Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2024 | 22/52 | Directed by Luis Buñuel
Almost every capital like New York, Paris, and London hides, behind its wealth, poverty-stricken homes where poorly fed children, deprived of health or school, are doomed to criminality. Society tries to provide a cure. Succes for its efforts remains very limited. The future is not bound to the present: the day will come when children’s rights are respected. Mexico, a large modern city, is no exception to the rule. This film shows the real life. It’s not optimistic. The solution to this problem is left to the forces of progress.
Destitute children play in the streets of Mexico City. A kid pulls out a pack of cigarettes and everyone crowds around him for one. The kid with cigarettes shares El Jaibo out on the streets — he escaped from reformatory prison.
El Jaibo meets up with the other kids and gives them the rundown of prison. When no one has a cigarette or money, he tells them he’s learned some things and will help them make money.
A blind street musician plays for tips. A kid draws a razor blade to cut the man’s bag from him, but the blind man notices and bashes him on the leg with a stick. When the man leaves, the kids tail him to a remote place, where they pelt him with rocks and mud. El Jaibo destroys the man’s instruments as the kids steal the bag and run.
Later that night, Pedro sits at home. When his mother comes home, he asks for food. But she will not feed him until he stops hanging out with the street kids and finds a job to support them. Instead, he goes out and robs a kid who cannot locate his father.
Pedro helps El Jaibo track down Julián, who they believe to be the snitch who got El Jaibo in jail. Julián denies it. El Jaibo wants to fight, but Julián refuses. When Julián turns away to leave, El Jaibo throws a rock at his head. He beats Julián to death and robs him, giving money to Pedro to make him an accomplice.
The film follows Pedro’s descent as he learns who to trust and the cost of this way of life.
Buñuel runs contrary to the social realist conventions of the time. The poverty these people face does not refine their moral character — even the seemingly innocent characters, such as the blind musician, have dark secrets and predatory habits.
Audiences ask about the value of showing this cruelty without hope. The film disputes the belief that impoverished individuals can improve their conditions through a positive attitude. It’s not like life has given these folks opportunities to squander. They have stolen every success in their lives, which are few.
Chicken and egg imagery adds a surreal layer. For example, a chicken witnesses a crime. Later, the same chicken’s owner consoles it, as though the chicken recounted what it witnessed. To be a chicken is not brave enough to take what you can. So, when Pedro kills chickens later in the film, it reflects the innocence within him he must kill to survive. At one point, he throws an egg at the camera and the yolk drips down the screen.
Buñuel’s surrealism shows most prominently when Pedro has a nightmare. The sound of chickens wakes him up, feathers falling from the sky. El Jaibo lay bleeding and laughing under his bed. His mother talks to him, but her mouth does not move. She offers him the motherly comfort he desires, and he promises her to get a job and change his life. Everything moves in slow motion.
The film also showcases superstitions. One child carries a dead man’s tooth he stole from a graveyard to keep bad luck away. A sick woman holds a dove tied up beneath her bed to absorb her sickness. When the dove dies, she should be healed.
This film’s influence spans from 400 Blows to Amores Perros — a bleak film for Buñuel, but compelling.