Lacks a certain drama - survival seems to come too easily to the titular castaway - but Bunuel's looking inwards, to a fever-dream with abrupt, jagged cuts to reveal daddy issues, thence to Crusoe's background as a "master to servants", mastering the island and its various animals (a baby chick appears in a cracked egg, rats on the beach, a tarantula in a jug of water) but not himself or his class snobbery.
Preston Wilder
September 27, 2014