El Bruto

Luis Bunuel - 1953
Bunuel and animalism here. The direction is a bit closer than usual, with analytical editing, cut-ins more. Still, it's a Bunuel film.
After the opening, and Bunuel is clearly on the peasant's side, we move, remarkably, to have a film from the evictors side, and from the man in the middle. This is real 'everyone has their reasons', but Bunuel takes this further; not only is it terrifying, but he casts his moral gaze on it, and condemns the misery.
The people are animals; when we see the brute and the look to the women, we just know he will continue forward (the estate as an ant nest). The old man chasing after the sweets. Yet their is sympathy as they cling, in the desperate fight to keep living.
As they move forward, they can blunder, kill accidently. There is perhaps a softer touch here than usual, in the sympathy shone.
And yet this film bristles, is harsh, hair stands on the end, it is brutal. The focus on the blood and the nail. The women on the fall, blood in mouth.
There are great touches; the hell of the slughterhouse, swinging meat. And I have never been at once and terrifyed and confused by the ambiguity of the hen at the end; food, present, animal.