Luis Buñuel’s drama about Mexico City’s street children is forceful, unsettling and worth the discomfort. Strong performances and a disturbing dream sequence keep it painfully human, though the repeated brutality and weaker subplots occasionally wear us down.
The Young and the Damned is a distressing, forceful drama that earns its severity, although its weaker subplots make the suffering feel over-insistent. Luis Buñuel follows street children in Mexico City without requiring them to be lovable before they deserve our concern. Poverty has damaged their lives and their dealings with other people. The film takes that damage seriously, including the cruelty it encourages. At 82 minutes, it is short enough to watch without a break, though we would understand wanting one.
Roberto Cobo’s Jaibo is the most troubling presence, and the performance makes the street violence difficult to dismiss as something these children simply cannot help. There is enough force in the acting to make us attend to behaviour we would prefer to turn away from. Alfonso Mejía’s Pedro keeps the children’s need for affection close to the surface. Stella Inda’s Mother helps make the adult world feel no more capable of providing comfort than the children are of finding it.
Gabriel Figueroa’s cinematography gives the slum streets strong contrasts, keeping their harshness visible without making every image look merely illustrative. We can register the surroundings as places people inhabit, which matters in a film so concerned with what those surroundings do to them. Edward Fitzgerald’s production design supports that sense of a neighbourhood with an existence beyond the immediate violence. The setting feels credible even when the story presses hard on its inhabitants.
Carlos Savage’s editing sustains the pressure, and the lack of respite is effective for much of the running time. It also contributes to the occasional feeling that another violent incident is proving something already established. Gustavo Pittaluga’s music is less essential to the emotional force than the images, and we would have preferred a lighter touch. The actors give us enough to respond to without much encouragement from the score.
We were disturbed most by the dream sequence, because it brings the distress closer than the street violence does. Luis Buñuel allows the film to leave everyday realism without making the children’s suffering any less immediate. The strangeness makes room for feelings that the harshness elsewhere can crowd out, and gives us something to think about beyond the next physical threat. It is the clearest reason to resist treating the film simply as a grim account of juvenile crime.
The screenplay by Luis Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza is less secure when it moves through the surrounding stories. Some supporting figures seem to be there chiefly to supply another example of neglect or viciousness, and the accumulation can make the film’s anger feel repetitive. More room for ordinary behaviour would have helped these passages, without requiring a sudden outbreak of optimism. Those passages briefly make us conscious of how insistently the suffering has been arranged.
A drama about neglected children can make sympathy easy by keeping the children innocent and giving an adult the right words to say. This one is willing to make care difficult, and to show why it remains necessary. That is a demanding choice for an evening, but the performances and the strange, disturbing images justify it. Choose it when there is time afterwards to sit quietly; this is poor preparation for cheerful company.
