Having Buñuel approached warmly to his return to work with European producers first with
Death in the Garden (1956) and then with
That is the Dawn (1956), would approach the Spanish to this work in which he outlined one of the figures that in next films will be repeated, that of a religious man of singular adventures. The genius of Talanda in this opportunity will adapt a not very well-known work of one of his major literary influences, the great countryman of his Benito Pérez Galdós, who tells us a story that certainly is not surprising that had powerfully seduced the Iberian director, the story of a a priest of very firm faith, apparently unbreakable principles that will be put to great test when the religious applies with the greatest discipline those principles, when he puts them into practice only to obtain rejection, violence even, in those to whom he tries to profess his faith. Naturally, the original work undergoes some modifications by the director, adapting certain details to the reality and Mexican contexts. The film had two-faces results, some repudiation and accusations of anti religion, but in turn recognitions at the Festival de Cannes, in a work fully identifiable as the work of this great great filmmaker, carrier of many of his most identifying stamps, increasingly developed.
The action begins in a humble Mexican town, a house in which its tenants, many of them prostitutes, live between austerity. There lives also Father Nazario (Francisco Rabal), who suffers a robbery, and who lives particularly in misery, as well as Beatriz (Marga López), a woman who thinks about killing herself, and suffers for her past with Pinto (Noé Murayama); he abandons her. Shortly after, Andara (Rita Macedo), one of the prostitutes, has a discussion with another woman of that ilk, they fight, the police look for her, and Nazario hides her in his house. Andara, wanted, has to flee, burns evidence of his presence, too many problems for Father Nazario, who is almost expelled from his order, leaves town, claims willl live on alms. Nazario leaves, arrives at a construction, where he asks to work in exchange only for food, but is chased away by the other workers; then he meets with Beatriz, in another town, helps with the seemingly miraculous recovery of an ill girl. In another location, and again with Andara, she meets Ujo (Jesús Fernández), a dwarf who courts her, while the Pinto also reappears, wants to take Beatriz. But finally they can not escape from the police, who follow them and find them, arrest Andara, separate her from Ujo, Nazario is also arrested, and Beatriz ends up leaving with Pinto.
In this film the director, according to his own words, in his book
My Last Sigh, preferring even the trivial to the aesthetically very elaborate, wanted to give us a truer, closer approach, something denoted in that curious beginning of the film, with that stamp that literally almost "jumps" to life, its protagonists almost come alive to give us an idea of proximity to the folklore of the land that is going to be portrayed. And that was certainly the idea of the filmmaker, to dispense with excessive ornaments, the camera with subtle movements shows us the environment where everything will happen in that initial sequence, with measured glides of the camera, soft travellings for this. This is how we approach the world of Father Nazario, "I am Catholic, Apostolic and Roman", defines himself, as starting from the innermost fiber of Christianity, in those three ranks, with Rome as a great reference, living in austerity, enduring some mockery, among which, initially, he is told that with his lifestyle he loses his dignity. And in fact, he lives among poor people, in precarious places, with marginal beings, vulgar prostitutes, thieves, disputes, people of low ilk, this priest who comes to be a continuation of
Death in the Garden (1956)'s Father Lizardi, with the so referential theme of religion, always present in the work of Spanish, and always, of course, under his scathing and acid look. Nazario is a priest who professes Catholicism with a fullness that will make it unacceptable for human canons, for daily and pragmatic existence; his attitude is submissive, of surrender, resignation to his destiny as a servant of Catholicism, while the epiphany occurs, while his idea of Catholicism is divided, of what is Christianity in the praxis of men, in the daily reality. It is fascinating his dilemma, driven by circumstances, completely breaks with all known religious convention, even stripped of his clothes, because the world must stop recognizing him as a man of God. Since then, a real change is gestating, he will find himself alien to wherever he goes, he will be an outsider, without a place, perfectly exemplified when he comes to the construction, he looks for work, even in exchange for food alone. The consequences are dire, the workers, threatened, throw him out, he who wanted to work without profit, just to survive, without causing harm, ends up awakening envy, greed, violence; eloquent the shots that are heard while he moves away.
