Highly controversial on its release, Luis Buñuel‘s The Young and the Damned is an uncomfortable and brutally honest exploration of the vicious cycle of poverty and crime.
Our main characters are pre-teen kids who live in unimaginable poverty and suffer from a lack of parental guidance or adult support. These young adults find it impossible to distinguish right from wrong as they learn from one another. Buñuel explores how extreme poverty strips people of their humanity and degrades their ability to find peace, security and freedom as they grow. However, at no point does Buñuel act as judge or jury. Instead, The Young and the Damned leaves any moral questions and social discussions firmly in the hands of the audience.
Many aspects of Buñuel’s film resemble Italian Neorealism, especially in its discussions of poverty, class formation, and adolescence. Yet The Young and the Damned also carries surrealist undertones wrapped in psychological analysis. For example, when Pedro brutally kills two chickens, the principal of the rehabilitation programme believes he can change Pedro’s behaviour if he is shown love, respect and trust. He believes Pedro’s behaviour is rooted exclusively in his unloving, miserable home environment.
These themes are widely explored in Buñuel’s filmography, notably the question of instinctive behaviour patterns, typically sexual, as seen in Viridiana (1962) and Belle De Jour (1967). Meanwhile, Buñuel’s trademark surrealist imagery also appears in Pedro’s nightmares as Buñuel breaks the fourth wall of cinema.
The result is possibly one of the most depressing and cruel depictions of a futureless youth constrained by social poverty and alienation ever committed to celluloid. There is zero hope for the young people we follow as we realise that their problems lie deep within the roots of social inequality. Buñuel leaves us with a ruthless critique of the issues presented and a shocking dissection of poverty that continues to speak to our modern society.
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