recommended

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Awesome Movie

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Luis Buñuel was the father off early surrealism and he movies were often really dream-like but "Las Hurdes" is really not and actually quite tame for a Buñuel movie. At least at first sight it looks like that. It actually is a quite sharp movie, that makes some valid strong points.Nothing surrealistic about this 'documentary' really. He only just alternates some of the truths, in order to get the point across. But oh well, not even "Nanook of the North" was an 100% real documentary. "Las Hurdes" might very well be making fun of other documentaries of its time with an often sarcastic undertone with its images and narration, that is too hard to believe at times to consider this movie a serious one. It's also a criticizing movie and therefor also got banned by the Spanish government at the time of its release.But it above all things is a great movie to look at, due to its fine camera work and nimble editing, though this also lets some things look like they obviously got staged. It's about a small isolated Spanish community, who live unattached from 'modern' society, with their own customs and needs.Provoking work from Luis Buñuel, though just not as surrealistic as you would expect from a Buñuel movie.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

This 30 minute documentary Buñuel made in the early 1930's about one of Spain's poorest regions is, in my opinion, one of his weakest films. First, let's admit that 70 years later, Spain is much richer than it was then (and when I say this, I fully admit that wealth can bring problems of its own, like excessive individualism and consumerism, though all in all wealth it's a far better condition than the extreme poverty portrayed here). And if poverty receded in Spain it was not exactly with the sort of socialism that Buñuel favored, but with Western European style capitalism. But one of the most shocking things about the movie is this: in one scene, the narrator chides that in school, children are taught the value of Pi. Teaching math to poor people, the horror!. Buñuel shortsightedness is at its most glaring here, not realizing that it is access to the latest knowledge and technology what will help the poor overcome their situation. What is he proposing? That children are taught exactly what at school? Doesn't Buñuel understand that it is the lack of modern technology that has made them poor in comparison with other people?

This film is a sort of experiment in gullibility. I fell for it.If you pay close attention, what the narrator actually contradicts himself several times. The presentation is so National Geographic that I could not help but believe everything that the narrator says- even when he's clearly speaking pure nonsense.As the film progressed, I gradually caught on to the hoax, and I am intrigued by it. There have been a few fine hoaxes in the film world, among them F for Fake and the Blair Witch Project, but I find this one more amusing. It is as though Bunuel wants to see how far he can go.I have been told that many anthropology departments in many universities kept copies of this film.

it's not fair, but people often see humanity divided into us and them. but fair or not fair, i tend to see it that way too. and this film is the closest single piece of art to drawing that dotted line right down the middle. if you don't like it, and most people don't, i don't think i'd be very good friends with you. Bunuel was a fantastic man. i recommend his other films, but i think this is his best. i also recommend his autobiography: My Last Sigh.