The Exterminating Angel: A Story about Not Being Able to Leave

There's a famous quote by Luis Buñuel that serves as a good starting point to approach his filmography:

People always want an explanation for everything. It's because of centuries of bourgeois education. And when they can't find an explanation, they ultimately turn to God. But what good is that? Then they'd have to explain God.

After watching 1962's El Ángel Exterminador, that quote seemed aimed at me and my desire to dissect the film. The more I based my approach on scholarly research, the further I felt from the experience of the film itself. Even what I read seemed to point me in that direction. For example, I found that Roland Barthes loved the film; particularly how it "suspended meaning". But something in me kept fighting that; the analytical urge remained.

The story itself is simple, yet it contains layers upon layers. A group of wealthy acquaintances and friends get together for dinner after a night at the opera. Then, for some unexplained reason, they can't leave the drawing room they're in. The door is wide open, there's no physical barrier, it's just that they can't bring themselves to leave. So they stay trapped there without food or water. Slowly, they regress into their animalistic selves.

For Buñuel, the explanation was straightforward: "I simply see a group of people who couldn’t do what they wanted to do: leave a room”.

That doesn't explain the repetition, though; at least 20 of them in the film, according to Buñuel. A character will say their lines, and repeat them again in a slightly different way seconds later. A toast that at first was well-received is ignored the second time around. Two strangers introduce themselves three different times in less than five minutes; friendly, hostile and formal.

But as the director himself said, it was just about a simple desire not being met. A relatable little story about not being able to leave a party. In that frame of mind, I went back to the film.

It starts with all the servants leaving the house. They have no real reason to go on such an important night; they simply don't want to be there. As the servants leave, Edmundo Nóbile and his guests arrive from the opera. They are all dressed in fracs and opera gowns, elegant and archaic.

Edmundo calls for Lucas, one of the servants, to get everyone's coats. He's not there. Then we enter the house, all dressed in our finest fracs and opera gowns, elegant and contemporary. Edmundo calls for Lucas to come and take our coats, but he never shows up. We don't mind, we are looking forward to a nice evening.

We sit down at the table, 20 of us, enjoying polite, witty conversation. Lucía, Edmundo's wife, has a black bear and three sheep tied up in the kitchen, a grotesque surprise she's preparing for us. I know this because I've seen this scene before. But I don't need to worry because Rusel, one of the guests, will say he doesn't like that kind of entertainment, so Lucía will cancel it. Right now, it's all about others' opinions.

Then comes the famous toast scene. Edmundo stands up, says some eloquent and friendly words. It's brief and perfect for the occasion. We all clap politely and are genuinely happy. After a few seconds, when he does it again for the first time somehow, we don't even care to look.

After dinner, we move into the drawing room. An elegant and spacious room that seems stuck in between time: medieval armour, a grand piano, and Catholic imagery on the bathroom door. We spend all night talking and drinking. Two distinguished gentlemen introduce themselves three different times, but we don't care, maybe we don't realize. We are here for a pleasant time.

Hours go by, conversation grows insipid, guests get drunker, but we don't leave. I want to go home, I gather my things, but I end up back in my chair. I wait for someone else to take the initiative. No one does. We all know this is not right, to just stay here until they turn off the lights, but we can't walk out.

It is late, so I find a nice little spot by the wall and go to sleep.

I wake up to the sounds of the other guests excusing themselves for spending the night on the floor. We don't know why we did it.

Silvia starts getting restless. She has kids waiting for her at home, but none of us cares about that. She announces loudly she's about to leave, but when she gets to the door, she stops. She sits down as if exhausted, all of us look without knowing what to say. An older man, an orchestra conductor, tries next. He comes up with an excuse to stay longer; suddenly, he wants coffee and won't start his day without it. It doesn't make sense, we all know it. But it does make sense because we all accept invisible boundaries in real life, we might as well do it here.

There's nothing/something holding us back. We argue about the cause, of course. Some say it's a curse or a disease, some blame Edmundo. I know it's a film, words on a script. The words refer to us as náufragos, castaways. But I guess once you're inside, it stops being fiction. And I know it only gets worse.

It's pretty clear the film shows the decay of the opulent classes. One of the famous quotes is "I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain". Rita Ugalde, sitting just a few feet across from me, says this to her friends. We all laugh about it politely and boisterously, maybe because we don't think about what it implies: we are about to feel a lot of pain.

Most of the rest of the film will take place inside this room. We will run out of food and water on the first day. After a few days, impossible to tell how many, we will use an old decorative axe to break open a water pipe and get some water. We will be dirty. We will be tired. Desperate and angry.

Like dogs, we sleep under the tables. On top of each other. It all turns into an orgy of people who no longer recognize that word, or the spouse they came in with. Like dogs, we lick condensation off the windows.

The sheep and the bear are still out there. There's no point trying to call them, they'll get here when they need to get here. And we will cook and eat them and survive a little bit longer. And some of us will realize we should just give up. The rest will hide their bodies in the closet and live with the smell.

There's a great deal of symbolism in the film, but Buñuel was against that kind of interpretation. I offer a theory: the bear roaming freely through the mansion represents that animalistic drive taking over, and the sheep represent blind faith; while us, the ones in tailcoats and dresses, are trapped in this absurd little stage with no exit and no plot and they won't stop humming the same song off-key and out loud and would you shut the fuck up, Silvia? I can't hear myself thinking.

In this scene, when Edmundo is about to sacrifice the goat, they decide to blindfold it first. Critics came up with many theories about what this meant: justice, the Church, the phallic symbol of the knife. Buñuel said he improvised it. But being here, in the room, it makes sense in another way. It's a lot easier to kill the sheep if it doesn't see you coming, and easier still if you don't have to look it in the eye.

Gilles Deleuze also wrote about El Ángel Exterminador. His texts are even more impenetrable. Meaning is way more suspended there than here. I keep trying to remember what he said about impulse images, and the heat here is unbearable. The same abulia that keeps me from leaving keeps me from thinking.

I read that Buñuel censored himself the first time around. He wanted the guests to resort to cannibalism, to actually show decadence. Maybe that's the variance in this repetition; we don't eat the sheep, we eat the fucking host and his wife.

We become the castaways. We a raft from canapé trays. It doesn't float, of course, but it could. Buñuel is known for his surrealist imagery and dialogue. At one point in this film, a woman who has just left the bathroom says she opened the lid and saw an eagle flying across a cliff. I would like to see that, but Buñuel always regretted he filmed this in Mexico instead of France or England, where he could have had bigger budgets. I can only imagine it. 

And still I can't leave. I stand in front of the door, but this immeasurable sense of lethargy holds me in place. In the film, repetition is what finally breaks them out. They all stand back in their original places, repeat their lines, and suddenly they're able to walk out. But that never made sense to me because I helped put their corpses in the closet and bar the door so the smell wouldn't get out. How can we repeat an earlier scene if we're missing characters?

We all stick to some of our old routines, now without meaning. Suspended meaning, Barthes would say. There's still a tiny shred of ritual that keeps us from going over. At this point, after all, it's still about others' opinions.

There's a famous quote by Luis Buñuel that serves as a good starting point to approach his filmography:

People always want an explanation for everything. It's because of centuries of bourgeois education. I don’t anymore. Just a spot near the wall. The floor is warm there.”

The Exterminating Angel1962