One Paragraph Movie Review: Land Without Bread

Three hundred and thirteenth film: Las Hurdes, or ‘Land Without Bread’, a short film made by Luis Bunuel, who I’m starting to form an opinion about. This is a very-large-inverted-commas “documentary” about a destitute, hopeless area of northern Spain, the residents of which were apparently furious about Bunuel’s partially-faked and mostly-devastating depiction of them. Portrayed as starving, goitred, and inbred with little blips on the despair graph like dying roosters, dying goats, dying donkeys and dying babies, credit must be given to Bunuel for his efficiency, as he manages to plunge the audience into a deep depression in an astonishingly thrifty 29 minutes. It’s quite easy to find reviews that make watching this film seem like an absolutely terrible idea, and I hope this is one of them. Half a dystentry-inducing unripe cherry out of five.