As I’ve noted before on my journey, Luis Buñuel is a filmmaker I have trouble with. I don’t dislike all of his work, and in fact I find much of it to be interesting, but it’s worth noting again here that Buñuel was a director that Andre Bazin said exemplified “the cinema of cruelty.” Once again, with his The Young and the Damned (1950), he seems to be trying to torture his audience, forcing them to look at the ugliest parts of the human condition. Somehow it seems appropriate that the iconoclast and noted surrealist decided to take on the neorealist approach that had swept European cinema in the 1940s. I’m almost certain that Buñuel reveled in the irony. But he was not out to make a Mexican version of The Bicycle Thief (1948). The Young and the Damned is a clear attempt at combining what others had done in Europe with what Buñuel had been doing for years; the first neo-surrealist picture.
Working in Mexico City, Buñuel turned his cameras on the youth street gangs that fought for respect and territory in the booming capitol. He focuses on the lives and interactions of two boys, both barely in their teens, the younger Pedro, who longs to be good and to win his mother’s approval, and the older Jaibo, the leader of Pedro’s gang. Jaibo’s street credit comes from an oft-recalled escape from the reformatory, and though his toughness is rarely called into question, he seems habitually intent on proving it. Pedro is a loyal sidekick, and together he and Jaibo fleece market merchants and harass blind street musicians. They also work to recruit new members to their ranks, and though Pedro seems intent on a life of petty crime, he often laments for the love of his mother, who has banished him to the streets for misbehavior. Buñuel spends a great deal of time establishing these characters and their relationships. Perhaps even too much time. When the film’s moment of crisis finally comes, as Jaibo bludgeons a rival gang’s captain to death while Pedro stands guard, it seems muted, barreling standing out against the minutia of a number of senseless acts of violence and cruelty. The remainder of the film centers on Pedro and Jaibo’s diverging reactions to the killing. Both are scared at first, but as Jaibo’s fear slowly dissipates, Pedro’s sense of guilt begins to overwhelm him. In one of the film’s most noted scenes Buñuel pulls out his entire bag of surrealist tricks, having a double exposed dreaming Pedro confronted by his mother and a piece of raw poultry before the angle of death confronts him for his crimes. As the two boys’ mentalities continue to diverge, the film hurtles toward a shocking conclusion that only vaguely points to a question of any meaning.
The Young and the Damned is a film chock full of powerful images. It contains several heartbreaking sequences, and conveys a fairly unique overall mood. Still, I can’t say that I enjoyed it. It seems to simultaneously dare its audience to react and challenge them to remain still; to submit to its unique form of torture that only Buñuel could induce. Yes, there is much going on here, but is anything really happening? It is not a film devoid of movement, but one that seems to openly defy any form of progression. This, of course, was likely Buñuel’s intent, and it doesn’t necessarily surprise me that he was awarded the prize for directing at Cannes for this piece. It also doesn’t surprise me that better films have been made in the same vein as this material – most notably Fernando Meirelles City of God (2002). However, with regard to my own experience with The Young and the Damned, I’ll say that I probably didn’t have as much fun with this picture as Buñuel was having with me.
Language: Spanish
Runtime: 85 Minutes
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