My favorite atheist

Sylvia Pinal as Satan as Jesus in Simon of the Desert, Bunuel, 1965

"Thank God I'm an atheist," the great director Luis Bunuel was fond of repeating in his later years, and he was only half-joking, I think. Bunuel was educated by Jesuits and even recalled witnessing a miracle in his home town of Calanda, Spain. But, at public high school, after being expelled by the Jesuits, philosophically galvanized by "Spencer, Marx, Rousseau [and] Darwin," he lost "what little faith" he still had at around the same time as he lost his virginity, in a Saragossa brothel. Sade and surrealism still had yet to exert their influence, but the die was cast.

Bunuel was one of those atheists to watch out for—the kind that knows Catholic Church history and doctrine backwards and forwards. Late in life he made a close friend of at least one Jesuit priest, largely, I infer, because by the late 20th century a Jesuit priest was the only person you could still talk about that kind of stuff with. As someone just barely old enough to remember the Latin mass, I have a special affection for the two films Bunuel made that deal most explicitly with the myriad mysteries of the church itself (as opposed to religious sentiment and philosophy in action, the subject of 1959''s great Nazarin), 1972 1969's The Milky Way and 1965's SImon of the Desert. Criterion released a swell version of The Milky Way in 2007; Simon, with the equally essential 1963 The Exterminating Angel, is released by the company February 11. 

A droll riff on the life of ascetic Simeon Stylites, who stood on a pillar praying for almost 40 years back in the earliest A.D.'s, the 45-minute Simon is, depending on who you believe, either a would-be feature that went uncompleted due to lack of funding (Bunuel's version), or the first part of a two-part anthology film starring Sylvia Pinal, which went uncompleted because the varied directors Pinal and producer/husband Gustavo Alatriste approached to do part two wanted to employ their spouses instead. (Pinal, still living an a genuine superstar in Mexico to this day, tells her version in most entertaining fashion in one of the extras on the Criterion disc.) Its compact form is one of the things that make it so special, so engaging. No sooner does one bit of business mixing what appears to be actual religious credulity with bracing cynicism end than another begins, vying to top the last one. Pinal plays a female Satan who adopts some quite outrageous disguises, as above, but is always found out by the stoic, fearsomely-bearded pillar-topper Simon. She finally achieves her goal by taking him to the one place where they'll be forced to be friends. Because that's all that Satan, the fallen angel, really wants—for oh-so-holy Simon to somehow admit that they're kindred spirits after all. 

One reason Bunuel was a lot more fun than the various stern-faced atheists railing against faith these days is that Bunuel was smart enough to understand that here was a battle he'd never win. One actually senses, sometimes, that he didn't want it won—he needed an enemy, or at least what you'd call an opponent, to keep the juices flowing. In Milky Way, an angrier film than SImon, he places religion in the context of the continuity of human stupidity.

One of the most mordantly funny bits in Simon occurs when the ascetic performs an actual miracle, restoring the hands of a crippled peasant, who then nonchalantly rushes his family away from the scene without even so much as a "thank you," and smacks one of his daughters on the back of the head for good measure. "Here a priest could say you are a believer," the critic Tomas Perez Turrent notes in conversation with Bunuel in the indispensable interview book Objects of Desire, a part of which is reproduced in Simon's DVD booklet. Bunuel shrugs him off. "[M]ust you exclude everything that is not materialist and provable from a work of imagination? No. There is an element of mystery, of doubt, of ambiguity. I'm always ambiguous. Ambiguity is a part of my nature because it breaks with immutable preconceived ideas.Where is truth? Truth is a myth. I am a materialist; however, that doesn't mean that I deny the imagination, fantasy, or that even certain unexplainable things can exist. Rationally, I don't believe that a handless man can grow hands, but I can act as though I believe it because I'm interested in what comes afterward. Besides, I am working in cinema, which is a machine that manufactures miracles."

"A machine that manufactures miracles"—very nice. 

