Review of Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2019) by Brunovn00 — 11 Oct 2019

"Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas" (its original title) is one of the best animated movies of the year. It's not too common to see an animated biographical drama, and this manages to be an excellent one. With stylized 2D animation that makes this movie visually great, and despite its lighthearted visual style, underneath, there is a rich, mature and compelling story about the production of "The Land without Bread", a documenatry about one of the most poor regions in Spain at that time. Buñuel's journey to get the film done is geniunely interesting. Every character feels real and compelling, specially the main character, Buñuel. We see his growth and change during the movie, we see how he starts the movie thinking that he knows that the world is rude, corrupt and selfish, and he ends up feeling that he was too naive. Talking about the visuals again, there are some details that I found creative and I really appreciated. Like when the movie mixes the real footage of the documentary with its animation in the scenes where the characters are shooting the film, I found that really cool. Also this movie also has some comedy. Some jokes might not be really that funny but for the most part, the humor is great and doesn't change the tone of the movie in any way. All the humor feels natural and it's not forced at all. One of my only issues with the film is, more than an issue, a wasted opportunity, and it's that I would've liked more surrealist-like scenes. After all, Luis Buñuel is associated with surrealism and I think this movie could've taken advantage of that in a better way. Also, some dream sequences were confusing, at least for me. I've only watched the movie once at the moment of writing this, so probably I need watch it again and pay more attention, but as of right now I found some of those scenes to be confusing and pointless.

Overall, this is a great movie, I highly recommend it. For what I understand, this movie got a limited release in the U.S. (I'm not from the U.S., btw), so if you happen to find a theather that is showing the movie, watch it, seriously, watch it. Even if you don't know anything about Luis Buñuel, you might find this movie great.