User reviews

This is the true story of how Luis Buñuel made his third film . In this movie director Salvador Simó deals with Luis Buñuel from his stay at Paris to voyage to Las Hurdes to shoot a documentary short . As his friend the anarchist and sculptor Ramón Acin buys a lottery ticket and he promises to him to finance it . They are lucky and with the money won at lottery they go to Las Hurdes in 1933 . It is a remote region of Spain which was connected to the outside world only in 1922 with the completion of a road. To reach Las Hurdes, it is necessary to travel through the town of La Alberca, which itself has some unusual sights and customs. The residents of the area - spread across several villages - lives in poverty and in isolation from the outside world. They survive mostly on a diet of potatoes and beans with meat available only a few days a week. In fact, they eat goat meat only when one of the animals dies. Inbreeding results in a disproportionately large number of people with mental disabilities. The title of the black and white documentary that Buñuel shoots ¨Hurdes , Tierra sin pan¨ refers to the fact that the residents did not know how to make bread , and the Spanish title ¨Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas¨or ¨Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles¨ regarding the maze of the homes built in tortoise-style .

This is a cartoon movie portraying Luis Buñuel and his journey to the region of Las Hurdes to film a documentary , it has surrealistic events , including dreams and weird happenings , as well as self-biographic elements , as Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education by his rigid , stiff father , which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and religion . The film also develops his childhood in Calanda with the famous ¨drums of Calanda¨ and the premiere of ¨L'Age D'or¨, after the film opened in Paris at Studio 28 on October, 1930, word spread about the film's bizarre content , on the evening of 3 December, 1930, halfway through the film, the fascist League of Patriots and other groups began to throw purple ink at the screen, they then rushed out into the lobby of the theater, slashing paintings by Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Man Ray , as producers soon withdrew the film from circulation and pulled the film from distribution for nearly 50 years and threatened with excommunication by the Pope . And the angry discusion between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí , as they had effectively fallen out by the time the film went into production to the extent that Dali refused to have anything to do with the actual making of the film , though they had previously made ¨Un perro Andaluz¨. In fact , Buñuel had financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, when he made his first film , 17-minute runtime "Un Chien Andalou" (1929) , and subsequently ¨Age of Gold¨(1930) .

The picture ¨Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles¨ mingles animated frames along with documentary , and it is perfectly blended . The cartoon images are made in traditional style , an almost primitive and naif drawing , but is enough agreeable and charming . Narrating life at a remote region of Spain in Extremadura , where civilisation has barely developed, showing how the local peasants try to survive without even the most basic utilities and skills . The Hurdanos themselves live in several dozen villages in the nearby mountains, near a valley that contains the ruins of a convent . The lifestyle of the Hurdanos is so primitive that, until fairly recently, even bread was unknown to them. The film was well directed by Salvador Simó who formerly worked in animation department of various films, such as : Midsummer Dream , Goofy and son , Howl , Las tres mellizas , El Cid : the legend , It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown , among others

This is an incredibly unique film. It's rare to see such mature animation like this, and I've been wanting more mature animation for a while. So I was incredibly entertained.

The film is about the Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel and it follows him as he films his documentary, Las Hurdes, which is a documentary about the Las Hurdes region in Spain.

Now, I love animation. However, I am slightly peeved that 2D animated movies are not very popular anymore. So I was excited to learn that this film is 2D. Not only that, but it is incredibly stylized and beautiful 2D. I've always liked aesthetics pertaining to historical generations of filmmaking. So it's not surprising that I love this art style. One thing I find interesting is that many scenes in the film have clips from the actual Las Hurdes documentary, sliced in with animated recreations of the scenes. I can't really explain why, but I really like this detail.

Another interesting aspect of the animation is the imagery. Luis Bunuel is often associated with surrealism and I assume that's why the movie includes several strange and nonsensical sequences. There's also a consistent theme involving religion, which I didn't really understand if I'm being honest, but it is interesting.

A major aspect of this film is Luis's relationship with the anarchist painter, Ramon Acin. The film was made thanks to Ramon, so it's understandable that the film heavily focuses on their friendship. It's interesting to see their conflict on the purpose of the film, and in general it makes for some compelling drama.

In a way this can serve as an introduction to Luis Bunuel and his work. I never knew of him before this film. However, now I'm somewhat intrigued by him and his work. Although, there is something I should warn people about. Despite the film being animated, this film is absolutely not a kid's movie. There are lots of dark jokes, mature themes and a surprising amount of animal violence. It is important to point this out as many people assume all animated films are for little kids, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

I give this film 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it for ages 13 to 18. If you're a fan of history, the art of film or both, and you can stomach some uncomfortable subject matter, I highly recommend this.

Reviewed by Calista B., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic. For more reviews by youth, visit kidsfirst dot org.

If you have already seen Las Hurdes, this is worth watching. If not, it will be largely incomprehensible (in addition to annoyingly animated). I always feel that I have been fooled into watching a cartoon when I press start for a feature-length film only to discover that there is no actual acting whatsoever and some graphic artist in fact created all of the visuals. But because I had seen Las Hurdes, it was interesting to watch, especially the critiques made by the director here of Bunuel's killing of the goats, and also his "theory" of what looks to have been Bunuel's autism.

I had heard about the goat killing before, and I know that directors do these things (apparently Almodovar tortured and killed six or so bulls in making of his film Talk to her). Of course, all meat eaters are perhaps hypocrites for criticizing these patent use of animals for purely artistic (not necessary) reasons, given that we could all just eat bugs, as some "people in high places" are now encouraging us to do.

Anyway, the use of a pistol to kill the animals involved a similar sort of hypocrisy, given that Las Hurdes was billed as a documentary...

I was pleased. Still, I remember how "Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread" was a formative viewing experience in my life (after "Un Chien Anadlou," "Raising Arizona," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," David Lynch, Pixies' "Doolittle," etc.), given the way Buñuel whipped out the butter knife and slathered on a parody of ethnographic film's bourgeois mentality by overdoing it (the VHS version I saw, in its translation, pulls punches here; the 16mm version I saw in film studies class does *not*). Already compelling material made for riotous viewing by a teenager tickled by "The Simpsons" and not aware yet of who Thomas Pynchon was at the Ivy League caliber school he was attending. Regardless, this film has a lot to say -- if that means "take you through," ground to cover -- and just settling back in and watching it will mean you'll be rewarded. Like "Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" and "Cezanne et Moi," this is one of the more pleasant and rewarding walks through a time and place you *shouldn't*, like, necessarily have *known* about to begin with, but we can slow down and catch up with ourselves now. Recommended for anybody in Western Civ. who's trying to still figure out what in the hey has been going on for the interval since, arguable, people've been living, maybe, past 35 (see the illuminating "Teenage" documentary for further details -- not everybody got Clara Bow's shot at life!). A worthwhile trip through an era involving a very willful man and one of the wittier presences of the 20th Century. Think like most big figures, but not a jerk. Think like Stanley Kubrick, but not Stanley Kubrick.