A Discreet Statement

by Tom Rechtin

As “After BuZuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” was written immediately “after” I had first viewed surrealist Luis BuZuel’s film by the same name, hence the title. Of course, the poem is also “after” the film (in pursuit of it) in the sense that it is my effort to encapsulate both the ambling, arbitrary progression of the film, and the manner in which this quality informs the characters’ lives within the film. In fact, the one part of the poem that was self-consciously (and directly) drawn from the film depicts the “you” in the poem as one of the six bourgeoisie figures in the film walking down the middle of a road in the countryside, moving with apparent stated purpose but always getting...nowhere. As this scene occurs at many places throughout the film, it serves as a defining “theme” for their lives. Meanwhile, and without intention, the last image of the poem perhaps echoes a scene near the beginning where these same bourgeoisie attempt to have dinner at a restaurant only to realize that a wake for the restaurant’s owner is being held in an adjoining room. Horrified, they leave, though in actuality they are as dead as that owner, and this despite their ability to walk out of the restaurant and–at various moments in the film–down that country road.