It is as if his very existence carries negative things, his willingness to help his neighbor, genuine, ends paradoxically enraging the neighbor, who seems not ready for this, for such a pure Christianity; the paradox, the irony, are thus served. Nazario affirms that he is on a journey of pilgrimage, a trip that will end by shattering his faith, a quixotic journey that will lead him to live on alms, not to stop practicing the gospel, but splitting from reality, from a Catholicism that does not correspond to his conception of faith, to his praxis. Naturally, his trip has its particular differences, as the Quixote, his madness, his behavior, will cause problems, is his downfall, and can not get away from it, but unlike the classic by Cervantes, while Nazario imparts his concept of faith, his journey is different from that of Don Quixote, since he is not a character who wanders between sanity and insanity. This is a man of faith, a completely sane religious who makes a voyage of astonishing discovery, in which his values and beliefs will be broken, he does not die as the self-proclaimed knight, not physically, but a part of him seems to have died, a death spiritual that is being announced -"for the first time in my life, I find it hard to forgive", he professes, his faith is breaking down-. In the end, after everything experienced, everything traveled, hesitate to receive the alms, what preached, finally cry, we have the uncertainty, what will this cracked subject do now, because after the initial rejection, then accepts the pineapple, sobs, is the final break of his beliefs, proclaiming and living on alms, rejects first, doubt, receives it, is symbolic that final action. Something of Bergmanian is in his religious doubts, in that skepticism that ends up hovering over him; if in Bergman the characters speak to God, and silence as a response is what upsets them, in Buñuel despair is more a bitter awakening, a bubble of vital, divine, existential conceptions that burst. Yes, the rupture is consummated, he walks without definite direction, neither physical nor spiritual, while the drum roll sounds, the only musical accompaniment, that Buñuel had to add for commitment with the producer. A Christian parallel is drawn in him, he is humiliated, taken almost to the extreme of Christ, but he is not divine, he will not endure like Jesus, but he will yield, he will break, and he will remain in uncertainty, and he is effectively portrayed in parallel to Jesus, they see him barefoot, with a cane, with women who seem to act as his apostles, he is even asked to perform miracles. They also believe him a healer, it is one of the many reactions of humans to interact with the priest who practices Catholicism, whom they call a heretic, a bizarre preacher, he is in fact an individual who undergoes quixotization, but this time they are not cavalry books, now it is the gospel. We have, ending the film, the sacrilegious of the jail, his final contact with humans before epiphany, affirming this one, "good ones over there, bad ones over here", it is almost the final interaction with that society and conventionalism that he escapes from.
Interesting and significant moments are, as when Andara begins to question Nazario, simple questions, simple questions of apparently obvious answers, in that symbolic simplicity, the priest is already facing the first questions, but his faith is still intact, he is just coming out to the environment that will fall apart. It is a detail of the filmmaker the fact that when Nazario is ready to answer the questions of Andara, his voice gradually fades. But there is more, the characters of Nazarin are sordid, Beatrice's conduct is certainly strange, disturbing is his bipolar behavior, after first seemingly suffering from the departure of the Pinto, he laughs with a jaw swing, and then have bizarre fantasies with him, having then disturbing torsions. She is horrified when she is made to see that deep down, she does not want spiritual relief or pilgrimage, she only wants carnal love, and revelation makes her explode in shame and laughter, and that's for both women seek the love of the man. Beatriz, in the end, in her strange nature, rests her head on Pinto's shoulder, bizarre masochism, can not escape from her own hell, and that is because in the end, there is no return, as Nazario had a quixotic journey, all the tormented characters end up worse than they started. Great moments of surrealism leaves Buñuel to flow in his film, one of them being the "deformation" of the frames, of the image, to enter into the psyche of Beatriz, who longs for the Pìnto, who wishes to possess him, to deprive him of his will, she wants to own a man. Her desire is intensely carnal, what apparently is her undoing, the Pinto, is what she most yearns to possess, but to possess in an absolute way, to take away his will, she soothes herself in a disturbing way, her nature is certainly ambivalent. Much surrealism is fully present and evident in the film, this having one of its most acute moments in the image of the laughing Christ, delirious tints are reached when Andara begins his flight. Another of the figures, Andara, after deciding to flee, burns all the evidence of his presence and direction, with a saint in front of everything, leading the incineration. Critics have found over the years diverse and indecipherable figures in the film, which is responsible for having fun and split Buñuel, asserting that he is as intrigued as the public; a good example of this is the pineapple of the final sequence. Technically, interesting visual resources employs the director, using images as elements of transition to move from one sequence to another, correct resource. Likewise, we observed in the film a dark tone, courtesy of the refined photography of the master Gabriel Figueroa, with whom it is known that Buñuel had small discrepancy when correcting some excessively precious frame, because Buñuel preferred closeness and simplicity instead of gratuitous ornament. In spite of it, Figueroa manages to produce the dark surroundings, the shady frames in which the confused and tormented characters play. Exemplary is the sequence when both women profess their love for the priest, and symbolically, he is unable to offer true shelter and response, plays with a tiny snail. The composition of the frames, the behavior of the camera and the shots used in this pleasant sequence are exemplary, aesthetically and visually of the most accomplished in the film by the director. In the same way, the love figure embodied by Buñuel is singular, something unprecedented in his filmography, the brief couple, the dwarf Ujo and a prostitute, the most marginal love, and probably the most beautiful love he portrayed, where all the differences, included obviously the physics, are drawn. At the end we see the dwarf, defeated, alone, looking down, while the police drive away his beloved prostitute, the most heartbreaking Buñuelian love. Another of Buñuel's winks, the feet, manifests when the mother of a girl dies in one of the precarious villages, and the camera shows her swollen limbs. A film of the most referential by Buñuel, carries his artistic DNA, his obsessions, his doubts, his discoveries, and, in short, continues his evolution as an artist; indispensable work for the follower of the buñuelian oeuvre.
