Buñuel’s Death in a Garden, really feels like two different movies stitched together. There’s the town rebellion and then jungle survival. Both in some way are touching upon the themes Buñuel is known for exploring in his films. The first half has a lot of noise and politics and tension with the miners gearing up to go against the authorities. Everyone is lying to each other or making a play for something, hustling for survival in their own way. It’s chaotic but in a way that still feels controlled. Its as if this society is pretending it still has rules even as it’s falling apart. Here you see themes of distrust of authority and religion and also greed bubbling under the surface. Then the film flips and this perhaps unlikely group of people flee authorities into the jungle and they are stripped almost bare of the life they are leaving. No more uniforms, rules or even hope, just hunger, heat and people slowly losing their sense of purpose. The jungle isn’t just their surrounding environment its a moral test of sorts. Djin sinks into despair as her vanity and illusions are dissolved by natures unforgiving force, the priest quietly abandons his holiness by lying to Maria and hiding the jewels she’s found for himself, and Castin unravels entirely from dreamer to vigilante madmen. In the end, Shark, the outlaw/anti-hero of the movie and Maria, the young and innocent, deaf beauty make it out alive which is a very Buñuel-esque ending and echos the sentiments of some of his previous films that in a world without rules its not virtue, or religion or greed/wealth that save you, its sometimes just the least hypocritical.