Mexican Buñuel season, Cinemateca 5/6
Nazarín tells the story of a priest who is too virtuous for his own good. Adapted from a Galdós story, it’s a lumpy film, opening with a long sequence in the small community where the priest is based, before expanding in the second half into rural Mexico, as the priest is compelled to flee, followed by two devoted women who revere him. The opening half hour feels dialogue heavy and theatrical. The film struggles to catch fire, (until it does), and it’s only when the priest sets out on his odyssey that the film and the narrative gather pace. There is an obvious critique of the Catholic church, with the priest’s goodness proving to be his undoing (perhaps reminiscent of Greene’s The Power and the Glory), but more than anything the film offers Buñuel a chance to explore and reveal a deeper Mexico, a Mexico far from the big cities. His depiction of the campesinos and the pueblos is impressively filmed by DP Gabriel Figueroa, and this world, with its rogues and dwarfs is beautifully brought to life. The paradoxical majesty of the Hispanic architecture juxtaposed with poverty and struggle and the smallness of man in the face of the epic countryside, is captured as the priest’s calvary leads him and his followers towards a bitter end. The films of Reygadas are second cousins to Buñuel’s vision in Nazarín.
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