I think the word you are looking for is "gospeliza...

2008-12-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

I think the word you are looking for is "gospelizationizing."

Viridiana is the reason I read Nazarin so dimly, and take the latter's final scene as a such a harrowing indictment. It just seems that the film was misread at the time (and by the NCFO, no less) because Bunuel's criticism was so far ahead of its time theologically. Basically, someone could make this film today about the resurgence of "social justice" thinking in contemporary American and British Christianity, and it would be dead on.

SDG's review makes use of The Power and the Glory comparison, it works very well.

The priest here reminds me of the whiskey priest i...

2008-11-29T19:52:00.000-08:00

The priest here reminds me of the whiskey priest in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. Both are somewhat idealized in their painful awareness of their flaws and inadequacy, an awareness that paradoxically elevates them to the level of the heroic precisely because their actions lack the materialist foundation that informs so much Marxist revolution or Christian social justice gospelizing (is that a word?).

I think to accept these characters as real and their actions as meaningful, one must accept the sacramental nature of the priesthood, which either resolves or merely glosses over the impossibility of resolving the tripartite chasm between the way others treat them, the way others think of them, and the way they think of themselves.

It doesn't surprise me that Buñuel had such a conflicted response to his prize. It's nearly impossible for me to know Nazarin is directed by the same guy who helmed Virdiana and not assume the sneering wink instead of the winking sneer, but, hey, who am I to tell the National Catholic film office their business?

Comments on Film - Think: Nazarín (Buñuel, 1959)

I think the word you are looking for is "gospeliza...

The priest here reminds me of the whiskey priest i...