The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Partly — The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is somewhat woke, scoring 58 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie assembles six prosperous French citizens and a South American ambassador for a series of dinners that never arrive.
Consciousness Markers
The film is a sustained surrealist satire of the French bourgeoisie, depicting them as corrupt, drug-dealing, and absurdly entitled, which aligns with the 'Eat the Rich' marker.
Buñuel's satire is absurdist and observational rather than preachy; it invites the audience to laugh at the bourgeoisie rather than delivering explicit political sermons.
The cast is entirely white European, with no deliberate effort toward inclusive or diverse representation.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes are present in the film.
The film features women in assorted roles, but its satirical target is class, not gender, and it advances no feminist argument.
The fictional South American country of Miranda provides political intrigue, but the film contains no racial-justice or racial-consciousness themes.
There is no environmental or climate-related content in the film.
No body-positivity themes or diverse body representations are present.
The film's dream logic and surrealism are stylistic, not a depiction or advocacy of neurodivergence.
The film is fictional and does not attempt to revise or reinterpret historical events.
Why it received this score
Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie assembles six prosperous French citizens and a South American ambassador for a series of dinners that never arrive. Forgotten dates, army maneuvers, a dead restaurateur, a bishop with a shotgun, and assorted dreams within dreams all conspire to keep the plates empty. The film is held together by appetite, for meals, for cocaine profits, for status, and by the cheerful refusal of the universe to satisfy any of it.
On the question of modern social consciousness, the film is a curious and largely empty vessel. Its contempt lands squarely on a class. These bourgeoisie are drug traffickers, adulterers, and absurd snobs, which places the picture on the eat-the-rich end of the ledger. The women, played by Delphine Seyrig, Stéphane Audran, and Bulle Ogier, are mocked as members of that class and never as women, so no feminist argument is advanced. The embassy of Miranda supplies political intrigue and a Maoist assassin, along with no racial consciousness whatsoever. There is no LGBTQ+ content, no environmental concern, and no interest in bodies as sites of affirmation.
The dream architecture is a joke at the expense of narrative logic and carries no brief for neurodivergence. History here is invented outright and requires no revising. Above all, the film declines to lecture. Buñuel presents the absurdity and steps back, letting the audience supply the verdict. A sermon would be beneath him. He would sooner have a bishop dispatch a gardener and cut to the next course. Six well-dressed people walk down an empty country road, going nowhere, saying nothing. That image does more ideological work than any speech, and it does it quietly, which is why the film endures and why its politics remain so hard to pin to a placard.
Thematic tags: ["oscar_winner"]
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
An upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
Questions about The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Is The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie woke?
Partly — The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is somewhat woke, scoring 58 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Woke-Adjacent.
What makes The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie woke?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Eat the Rich (80). On Eat the Rich: The film is a sustained surrealist satire of the French bourgeoisie, depicting them as corrupt, drug-dealing, and absurdly entitled, which aligns with the 'Eat the Rich' marker.
How does The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie compare to other 1972 movies?
It ranks #2 of the 24 films from 1972 we've scored; their average is 14. The wokest is Silent Running (69).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.