Comments

[bill]

I've been catching up with Bunuel lately, and I hope it's okay if I diverge from the religious angle right off the bat, but one of the things I've been finding interesting about him is the way he flirts with genre. Godard and Truffaut and the like would mess around with crime films and SF films while actually pretty much MAKING crime and SF films, but some of the Bunuel films I've seen so far are films that could fall into one genre category or another if he'd decided to nudge them just a little bit more in that direction. I'm thinking specifically of "That Obscure Object of Desire" which, apart from everything else it's dealing with, comes awfully close to tipping into James M. Cain territory. Also, while it's been many years since I've seen "The Exterminating Angel", that one always struck me, story-wise, as being like an episode of "The Twilight Zone" without the clear moral punch-line (which I know is reductive of the film, but I'm just trying to mine this one area at the moment).

Did Bunuel ever directly tackle a genre story? I'm guessing not, but, as a genre-hound, I'm finding this thin branch of his work to be interesting.

[Glenn Kenny]

@bill—Most of the Mexican stuff contains strong genre elements, especially if you include romantic melodrama in your genre bag. But the sort of thing you're talking about is strongest in the likes of "El," a psychosexual thriller with strong intimations of Cain at his craziest, and "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz," a black-comic portrait of a serial killer. Of course, these can hardly be said to be "straight" genre pieces...

[Vadim]

This is probably just my fault, but I found The Milky Way almost unwatchable, for the precise reason you mention: it's more Catholic than most Catholics themselves, to a point that goes beyond self-parody. I mean, I like Bernanos as much as the next guy, but jeez.

[bill]

Glenn, you've further peaked my interest, but, of course, neither of those films are available on Netflix. Would it be worth my money to go the foreign-region route?

Netflix does have "The Brute", though, which sounds interesting.

Vadim:

"it's more Catholic than most Catholics themselves, to a point that goes beyond self-parody."

I may only be a Catholic of the lapsed variety, though I'm not an atheist, but I think the "self-parody" was what he was going for.

[Glenn Kenny]

@bill—There's a not-bad Films-sans-Frontieres double feature of "Archibaldo" and "El" that is region free. Possibly out of print. But worth digging for.

@vadim: I admit, "Milky Way" is definitely the biggest "specialty" item in the whole Bunuel oeuvre. It's telling that he made it at a certain commercial peak, a career moment in which he could "get away" with such an indulgence. I still love it though, and I think it has moments that are laugh-out-loud funny even without context—the duel, the executions. But if you haven't seen "Simon," you're in for a treat; the esoteric references never threaten to gum up the comic invention and philosphical trenchancy. And Sylvia Pinal...

[Dan]

"The Milky Way" isn't my favorite Bunuel film ever made (although Bunuel is one of my favorite filmmakers), but it's definitely got some great moments, especially the bit in the limo and the sword-fight. Although I'm surprised nobody's brought up the equally pointed and brilliant "Viridiana" yet, although I suppose that deals more with applied religion instead of the philosophical implications of it. I've always liked how Bunuel tackles religion; even in something like "Way", he never lays it on quite as thick as other filmmakers dealing with the same subject.

@bill: "The Brute" is mostly interesting for seeing what Bunuel does with a very, VERY stock story. I barely got through it, to be honest.

In terms of Bunuel and genre, what's always stood out for me is his willingness to deploy genre tropes as needed, although I think "Object" is way too funny and far too interested in its overall message to be as close to Cain as some might like.

Although part of me likes to think of "The Phantom of Liberty" as a more artful "Kentucky Fried Movie."

[Griff]

Glenn, Bunuel's THE MILKY WAY was released in Europe in 1969; it was distributed in the United States in 1970.

[Bruce Reid]

"Sade and surrealism still had yet to exert their influence...."

I wouldn't write off Saragossa brothels so completely as that.

[bill]

"I've always liked how Bunuel tackles religion; even in something like "Way", he never lays it on quite as thick as other filmmakers dealing with the same subject"

No he doesn't, and I also like that about him. Seen from a certain angle, Viridiana would have been better off staying at the convent.

And I'm not saying "Object" is really all that close to Cain, just that, if nudged in the ribs a little bit, it could have toppled into that territory pretty quickly. Which isn't a criticism of what the film ultimately is, or of Cain. It's just an interesting tightrope walk.

"'The Brute' is mostly interesting for seeing what Bunuel does with a very, VERY stock story. I barely got through it, to be honest."

Oh well. I'll still check it out. Hopefully I'll disagree.

[Brandon]

One of my favorite Bunuel quotes (sorry I forget the context, but it's found somewhere in MY LAST SIGH):

"Sometimes you just have to say shit to science".

Marvelous.