26 November 2024: Spanish Peer Tutor Celeste about “Ensayo de un crimen”
Ensayo de un crimen is a psychological dark comedy directed by Luis Buñuel in 1955. If you're not familiar with him, Buñuel was a renowned filmmaker and master of surrealism, often exploring the human psyche and exposing hidden psychological tensions in his work. This film is one of those that raises the question: How would a person react if given the power to kill their enemies? However, there's a twist.
The film follows Archibaldo de la Cruz, a wealthy man who lives a solitary life, who becomes convinced from a young age that he has the ability to cause death to anyone he desires with the power of a music box that he inherited from his mother. This music box has a ballerina that spins on the top and plays a lyricless lullaby for as long as the music box is wound. He becomes obsessed with this power, downright mesmerized by it, and the film shows us through an absurdly humoristic way how the mind can be corrupted by such a power as to kill without consequence. What will become of Archibaldo by the end? Does the music box hold unforeseen consequences? I'll leave it to you to discover how the story unfolds.
For those learning Spanish, Ensayo de un crimen is an excellent movie to add to your watch-list as part of your learning journey. The pacing and the clarity in the speech is not overly complex, not to mention the vocabulary is on the formal side, so it would be the optimal choice for understanding voice registers in more serious contexts. The film is available on YouTube for free!