Luis Buñuel: The “hero” filmmaker Wes Anderson thinks about “every day”
Wes Anderson has developed one of the most distinctive directorial styles in modern cinema. With specific colour palettes and an undying commitment to symmetry, his visuals have been admired and emulated by many. Few of Anderson’s peers have honed a style so iconic that their films become easily identifiable by a single shot.
Alongside his aesthetic preferences, Anderson infuses his filmmaking with quirky narratives, spell-binding scores, and ensemble casts full of trusted collaborators. The result is a modern form of surrealism, each of his films immersing viewers in their unique, dream-like world. It’s no surprise, then, that Anderson has previously stated his love for some of the original cinematic surrealist movement’s key players, namely, Luis Buñuel.
Buñuel was a Spanish-French-Mexican director who helmed 29 feature films over a career which spanned half a century. He made his feature film debut with L’Age d’Or, which translates to The Golden Age, in 1930. With a script penned in collaboration with Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, the movie remains a surrealist staple.
Flitting between the Spanish and French languages, Buñuel refused to be contained. His films often featured criticism of the bourgeoisie, delivered through his unique, surrealist lens. In 1954, Buñuel made his English-language cinematic debut with an adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s 1819 adventure novel, Robinson Crusoe. Buñuel continued to direct until his death in 1977, delivering his final film, That Obscure Object of Desire, in the same year and receiving a nomination for ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ at the Oscars.
When Anderson picked out ten of his favourite films for Criterion, he provided a varied list. Amidst Max Ophuls’ “perfect film” The Earrings of Madame de… and Roberto Rossellini’s “wonderful and very strange” The Talking of Power by Louis XIV, the director picked out The Exterminating Angel by Buñuel.
The Asteroid City director stated that he had just rewatched the 1962 film “for the first time since fuzzy VHS in University of Texas A/V library”, where he studied and first met his long-time cinematic partner Owen Wilson. Anderson went on to gush over Buñuel, sharing: “He is my hero. Mike Nichols said in the newspaper he thinks of Buñuel every day, which I believe I do, too, or at least every other.”
It makes sense in the context of Anderson’s own filmmaking style, with their similar focus on distinctive design and surrealist scenes. It’s perhaps one of the highest compliments Anderson could pay Buñuel – to remember him every day, presumably while forging his own surrealist stories for the screen, and to find inspiration in just the thought of him.
