Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Karlee The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

lasttimeisaw A Bruñuel school's invitation is always becoming for any cinephile's reservoir, currently this film marks my fourth entrance into his territory after the lesser approachable THE MILKY WAY (1969, 6/10), THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL is an outstanding surrealism allegory, Bruñuel maneuvers a sleight of hand with sheer simplicity, the entire story is predominantly crammed in a living room of a regal mansion, the owners Lucía (Gallardo) and Edmundo (Rambal) host a dinner party for 20 middle-class guests. Bizarrely the party never ends, all of them, with the steward Julio (Brook) are incarcerated in the living room, whoever intends to get out of the room, will involuntarily alter his mind to stay, meanwhile for the people outside, the same mysteriously inexplicable force hedges them from entering too. Trapped in this claustrophobic space, the coexistence turns sour with time ruthless consuming the sustenance, the energy and the etiquette, simultaneously squabbles, vituperation, oneiric hallucinations, suicidal tendency and roughhousing all come to the fore (Bruñuel could go to extreme with cannibalism but he chose to refrain), the procedure of everyone takes off their facade and betrays their true self is excruciatingly riveting, the film could scale new heights as a superb probing essay on human nature if Bruñuel cared to exhume deeper to each character's meaty back-story (the fraternal hint, the flirtatious lady with terminal cancer, the undercurrent of adultery between the hostess and the Colonel, a votive trip to Lordes, the before/after reaction of taking the ulcer pills, not to mention the "La Valkiria" Leticia played by the first-billed Silvia Pinal, there are a slew of untold scandals are in need of elaboration). Instead the upshot is executed with a much murkier distinction, conspicuously they are all pawns in Bruñuel's storybook, it is rather an exacting task to distinguish all the different roles from a first-viewing, if only Robert Altman would do a remake, and expunge the political metaphor of the ending, then it would be transformed into a highly-watchable character analysis and an incisive farce with eye-dropping theatrical showpieces.Of course Bruñuel's mastery is omnipresent in the film, the superimposition shot of a clear sky upon a facial portrait, the outlandish amalgam of lambs and a baby bear, and the creative approach to offer a vent to let them out (a Paradisi's sonata is the turning point), until the climax, we all realize it is just a trial run, and the denouement is a dual indictment on undiscerning religious belief and the political status quo at then, pepped up with a palpable feeling of hopelessness. Also the slap to the bourgeois is loud and clear since the film's opening, it is the servants who are sentient of the pending uncanniness, and urge to leave the house as soon as possible, only the obtuse are being entrapped by the almighty trickster. Then what happens to the hoi polloi in the church? The purge is more generic or we should merely stop over-interpretation? Anyway who needs a concrete answer as long as Bruñuel is concerned.

Andrew Huggett A strange bizarre Mexican film – a bit like an extended episode of the 'The Twilight Zone'. Interesting, and fairly gripping to watch but leaves more questions than answers – why are some sequences repeated with variants in the first 20 minutes?, why did all the servants leave (and how did they know to leave when they did)?, what is the significance of the sheep and the bear and the chicken feet? and what was the final scene all about (when the police started firing shots at the crowd that have gathered outside the church)?. Very strange and surreal. It's an interesting central idea but I'd have liked a bit more of a hint as to what was going on. I'm probably taking it too literally and from too simplistic a viewpoint. Probably deserves another viewing.

Jarrod Bonner This is probably my favorite Bunuel feature. It combines the surrealist potential of his more abstract works, such as Un chien Andalou, with a solid, if absurd, plot. In this case, a group of bourgeois party goers find themselves unable to leave a room. It gets pretty absurd as they have to bust a pipe in the wall for water and slaughter a lamb for food.Meanwhile outside, no one is able to penetrate the building to save them. It's all pretty absurd and the results are hilarious. It's a premise that would make a great Monty Python skit and somehow makes for a great feature length film, too!

felixoteiza Reading these reviews I notice that people keep making the mistake of judging a film by the intentions of its creator. So, if Buñuel says that TEA doesn't have a meaning we got to believe him so. That's wrong. We have to understand that what distinguishes an artist from the rest of us is his/her capacity to bring to the open in a orderly, harmonic fashion what lies hidden in his/her--or in the collective--subconscious mind, many times without even being aware of its meaning. For that reason his/her opinion on the finished artwork is just as good as ours. Now, in what most of us agree is that there's a metaphor here somewhere; and knowing about Buñuel's rather poor opinion of the upper crust it's just too tempting to jump into the "useless-without-the-workers-loafers" wagon. But I find that just too easy; as that is something we would see anyway in any of his movies, even if the subject was an extraterrestrial invasion. The anti-bourgeoisie angle was something to be expected of him, which doesn't mean it has to be the central, or unique, topic of this film.What I think Buñuel's dealing with here, more than anything else, is mental traps; or rather mind prisons. Mental prisons in which people fall, for reasons that may have their origin in circumstances, traditions or in simple mindsets. Now, if you think I'm talking theory, let me mention this most famous ex.: Einstein was able to discover the Theory of Relativity mostly because of his faith in Mathematics, as he thought that everything in the physical world comes codified in numbers and so each one of its mysteries could be likely solved by putting numbers in it; i.e. by putting it into mathematical form--in equations & formulas. That seems logical and sensible. But then to his surprise, came the Quantum Mechanics revolution--which has given us computers, Internet, DVDs, etc--but which states that the physical world is much weirder than what he ever thought & that many things in it happen randomly, by mere probability. Einstein never accepted that--God doesn't play with die, was his famous reply. He never accepted the laws of physics that have given us much of what's part of our daily lives, including Ipods, Tweeters and cell phones. For him, his own image of the world was more important than all what was happening around him. He had fallen in a mental prison, just like the characters in TEA. These people have all come to believe they can't get out of that room simply because that idea has gotten stuck in their heads, is part now of their mental reality, which is confirmed to them every time one tries, unsuccessfully, to do so--or rather the room embodies the idea, mindset in question in the metaphor).I know this explanation won't satisfy those who look for the anti-bourgeoisie angle, but I think I can fill up that hole. These people have lost their freedom of movements because of the mental trap they have fallen into, I said. Now this can only be conceived if they are otherwise able to move freely--or the thing won't fly. And the leisure class is the only one that fills such a condition. They are the only people who may get out of bed, or not, next morning simply because they are not forced to earn a living. With any other social class--middle, lower--this plot wouldn't work. In that case people would have simply broken out of the room because if they are not at their desks, production lines, kitchens, early next morning they'll be disciplined or fired. So this plot is only possible with people who does have usually the freedom of doing whatever they wish next morning and the upper crust is the only one capable of doing that. Buñuel may have been all anti-elite you want but he was above an artist and for him was foremost to put the right characters into the right plot--not that he didn't enjoy throwing more than a few jabs to the gold laden in this one anyway.Besides that, most of what we see here is filling: bits of personal experiences, of dreams, of social meetings. For all I said, I don't think the house workers' flight means the loafers' dependence on them. Anyway, as a leftist, Buñuel preferred to paint workers in a more proactive way, I imagine, and in his world they deal with reality, with practical things, so at the time of the metaphors they must be out of the picture.Good cinematography; the B/W is perfect here for the mood and the atmosphere. I love how Buñuel can make his actors say the most unlikely, absurd, things without flinching. And see how self-conscious these slackers are, compared to the European bourgeois in Discreet Charm (far more relaxed & désinvolte) because of their perennial Third World complex, always striving not to bee seen as "Indians with bows & arrows" (that, Buñuel never got it: that his Mexican actors were doing a good job, but impersonating their own upper crust, not the European, as he wished).