Full of passionate embraces and a timeless love story,
Abismos de Pasion ought to appeal to the teen girl in all of us, or at least, one might think that, given the generalization commonly associated with its source material. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. Luis Bunuel was nothing short of an artistic genius and his ability to control his viewer is almost more eerie than his ironic mise en scene and montage. Unfortunately, the casual viewer won't catch this at first glimpse, especially when thinking
Abismos de Pasion has anything to do with the
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte wrote.
Buried within each shot is an appeal to the unconscious of the viewer.
Wuthering Heights is the source text for the film, and it is apparent in the actual plot of the film. Bunuel, however, is using the plot to drive his images; images of death, of cruelty, of pain and loss. These are the passionate happenings of the on screen images, and it is whatever is happening to the viewer, through the viewing of the scenes and the film as a whole, that drives the film, as it drives all of surrealist art. Eventually,
Wuthering Heights becomes nothing more than a name for a similar piece of work, as the two pieces of art diverge in their composition and thrust so wildly. This is not an apparent shift; at first glance, this film does feel like
Wuthering Heights gone to Mexico. That being said, watching the film as something removed from
Wuthering Heights would draw more differences than similarities, not only in thinking about the plot, but also in what affect the film has on the viewer. Whereas an "accurate" transposition of a novel to screen will try to capture the spirit of the novel. this film captures the spirit of
Wuthering Heights as separated from the novel; as if it is some sort of platonic form inside the psyche that Emily Bronte first glanced at to create her novel. Because film uses images and sound in place of words, it is no wonder that the images of the film would vary from the words of the novel, if, indeed, it is something apart from either thing that is being accessed for the creation of either work of art. While it may not be true that
Wuthering Heights exists anywhere apart from its various interpretations and adaptations, Bunuel's care to use images to encapsulate the unconscious side of the original novel is more creative than most directors ever seem to get.
The film generally consists of the plot of
Wuthering Heights starting after Cathy is married and Heathcliff returns, in fact, startign at his return. The surrealist interpretation that Bunuel applies forces a different piece of work than Emily Bronte created. Using images of violence, extreme closeup on the mundane or natural, and implanting seeds of evil inside each character, Bunuel traps his characters in a literal abyss of passion. It is not, however, passion of love and beauty: it is passion that destroys. It is this ultimate realization made by the film that separates it from
Wuthering Heights, and, what expresses the intensity of film as an art. It is as if Bunuel is saying that film finds different things within
Wuthering Heights than Emily Bronte realized when she wrote the novel. It is this statement about the nature of art, both film and literature, that makes this movie as artistic as it is. Subconsciously, all art exists as something apart from what we see, or at least this is what Bunuel woudl posit. It was, in making this film, his goal to reveal what exactly that meant for
Wuthering Heights.
All of this being said, nothing implies that it is an inherently good movie. Artistically speaking, this film is brilliant. Bunuel juxtaposes images creatively to create a wide variety of emotions and thoughts for the viewer. The use of music in the film is interesting, as it often does not fit the on screen emotions. Because of the experience of film viewing often garnering its emotional thrust from the film, the viewer is often confused and purely at Bunuel's mercy as of what to think and see. In the end though, it does not seem the most entertaining of films. The plot is often thin, and the characters simply embodied passion more often than sympathetic creatures. That being said, the experience of watching the film is one worth having at least once. The way it attempts at appealing to the unconscious could be one of acute pleasure, if only for its difference from most other films, today or in the past. Even if it is not the most enjoyable movie to actually watch, its artistic value and psychological appeal make it, in the end, worth viewing and, perhaps, eventually, enjoying.
-Zachary R. Belcher
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