The Exterminating Angel (The Criterion Collection)

A group of upper class, shallow people discover they cannot leave a house and self-destruct as the hours pass. We are a long way from Lucia di Lammermoor! The Exterminating Angel is an absolutely unique, profound, funny, moving, cruel, beautiful, harsh, contradictory, breathtaking opera by one of the finest composers alive: Thomas Adès. I can think if nothing like it. For one, the majority of a large number of characters/ singers are onstage for most of the two hours. For another, it takes its surrealist source material—the film The Exterminating Angel by Luis Buñuel—and adds another layer of surreal elements all its own. It is full of extremes. The roles require huge ranges for most of the singers, often utilizing the top of them. (The soprano Audrey Luna sings the highest note the MET has ever heard.) In this way, the often brittle, sometimes irritating, characters slowly succumb to a growing hysteria, which is heard through the very notes being sung and played. Each character or pair of characters has a different trajectory. Some cause scoffing, some cause surprise, some cause laughter, some cause sadness. But somehow their humanity finally shines through. The orchestra is large and supplemented by a whole battery of drums, as well as miniature violins, and the ondes martenot. Beautiful passages are placed side-by-side with ironic music and harsh “modernist” sounds. And most delicious of all is they can only leave when the character of the (not fat) opera soprano sings an song!I’ve watched it several times and I can honestly say I find no dull passages. I’m am always captivated through the entire thing. Of course, the more I see and hear it, the more I take away. Part of the miracle of the whole thing is how well differentiated each character is. Even when everyone is singing in the top and bottom of their ranges, the differences shine through. And everyone has at least one time to really shine. Some have more than one. The composer conducts a superb musical performance by cast and orchestra of quite difficult music. Though anyone who knows the Adès sound world will have no trouble with it. For Adès has a distinct musical voice, in the way that Benjamin Britten does. Each work “sounds” like him yet is new.The production is directed by Tom Cairns, who wrote the libretto in collaboration with the composer. He keeps everything quite clear—or as clear as a surrealist opera will ever be. The costumes for everyone are easily identifiable. And a fun aspect of the work is how the costumes are put through their paces just as fully as the singers are! A giant archway moves to show the difference between the inside of the claustrophobic house (which is seen from different perspectives as the rooms change) and the outside. The mostly unobtrusive filming helps this clarity. A nice blend of full stage, groups, and solo closeups. The surround mix is superior to the stereo but both are fine. If anything, the stereo makes the music sound a fraction more shrill. English subtitles. (French, Spanish, and German, too.) We should be glad this video exists because the cost to produce this will be prohibitive to most opera companies. Luckily, it’s a winner from that standpoint.My take on it is that human behavior is unfathomable. But anyone can see or hear different things: part of the genius of it all.No use trying to sell this to people who are immune to anything complex or new. It is both, yet not so far away from 20th Century music as you might expect. Traditional “bel canto” singing is mostly missing. Though truly, some beautiful music is in here! Sometimes parts overlap into confusion (though this is not so far away from the 19th Century, is it?) The sound is very forward making the extreme ranges sound shrill. Again, on purpose, but I just want people to know what’s in store.For me, a modern masterpiece. Plain and simple...well, maybe not simple. A brilliant follow up to Thomas Adès’s The Tempest, another major work in the modern history of opera.On a personal note: I went to school with Mary Dunleavy, a beautiful singer with a beautiful lyric soprano that sang major roles with the MET in her youth—The Queen of the Night, Violetta, Gilda. (She can be heard in broadcasts from The MET archives.) She has had a wonderful long career singing roles of every stamp and age. She appears in a small but fun part as a maid that flees the house before she can be trapped in it. She looks and sounds lovely. Brava!

The film's central characters are overcome by their bourgeois sense of propriety and, due to pretense, are seemingly trapped in an opulent parlor room by their incapacity to overcome their own outrageous forms of hypocritical propriety. The inability to leave the dinner party first grows to absurd proportions leading to the inability of all attendees to leave at all. They are psychologically impaired and degenerate, slowly, into their basest elements until they realize, collectively, that escape is possible.Rejecting rationalism, and accessing the unconscious desires of mankind, is at the heart of this film. The constructs of man, the masks of artifice he appropriates, are fashioned out of rationalism and serve to obfuscate reality. Man becomes pretentious, corrupt, immoral, and despondent because he has lost sense of himself. For Buñuel, the bourgeoisie is ripe for attack, given that they shape and determine the values of their society. If our social leaders reject true humanity, then how can society hope to find truth? For Buñuel, humanity cannot thrive under such conditions. Hell is divestiture from the self.This film is for anyone who enjoys an intelligent and beautiful film (Cinematography by Mexican master Gabriel Figueroa). Buñuel is clearly one of the greatest pillars of modern film.

A true classic.Captures the reality of humanity

Here is another of Luis Buñuel's movies where the actions, and the characters, appear to go nowhere. The barriers that impede their way out of the day to day situations, here they are the walls of a living room in a large mansion, are made stronger by their emotional and spiritual weaknesses. Its as if the director were shouting to its audience, "Move, move, take action" just like Jesus shouted in front of his friend's tomb, "Lazarus, come out!" The sheep kept in the kitchen at the beginning of the film, and used for food, are later seen as a flock running into the church where the characters are again imprisoned. Are they sacrificial lambs for the benefit of humanity?