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Interpretation of the movie ? (spoiler ofc)

posted 15 years ago by BornFree-2
14 replies | jump to latest

So i've been thinking, and i found myself with two different interpretations of the movie and i wanted to know wich one is the right one for you.

N°1 : Viridiana is a naïve young woman, raised in the sweet lie of religion who doesn't know anything about real life. She tries to help poor people to redeem herself from her uncle's death but finally founds out people are evil. So she finally does the right choice by deciding to stop believing in religion and trying to help other people (she becomes less naïve, more realistic). She decides to live her own life.

N°2 : Viridiana is a good young woman with a pure heart. When her uncle dies she tries to help people as well as she can but finally realizes that people are evil. So she finally does the coward and selfish choice to give up trying. And that's why mankind is doomed, because even people like her don't think they can make a difference.

I'm closer to N°1, but i only recently thought of N°2. Tell me what you think.

And if you have other interpretations i'll be glad to read them.

[–] MickAstonDavies 15 years ago

It's well-known that Bunuel was an atheist (though apparently he got bored with hearing his "Thank God I'm an atheist" gag quoted at him), but I always found the ending ambiguous.

Her worldly cousin says it is good she has left the church and joined the real world. He starts playing some pop music on the radio, but Viridiana looks completely remote and uninterested in what is going on.

I think the ending is meant to be ambiguous. One way to look at it is to say that Bunuel may not have liked the church but he didn't like the contemporary world much either. But it's a long time since I've seen it...

[–] BornFree-2 15 years ago

Interesting point.

Another sequence wich can go along with my N°1 interpretation is the one were Jorge buys a dog to save him the effort of running behind his master's carrage. Then we see another carrage passing with another dog tied to it.
It kinda means that it was a pointless thing to do.

[–] safalmk86 15 years ago

An interesting thing is after all the classical music in the soundtrack, it's only in the closing sequence that popular music- easily recogniseable American Rock n' Roll- is used

[–] grybop 13 years ago

I bet Bunuel shot the last scene because he couldn't show a sex triangle on screen.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 12 years ago

but he didn't like the contemporary world much either

think this is true. There's something about the character of Jorge and his rampant renovation of the house and land left him by his father that seems out of step. He buys a dog from a cart man to rescue it but all the cart men have such dogs. The issue isn't the one dog, who barks for the cart man as he drives off, but the poor straits in which the cart men live and work that means they keep dogs to hunt them food. Like their dogs they are hungry too. Jorge's action is indulgent as a result. In some ways like Viridiana's but at least she is not imposing herself on the land.

To say a little often is to tell more than to say a great deal.

[–] Joao_de_Deus 15 years ago

It's a Buñuel movie so...Number 1 without a doubt!

Under the Paving Stones, The Beach

[–] blueelm-1 13 years ago

I took it another way.

N°3: Viridiana is a naïve woman who wants to be good. She was raised in the sweet part of the lies about religion, and kept safe from any real suffering which is corrupting. She believes that because she is not corrupted that everyone is pure and good, but that belief is itself a corruption and for that she becomes what she always was... a real person.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 12 years ago

kept safe from any real suffering which is corrupting. She believes that because she is not corrupted that everyone is pure and good, but that belief is itself a corruption and for that she becomes what she always was... a real person

This allies with my thoughts about the film.

To say a little often is to tell more than to say a great deal.

[–] lombano 12 years ago

I agree with number 1, save for this: "She decides to live her own life." The traumatic context in which she drops religion (after nearly being raped by the beneficiaries of her charity) and the distant, shell-shocked, uninterested way in which she joins the card game all suggest she's turned her back on religion but she's not really embracing her cousin's ways - that she turns to him because she has nothing, and no one else, left.

[–] GuineaPig 11 years ago

Buñuel always said that his movies were not meant to have one interpretation but varied and that his movies were filled with contradiction precisely because it allows people to come up with multiple interpretations which are all valid. This contradictory nature of his films was meant to come closer to human nature and the nature of complex thinking which is highly contradictory.

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] BeatLedzepPinkfloyd 10 years ago

I think the end is showing Viridiana still distraught from being raped, and truly the only way to bring her back into the real world. Her engaging in sex is helping her embrace the real world, and the threesome with her cousin could either be her being so damaged by events that were caused by her not committing incest with her uncle, she's just thinking "funk it, if I had done this in the first place all this bs wouldn't have happened. But I can't remember if they were blood related or not, I think they weren't so throw that out.

Or the threesome is showing the damage of her rape and displaying how promiscuous, and sexually active/adventurous she'll become as an effect.

Also the threesome can be what she's feels is necessary after she realizes that her life devoted to god was a lie, and wasted a good portion of her life. Maybe she feels that she has some catching up to do.

Or maybe Bunuel put it in there as a mockery of the trinity, or that was Viridiana's intentions..

I am Jack's cold sweat.

[–] TheMichael 10 years ago

I didn't see Viridiana as someone who self-actualized. I just think she became heartbroken to know that Christian charity did nothing and affected no one. There's a lot of blasphemous imagery in this movie, for sure, but a real attack on religion would have came from the mother superior. But I thought the mother superior was a pretty straight forward and inoffensive character. And Bunuel himself said he didn't aim for the movie to be blasphemous. I just see the movie as Christianity having no affect on the modern world, and that people are initially evil. Even Viridiana was selfish in her attempts. But she tried staying pure as a nun, and that didn't help anyone, then just a regular good Christian, but that didn't influence anyone. If this movie was REALLY anti-Christian it would have shown a life where good would have been committed without Viridiana's beliefs. But no good happens, and thus a tragedy of trust on humanity.

Someone pointed out the dog scene. That was a good scene. It showed the problem with the mistreatment of those pups were not only part of a cruel system, but a necessary cruel system. That's what Viridiana finds out: she can't change the system of humanity. Changing the world through Christianity is just a myth told in the system, but the reality is people just go for what they want, and in the end Viridiana just goes for what she wants, seeing as how her chastity and good will brought her nothing and did nothing.

[–] pt100 10 years ago

Another way of stating briefly what others have said is this: The world is what it is, people are what they are, bad things happen to good people, and life is absurd.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. -- A. Einstein