day, I was reminded again of John
Farrow’s 1939 melodrama, Five Came Back. There are, of course, obvious
differences. Farrow’s work might almost be described as a disaster film that
almost saves the jungle escapees of Buñuel’s drama, since when the figures of Death
in the Garden come upon a crashed airplane, they carefully pick through
their luggage, including foodstuffs, clothing, and other baubles. Although
Farrow’s airplane travelers all amazing survive their crash,
very few survive their jungle experiences. And in both films, the denizens of
the insufferable Eden in which they find themselves, reveal their psychological
makeup and the beliefs and failures of believing which define their actions.
But, whereas, the characters in Five Came Back are basically all
types, whose destinies are partially determined even before they crash into the
desperate situation in which they suddenly find themselves, Buñuel’s figures
seem much more unpredictable. We never might have imagined, for example, that
the loving cook, Castin (Charles Vanel), a current diamond seeker who hopes one
day to open a restaurant in Marseilles, would, under the punishment of the
jungle leafage, go mad and kill half of his fellow travelers—just as we never
might have imagined that his beloved mute daughter, María (Michèle Girardon) might
have been strong enough to be one of two survivors.
We can almost forget the cinematic reasons for their escape from a growing
dictatorial South American country into an environment that they would be
unlikely to come out of. It’s all too clear that the corrupt city that they all
temporarily inhabit is a metaphor for Buñuel’s homeland, Spain—even given the
fact of true dictatorships of Argentina, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru during that
very same period. For Buñuel it was both personal and representative of current
events.
The director, moreover, based his heroes on personal values as well.
While one might have thought that the committed, caring, and handsome priest,
Father Lizardi (Michel Piccoli) might be
allowed into the survivor club, as a man who particularly espouses the status
quo—and given Buñuel’s own anti-religious perspectives—is not permitted to
live, despite his attempts of saving his small band of disbelievers.
You might also have thought the young whorish Djin (Simone Signoret),
who, after all, loves and is loved by most of the men of this little party,
might be among those “who came back.” And certainly, she is the most lively
complainer of the entire group—and with good reason, since a bedroom existence
and complete non-involvement with revolutionary values makes her the most
unlikely member of the conspirators. Yet, far beyond everyone else’s obvious
failures, she is certainly the most absolute traitor, a woman who might sell
out anyone for profit and sexual gain. Her amazing late picture presence, as
she dresses up in gowns and jewels stolen from the plane they find crashed into
the jungle, reveals her absolutely amoral sensibility better than anyone else
in this movie—the priest having already tried to bury the jewels the young María
has previously discovered. Djin, above all others, almost deserves to die,
despite whatever true love she may or may not feel within. If she has convinced
Castin that she loves him, and is attracted the macho-hero Shark (Georges
Marchal), and has even sexually compromised the priest who is seen by the
community as visiting her—she must die, even for Castin’s sake.
The
rakish hero of this director’s tale is the handsome, usually bare-chested,
Shark, whose motives are never quite clear, as is his morality, representing
the most vague of the all the figures gathered. He comes out of nowhere and moves in a moral
world where we can never quite be sure where he is standing. Yet, he seems more
loyal to his small band of revolutionaries than any of the others, and, despite
forays out into a world where he might easily have survived alone, he returns
to them, even—when Castin goes mad—attempting to protect them. Clearly, he is a
brutal adversary and has obviously survived through his ability to destroy
others. But it is only through him that any of the others have the ability to
survive, and it is he who takes away the beautiful young María to a new life in
Brazil, wherever that may lead them. One suspects that their life together—even
if it might not even be a shared one—will end, as it has for all the others, in
tragedy. Certainly those who returned in Five Came Back might never have
lead “normal” lives.
As
critics and even the director himself might argue, Death in the Garden
is not one of his films. But I might never forget these pilgrims’ greedy
consumption of python flesh or, even more notably, that python carcass coming to life
again through its infestation of ants. And seldom has a jungle such as that Buñuel
created ever before or again been so alive with the sense of often invisible
life. Again and again, the characters regret that, despite all the noise and frightening
possibilities of destruction, they can never actually see the world around
them. The jungle knows them in a way that they can never imagine it.
Buñuel’s world in this film becomes an almost surrealist landscape in which
survival is simply a matter one’s own inner emotional realities, and as
disturbing as these character’s souls are, most of them live only in their
imaginations, and, thus, their deaths are certain even before the tale’s
curtain rises.
Los Angeles, February 1, 2017
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