Mexican Buñuel season, Cinemateca 4/6
Since I read Robinson Crusoe a few years ago it has always intrigued me that Buñuel should have chosen to direct a version of Defoe’s novel. What Defoe’s tale depicts is, in so many ways, the antithesis of the classical Buñuel text. Buñuel is fascinated by society and the way in which the human vices and passions run beneath a veneer of civilisation. On a desert island with no-one for company, the only society Crusoe has is his pets. It’s perhaps indicative to see what Buñuel kept in from a novel which has to be cut to ribbons to fit the 90 minute format. One thing he retains is Crusoe, when leaving the mutineers behind on the island, telling them that they have one thing he lacked: human company and someone to talk to. The true challenge for the filmmaker is to make a film which doesn’t permit him to use his most effective skills: the dissection of human society. Instead, Buñuel pursues a study of loneliness and isolation, until the arrival of Friday. Crusoe goes through the wringer of existential despair, human activities which keep him distracted, self-pity, and optimism. This sequence, before Friday appears, is perhaps the more complex and intriguing part of the film, although it is slightly disturbing to see the way in which representation of native peoples, to use a phrase, does not appear to have developed greatly in the course of 250 years since Defoe.
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