Buñuel is reaching new heights in his art, in his cinema, he is burning stages, and initiating new phases in his evolution as an audiovisual creator, his obsession topics are reaching their peak, the return to Europe finally materializes, not yet completely, but at a safe pace. In this film something not very common occurs in the filmmaker, since he does not adapt a literary work to the big screen, in this opportunity the script was born from Julio Alejandro, but Buñuel participated directly in its elaboration as co-author, which gives him a great authority and freedom at work, which addresses many of Buñuel's themes par excellence. After The Young One (1960), the filmmaker returns to the desire of an older man towards a young girl, when a lonely individual of mature age falls in love and obsesses with his niece, a nun, will try to join with her and fail; the young woman, affected, will try to practice charity with some beggars, only obtaining disastrous results in the mansion where she lives with her cousin, the unrecognized son of the first individual. One of the most controversial, powerful and appreciable films of the huge Iberian filmmaker, of which always spoke in positive terms, rejoicing in the way he could work on this film, because it is one of the occasions when greater freedom of maneuver he was given, and you can tell it.
At the beginning of the film the hallelujah flows, sounding in the prologue we are already given notice, with that powerful prolegomenon, of the intense and irreverent religious dilemma that we will witness, because Buñuel will take a step further the concerns and approaches that in that regard had already presented. Yes, Buñuel, who had a deep and confessed Catholic formation in his childhood, now appears with a deep religiosity -of course, a Buñuelian religiosity-, and will parade crosses, a crown of thorns (which symbolically burns at the end) and even nails and hammer, a film that abounds in Christian figures, even having the leper; there are also the ashes that Viridiana takes to Jaime's bed, representing penances and death, she says, and thus ends up being in effect. All these Christian figures reach a delirious climax with the sumptuous and orgiastic banquet, a morbid representation of the Last Supper, one of the major Christian symbols, which is the bizarre framework for vulgarity, atrocity, orgiastic and repulsive, Buñuel takes to the extreme his representation, probably never so powerful and irreverent the representation of religion here. But all that irreverence, of course, has an earmark, as we have seen before, Buñuel conveys to us his concerns, the same concerns that we had already slipped not with little vigor in Nazarín (1959), the question of a genuine Christianity applied in the reality, in a day to day basis, the way in which a Christianity fully exercised in the world of mundane humans is incompatible. In the first part of the film, indisputably the most plagued and steeped in religiosity, there is a marked mysticism, differentiated from the rest of the film footage, with sacred music framing many passages, as when Fernando Rey is seen transvestite in front of the mirror, and Viridiana appears sleepwalker, without words that well-achieved sequence; with that effect, that and other sequences feel impregnated with liturgical halo, the presences of both feel almost hieratic, especially that of her naturally, a silent surrealism flows not with little bizarreness. Differentiated will be the remaining part of the film, but in some way, with all the religious charge -which even decreases, never disappears-, it is as if Rey and his sordidness still hover over the universe of the film. We saw him cross-dressed, his obsession is pathological, in him the traumas are fused with torture, he is humanized a little by saying that he once wanted to do something good for humanity, but now he is prey to his obsession, even with lies he wants to get his niece, although finally he can not sustain the wicked lie; he is torn, insecure and fearful, between one thing and another, a stamp of many buñuelian characters.
