Humiliation is good for the soul

Trivia question: How many of Buñuel’s films have a Catholic priest character? Answer: all of them.

Nazarin (1959, Luis Buñuel) is an examination of how one is to live a life according to the example set forth by Christ. And what does that even mean? Give up all earthly possessions. Stop caring about money or food. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Go out and speak the gospel to those who care to listen, for starters. Let’s see what that’d be like. 
     No, wait, even better, let’s see what that’d be like if Buñuel applied his style of we all hate each other and brutally hurt each other to this question. The main character in Nazarin is PADRE NAZARIO. And through him, we get a cautionary tale that is both tragic and pervasively hilarious. The film turns out to be all about the weighty consequences of Nazario’s choices. First, he chooses to live a life of poverty, among the poor. So, this places him in a poor neighborhood, boarding in a hostel full of prostitutes, who spit vile insults and fight amongst themselves, everyone around them, and yes even Nazario. He doesn’t last long here.

The rest of the narrative develops this conflict wherein Nazario takes to the road in exile and two women from his old neighborhood follow him, despite his exhaustive pleas for them to allow him to be left alone. BEATRIZ is a suicidal, psychotic woman suffering from epileptic seizures that she believes are caused by her being possessed by demons, and who has sex with men because she secretly wants to use her body as a means to have them desperately need her. And ÁNDARA is a mean, ugly, violent prostitute on the run for murder, whose ignorance conflates superstitions and magic with her religious beliefs. 

     Yeah, so these two women are symptomatic of people who don’t have any faith of their own but like parasites infest this guy who’s trying to find his own personal path to being a good Christian. When they relentlessly demand he perform a miracle to heal Beatriz’s sick niece, Nazario in vain keeps trying to tell them that he’s not a cudandero, and only God can heal. But by dawn the little girl gets better. So now he’s a saint to them.

     Near the end of the film, Beatriz’s mother confronts her with the accusation that she is in love with Nazarin as a man. Obviously the question at stake here is where is Nazario to draw the line if his obligation to Beatriz is to love her as his neighbor what does he do if she's in love with him as a man? Yet, it was Nazario who sought out the poor as his neighbors. This isn’t an easy question. And what about when Nazario intentionally avoids approaching the passengers of the stagecoach? Is that fair?

 

The end of Nazarin has another of these amazing allegorical Buñuel sequences. Nazarin is alone, being transported to prison by a guard in plain clothes, and they stop by this old woman with a cart selling fruit. The guard takes two apples and doesn’t even think to offer one to Nazario means the people of the world are selfish and don’t care about their fellow man.

     Then the woman offers Nazarin a pineapple. And he goes into something like shock. He refuses her. Because he’s used to being a martyr. Except he finally realizes that God is providing him with that pineapple. And by refusing God’s gifts his whole life now he’s going to prison. So he accepts the pineapple, but it’s too late.