Films can, and are, often criticized for having “nothing happen.” The pacing is dull and sluggish, characters don’t accomplish much, and the plot largely finds itself ending not much different from how it started. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie carries that same label but instead ends with “nothing happens, but…” The film follows six obviously well-off and wealthy individuals who spend the entire runtime not really doing anything. They attempt to do things, but they are constantly interrupted by some kind of intrusion. The military interrupts their dinner to grab food, a priest is tasked with giving a man his last rites, they’re arrested and thrown into jail, the owner of the inn they go to dine in died and his corpse is in the other room, they simply decide to leave, etc. It is all, in a word, absurd. Often these sequences of nothing happening are broken up by one of the characters waking up in bed, implying that all the nothing that didn’t happen hadn’t happened either. It would be frustrating if it wasn’t so ridiculously comical with just how utterly inconsequential aimless everything seems to be. And in there lies what I believe is Bunuel’s point: The titular discretion of the bourgeoisie’s charm lies in that they don’t do anything. Nothing of real substance and quality, anyway. They just meander through life, sticking to their social rituals of dinner parties as if nothing else in the world means a thing. Their arguments are petty and juvenile, their clothes and jewelry lavish and ostentatious. They are the most dull and boring people you will ever have the displeasure of meeting, but they’re utterly convinced of their own self-importance. The build nothing, create nothing, seek no company or friendship outside of their private elitist circle. So literally in the film, and metaphorically for life, they wander down the road, arriving nowhere beyond their own vanity and perceived superiority.