For this film, the filmmaker repeteadly asserted he enjoyed a freedom to work, a freedom to shoot that he almost never had again in his cinematographic journey, affirms that since The Golden Age (1930) he had not similar freedom. The filmmaker told us that from the aforementioned surrealist film, he had not been able to continue with his particular artistic traditions so authentically, and if that is something appreciable for him, perhaps it is even more so for the spectator, who will see all his symbolic and thematic power unleashed. Thus, for the connoisseur of the cinematography of the Iberian, to appreciate this film by Buñuel, it is like talking to an old comrade, in which his details, his words or expressions in the conversation are noticed. Analogously, we appreciate here the details of his art, his cinema, his figures, like the feet, first of the girl jumping the rope, then Jaime and Viridiana, he fiddling nervously at their first contact; the director delights showing feet, one of his most traditional images, because this is one of the films that most shows that detail, and then we will see the feet of Jaime in the organ, just to mention another example. Another of his classic images, the female on duty discovering her flesh, especially her legs, will flow, and we see Viridiana, who is already shown as the carnal object of desire on this occasion, taking off her stockings, showing off her legs, thighs, another buñuelian image par excellence. Buñuel affirms that with some lukewarmness he may have "plagiarized" his own work, previous figures of his, and there will be someone who sees in Fernando Rey looking out the window, the female character in Un Chien Andalou (1929) in a similar situation, or when Viridiana peels a fruit, one might see similar figure of Mexican Bus Ride (1952). Another image of this unusually free Buñuel will flow, we will see a tremulous camera approaching a cat that hunts a mouse, buñuelian way of insinuating the carnal union that has just taken place, Jorge and Ramona, master and servant; Buñuel always had a special way of filming the implicit extension of a loving situation, having here a singular example. Interesting and disturbing sequence, because we know that Ramona was to some extent an accomplice of Jaime in the almost outrage that Viridiana was a victim of. Ramona is therefore an undeniable part of that dark universe, let's not forget that after Jaime was unable to rape Viridiana, he shields himself, more than once, with his servant with cowardice, and that she collaborated and tried to consume that sordid incestuous union, and of that failed attempt, Jaime will come out in a state of disrepair, recognize his illegitimate son just before taking his own life, as if trying to find redemption, as if he left a "clean" extension of his in that shady universe.
Viridiana, center and core of the film, has an existential break, quixotic journey has had, an epiphany has occurred, breaks her religious canons, initially conventional, because after the uncertain rape, his Christianity changes and gives herself to take care of beggars; like the priest in Nazarín, she embarks on a journey that will not have a good end. If with Nazarin the director assertively posed certain questions in that regard, here leads to hyperbole, with a very acid portrait, the confessed atheist has free road to act, something that takes other forms when we remember the profound Christian formation of the director. For Nazario, kindness and charity brought catastrophes, did not fit in reality, saw his new path shipwreck, although now Viridiana has a different journey, she does not "take off" like the priest; at the end of the previous film, Nazario takes off completely, with uncertainty, of everything, but she does not, she "returns", she gives herself to Jorge, in that disturbing closing scene to form what is clearly a ménage à trois, while a modern rock music sounds (by then, of course), severe opposition to the sacredness of Jaime. And we have the final symbolism, her crown of thorns burned by the child, burns, corrosively questions whether the idea of true Christianity is futile. She is in suggestive mode, a sleepwalker, she, with fear pulls the udder of the cow in a sequence very Buñuel, she has Marian representation before the almost rape, a complex character who builds an untied Buñuel. At a technical level, the subtle but determined camera behaves with the sufficiency already exhibited in previous works, brief and precise movements will bring us closer to the actions of the protagonists, the technical mastery of the director is undeniable, and his staging, sometimes accused of neglected, it is noticed purified, ready to make the final jump in his total evolution. We have the narrative and transitive resource of the rope, the toy, it starts with the girl Rita, it will reappear powerfully with Jaime's suicide, then also, when the beggars have just arrived at the mansion, then in the second rape attempt, it is an acute leitmotiv that connects the segments of the film, which leads us back to the main thread, which articulates the facts. The sequence prior to the orgiastic banquet is superb, never seen in the director an exercise of this nature, that type of assembly in Buñuel, powerful, opposing physical and spiritual activity, work with prayer, meat with spirit, in an exquisite resource few times by Buñuel wielded; we also have the beggar painter and the nod to Goya, along with Galdós, his two confessed greatest influences. The beggars personify the carnal desire, the hunger, the excess, the fury, the resentment, the wide human range of sins, which end up destroying and breaking Viridiana's principles. Apart from the huge representation of the supper, which is the visual heart of the film and triggering the final break of Viridiana with those principles, we have another symbol, the crucifix-knife, or knife-crucifix, in whose anecdotal inclusion even Carlos Saura got involved. The freedom of the director is noticeable, and it is overwhelming, mocked the censorship, the film in Spain was just released when Franco was out of power, the selling of the crucifix was prohibited, in addition to the immediate reaction of the Vatican; the powerful cinema of Buñuel did not leave anyone indifferent. Fernando Rey is superb in his brief but solvent performance, it is understandable that he became an almost fetish partner of Buñuel in the twilight of his career, in some of his best films -in the year of this movie, no longer too far to see the light -. Buñuel is almost at his maximum expression, as the Spaniards would say, estaba que se salía (he was rocking), it was the moment, the best was already here, the prodigious genius of Calanda was about to set the final stage of one of the most brilliant filmographies seen in the cinema.
