Nazarin

In his films about morality and the church such as Viridiana, director Luis Bunuel has attacked the self-deception of those whose "pure" Christianity comes into conflict with the demands of society. In the masterful 1958 film Nazarin, Father Nazario (Francisco Rabal), a Catholic Priest, tries to imitate Christ by living a life of self-denial. He surrounds himself with prostitutes, beggars, thieves, and dwarfs and freely shares his meager resources with others but finds that his actions only produce distressing results. Based on the novel by Benito Perez Galdos, the film is about a gentle but sanctimonious priest in rural Mexico in 1900.

Naively unconcerned with his own best interests, he provides refuge to Andara (Rita Macedo), a prostitute who has just killed another street girl in a knife fight. When he also befriends Andara's sister Beatriz (Marga Lopez), suspicions arise among his superiors about his behavior. Forced to leave the church, he remains steadfast in his beliefs, going on the road dressed as a peasant and begging for alms. The sister's soon join him as disciples in his saintly pilgrimage after a dying girl regains her health as a result of his prayers. Nazarin's best intentions prove fruitless, however. He agrees to work on a road crew for food but in so doing creates a labor dispute that leads to violence. His guidance is again rejected when he volunteers to help a woman dying of the plague, asking her to picture what Heaven looks like. In spite of the priest's equation of sexual desire with sin, all she wants is one more visit from her husband and lover. Arrested and thrown into prison with Andara, Nazarin's life becomes more and more Christ-like in its agony. He is beaten by a thug and begins to question his faith when he is unable to forgive his assailant.

Is Father Nazario an impractical fool trying to live by unrealistic ideals, or is he a modern-day Christ, sentenced by a soulless world to endure a similar fate? Bunuel sends us mixed messages. He attacks the hypocrisy of the church for not living up to the teachings of Christ and seems to admire the priest for his rebellion against accepted social norms. Yet ultimately Nazario is just a sad and forlorn human being. Condemned by the church as a "nonconforming rebel", scorned by a society that does not understand his passion, he carries his "crown of thorns" to an uncertain end, perhaps realizing at last that his self-satisfied idealism did not include understanding the true nature of his humanity.

Luis Bunuel has always been a filmmaker whose work was obscure to me. My first experience with him was The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie, often considered his greatest work, with which I became so frustrated and bored that I eventually shut the tape off. Likewise Belle de Jour, which is almost certainly his best known film and also generally considered one of his many masterpieces, didn't interest me very much at all. I didn't hate it like I did Discreet, but I didn't like it. Third, I saw L'Age d'Or. Finally, I had gotten somewhere. Fourth, Los Olvidados, also good. Still, neither L'Age d'Or nor Los Olvidados blew me away. Great films, but not masterpieces.

Nazarin is my fifth Bunuel, and I like it just a tad more than those other two. It is about a priest from Spain now in Mexico who refuses to live in the kind of luxury most priests live in. He wants to be more like Jesus, leading the meekest life possible. He's also willing to forgive everyone for anything, and to suffer without protest. I'm pretty sure Bunuel does not sympathize with the character, and sees him as rather self-righteous. However, I only assume that because of my knowledge of the director, whose most famous quotation is "Thank God, I'm still an atheist," which he apparently said in an interview over this very film (I get this information from John Baxter's book about Bunuel, if you're interested). The interviewer who dragged those words from Bunuel's mouth must have been himself confused about Nazarin. One who was more predisposed to believe in religious conviction, who also knows nothing about Bunuel, might see the priest as a heroic figure. This is especially true if that viewer has his/her own criticisms of organized religion. The priest may be somewhat self-righteous, but he seems to be basically a good man. When he harbors a violent prostitute in his room in order to protect her (and, presumably, to save her soul), people begin to find out and assume that their relationship is sexual. His superiors assume the same and punish him for it. Later on, he suffers even worse punishments from clerics.

Octavio Paz, Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, said about "Nazarin": "Nazarin follows the great tradition of mad Spaniards originated by Cervantes. His madness consists in taking seriously great ideas and trying to live accordingly". A humble and spiritual priest (Francisco Rabal in a wonderful performance) attempts to live by the principles of Christianity but is cast out of his church for helping a local prostitute by giving her a shelter after she had committed a murder. Nazarin wanders the country roads of the turn of the 20th-century Mexico, offering help to poor and begging for food. His two followers, a murderous prostitute Andara and her sister Beatriz who is a failed suicide desperately searching for love, consider him saint but it does not prevent him from hatred and humiliation from both the church and the people he meets on the road. He ends up beaten in prison and begins to question his faith for not be able to forgive his attacker.

Bunuel tells the story in a manner of a Christian parable masterfully and uniquely combining admiration and irony for the main character and strong criticism of formal religion and hypocrisy. The film is simple and profound as well as beautiful, ironic, and heartbreaking.

I consider Bunuel one of the best filmmakers ever. I've seen twenty of his films and they all belong to the different periods of his life but they have in common his magic touch, the masterful combination of gritty realism and surrealism, his curiosity, his inquisitive mind, his sense of humor, and his dark and shining fantasies. With great pleasure I am adding little seen and almost unknown but amazingly candid and touching surrealistic tragic-comedy "Nazarin" to the list of my favorite films.

Nazarin is some kind of saint,he wants to live in life exactly how Christ taught man to do.But it's too late:now the Catholic Church is in the hands of a wealthy bourgeoisie,the bishops live in luxury and don't give a damn about the poor and the sick.That's why our hero can't follow the way his hierarchy asks him to follow.So he divests himself of everything,and on his way to purity,he's joined by some kind of Mary Magdelene and a woman who's attracted by him sexually (the scene between this girl and her fiancé is telling).In Spain (it was the late fifties),they thought Nazarin was a Christian movie!Knowing Luis Bunuel,it was downright incongruous:all his work is anticlerical to a fault.Comparing Nazarin and his "holy women" to Jesus is a nonsense.On Nazarin's way,only brambles and couch grass grow.His attempt at helping working men on the road is a failure,he's chased out as a strike-breaker.All his words amount to nothing.At the end of the journey,he's arrested and offered a pineapple by a woman(Bunuelian sexual symbol). Thanks to "Nazarin" ,Bunuel was allowed to return to Spain (where the censors had not got a clue ) and to direct "Viridiana".

When you look at Mexico's best movies you will more than likely find that the Photography was performed by Gabriel Figueroa. He is recognized in the world as one of the best that have ever existed. His master control of the cameras gave an added asset to the movies he was part of. If added to his participation we add the direction of Luis Bunuel, you will never find such a pair of aces anywhere else in the world. This story, Nazarin, was written by Spain's greatest writer besides Miguel de Cervantes(Don Quijote de la Mancha). The story in itself is superb: Nazarin a priest that lives by his beliefs tries to live a very Christian life, but as always there are people that do not accept this. He wanders through many places preaching his Christianity but finding, most of the time, people that do not accept him. But besides the splendid story, it is always interesting to try to interpret the enigmatic messages that Bunuel sends us throughout the picture in scenes that make you shiver.