Ascent To Heaven

Luis Bunuel - 1952
This is far from being my favourite Bunuel; in fact it may be my least. Saying that, I wouldn't want to call it a bad film. There just seems to be a sentimentalism, and humdurm elements in the plot and dialogue, that bring it down.
These elements that I found negative actually made me consider Bunuel's art. Yes he looks at people like ants, but compassionately. Fatalism and Bunuel is interesting; his people are driven by naturalistic impulses, wide-eyed bodily madnesses, are bascially unable to stop themselves. They are selfish and sexually driven, always. Yet Bunuel also is angry at this behaviour, never accepts or says 'well, that's the way it is'. Notice here how the adulterous moment is not dwelled on but very quickly pulled away from.
The brilliance of Bunuel, or one of his brilliances, is that every shot looks as thoughwe see something for the first time. A new look, in those longish and spread out compostions, people standing across the frame, of something we thought we knew before. This partly happens from inversions. As the bus is stranded, there is that strange sense that it turns to a family picnic. The political march turns out to be against the politician. Most remarkably, the dream sequence is started by simply a 180' cut, where the sheer whiteness of the headrest, no 'tricks', makes the world anew. The clear 'surrealism' of the dream sequence with the plants, discontinuous locations, and the classic Bunuelean goats everywhere, are really set up by this simple inversion.
Bunuel's world suspends morality in many ways, or rather has traditional morality as crazy. That is, we support the hero imprinting his dead mother's fingerprints. There is no vacuum though, due to the searing gaze I have before mentioned.
There are too many moments in this film that go through the motions, it isn't Bunuelean enough for me, despite some great moments; the quiet power, and inversion, as the little girl is cheerily shown the dead woman's face. Even in probably the Bunuel film, if forced to, I would call my least favourite, it attests to a genius seen nowhere else.