Benign Buñuel - on SIMON OF THE DESERT

SIMON OF THE DESERT, Luis Buñuel’s last Mexican film and his funniest, is a compromised work without seeming like one.  Its mere 43 minutes running time, a result of the producer running out of money, explains the film’s abrupt finale, but Buñuel’s ultimate solution – jetting his hero centuries forward to a 1960s nightclub hell - is befitting the surrealistic touches that precede it.

The plot: Simón (Claudio Brook), an early Christian ascetic perched atop a pillar for six years must resist the temptations of the Devil in the guise of Silvia Pinal, who appears as a water bearer, a not-so-innocent anachronistic school girl, and as Christ, carrying a lamb, which she promptly drops and kicks when Simón denies her.

Buñuel depicts the often absurd proceedings with a serene detachment.  If the actors’ playing was more broadly comedic, several scenes could have passed for a Monty Python sketch.  The men and women who gather around Simón’s pillar aren’t too impressed with Simón, even after he performs a miracle: restoring a man’s chopped off hands.  It’s all pretty mundane to the onlookers.  After all, what else is a saint supposed to do if not perform miracles, as a baker bakes bread.

One scene, where a possessed monk quarrels with his fellow monks, is basically the Duck Season/Rabbit Season gag from the Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny cartoons, as the possessed monk manages to confuse his fellow monks as to what they should be damning and praising in their shouts.

As funny as SIMON IN THE DESERT often is, it is also one of Buñuel’s most benign films.  The old master can’t conceal his fondness for his Simón, in his solitude, nibbling on lettuce and blessing the insects who visit him on his perch in the sky.  The purity of Simón’s devotion is something Buñuel cannot scoff at; he just shakes his head, amused, smiling.