Nazarin (1959)

I had a very hard time suppressing my prejudiced conceptions about Bunuel. And well, for all my effort, Nazarin turned out not to have been a very good movie. The biggest problem I had was that it was difficult to follow what the film tried to say. Was it a critique of the catholic church? Of religion? Of “saintliness”? One could of course argue that the film took an open approach to these things, and did not churn out a thesis about this or that. But I rather felt that there was too little good material to reflect on here. From a more technical point of view, the film was mostly a rather bland experience. There were, however, a few nice scenes toward the end. In one of them, we see a small town stricken by the plague. The only thing we hear is the harsh sound of church bells. The streets are empty. The main characters walk around in this desolated landscape. That scene did a far deeper impression on me than all of those scenes with the suffering Christ-like figure who is torn to pieces by the cruelness of Humanity. That is basically what we see in the film: cruel people. All forms of goodness are depicted with an air of tired bitterness. To hell with goodness, it won't survive anyway. What is goodness anyway. That, to me, seemed to have been the message of the film.