Film review: Nazarin

Nazarin (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1958). Bunuel's best film, like most of Bunuel's films, is a skillful and satirical examination of religion and relationships of power. In Nazarin, a virtuous priest is subjected to a series of torments obviously meant to mirror the life of Christ. But for Bunuel the atheist, the most unbelievable miracle in the Gospel narratives is that people actually listened and were changed by the words and deeds of Christ. His film imagines a world where the petty squabbles and self-absorption of human beings wholly prevent an authentic spiritual epiphany, and where Jesus' last moments—wracked by doubt and anxiety—take on a subverted but still profound significance for contemporary human experience. The narrative is oddly choppy in places, but Bunuel successfully communicates his critique. A