Three Films by Luis Buñuel

“Back to that notion of power, I feel like somebody who’s really always poked fun at it and done a great job of exploring it with humor and surrealism is Luis Buñuel, and there’s a Buñuel set of three films: Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire, all in one set. I’m going to get that and have my mind blown again.”

“Viridiana of Buñuel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie of Buñuel, which I think would be the perfect title for my new feature film Force Majeure. It should have actually had a name of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.”

“Oh, my favorite filmmaker ever. I couldn’t leave him out, Luis Buñuel. It’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire. I mean, I watch them often. And I guess Phantom of Liberty was quite inspiring for Kinds of Kindness, the structure of the three different films that are not necessarily related. And this looks like a bargain.”

“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, in fact I like that, but I've got three films here on Phantom of Liberty and That Obscure Object of Desire. Now Serge Silberman, who was my inspiration as a producer when I was growing up as a young producer, I was looking at this man and then I met him and he gave me advice. He said to me, 'Jeremy, you can only do well by using your own taste in choosing your projects. Never let anybody else choose your projects for you.'”

“The Luis Buñuel collection. The stuff he threw out, the dramaturgy, the craziness, the concepts that he was talking about, it's so sophisticated and modern and yet with a lot of humor and a lot of intelligence. This collection has The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. I got to know really well Jean-Claude Carrière, the screenwriter of these films. He was such a mentor and such a wonderful person. Such a genius, this is how it ends with Luis Buñuel, the best director by far.”

“Recently Criterion had a 50% off sale and I took that opportunity to grab the three films package of his.”

“This is amazing. Three Films by Luis Buñuel. For me, the reason that Buñuel’s films work so effectively is that they don’t look weird. They don’t have that kind of Lynchian, dreamlike cinematography. They look very straightforward, which makes it so much stranger when a family sits around on toilets, talking about politics and things like that, and when they go to the bathroom to eat their dinner. Phantom of Liberty and Discreet Charm, two of my absolute favorite movies ever.”