It's a jungle out there

Death in the Garden (1956, Luis Buñuel) is a fun morality tale set in the jungle. The moral is something like when there’s only greed and corruption, nothing really matters and no one has a chance. The film centers on five characters whose paths become aligned, when in the second half they all find themselves in a jungle while trying to escape. 
     The hero though is this character called CHARK. His entrance is really cool. He’s this stranger who comes into town with a donkey and the armed soldiers raise their rifles at him, but he flips them the bird and keeps walking to a well that just happens to be surrounded by a picture perfectly staged assortment of posing beautiful women. The army arrests Chark because he robbed a bank. When they bring CHENCO, an eyewitness to finger him, Chark yells that he’s lying. So, did Chark rob the bank or not? What do you think? I like that it’s unclear. I don’t want to know the answer. Because my take on the moral at play is finally that MARIA, because she cannot hear or speak, kind of represents peasants or like the common people. And ultimately she can’t rely on her father, or the priest, or government, but only this guy who goes off his instincts; and, although he may or may not be a criminal, he’s trying to do what’s right.
     This mixed up coterie is what makes up the dramatic material of Death in the Garden. The bandit and the prostitute turn out to be not all bad. And CASTIN, the kind old father, turns into a complete lunatic. Castin is the familiar Buñuel male who's infatuated with a woman. In the jungle, DJIN, the prosty whom he intended to marry, moves on and so he shoots her in cold blood—not a fantasy sequence this time. And in the climax of the film, Castin also murders FATHER LIZARDI, the Jesuit missionary; and the only reason I’m mentioning it is because there’s this shot that pushes in on the dark cavernous broken half of the fuselage of the wrecked plane as if it’s some cave he’s now hidden from us in. And the cave has this spooky feel of like how in the wild of the jungle he’s regressed to man’s primitive state. Also in the jungle, what’s up with Father Lizardi ripping pages out of his Bible? My guess is he’s using them to wipe his ass? I mean it fits with the way the story’s been heading. 
     There’s a bunch of cool Buñuel imagery too. Slicing the eyeball of the prison guard with that pen. The dying snake being devoured by swarming ants. And late in the film, the moment when Castin finally gives up all hope, there’s this exterior shot of traffic moving by the Arc de Triomphe that freezes to a still we see is now a photo he’s holding. Then he tears it up and throws it into the flames of a campfire.
     The jungle almost feels like this place where people’s true natures are revealed and they're somehow dealt with according to some ancient law. Except then why does the priest die? And what about the fifty casualties of the plane crash? Maybe an undiscerning system where everyone isn’t given a fair trial? And grace shown to only but few?