Simon of the Desert

Simon of the Desert is a short film by Luis Bunuel made in 1965 and shot by the wonderful Mexican cinematographer, Gabriel Figuero.  The movie's short running time, a mere 40 minutes, is explained by the fact that the film was originally designed to be part of an anthology with two other sections.  The anthology didn't get finished and so Bunuel's contribution was, in effect, orphaned -- the movie was not easy to see for many years, primarily because it was too short to stand alone as a feature film and too long for a short subject.  The movie is restrained and enigmatic:  I've seen it several times and don't know exactly what Bunuel means by the film.  Of course, the Spanish director is a surrealist and, I suppose, he would have disclaimed any meaning at all, preferring to regard the film as a sort of open-ended and puzzling comedy.  Simon is Simon Stylites, a saint that we first meet climbing down from a pillar where he has stood with outstretched arms for several years.  A wealthy man in the neighborhood has decided to show-off by building a taller, more ornate column on which the saint can stand.  A number of half-witted monks stand around the base of the pillar -- periodically, they bicker about theology.  A thief who has had his hands cut off in retribution for his crimes is the beneficiary of a miracle -- Simon restores his hands.  (Of course, we can anticipate what will happen next -- the criminal's daughter questions her father whether these are the same hands that he possessed before they were chopped-off and he cuffs her on the ear for her impudence.)  Simon realizes that standing on the pillar is too easy a penance for him and, so, he decides to further mortify himself by standing on one foot.  Satan, in the form of a little girl who looks a bit like Brigitte Bardot, tempts him.  When Simon tells the devil to get away from him, lightning strikes and the girl is revealed to be a haggard and gaunt old lady with sagging jowls and fearsome eyes.  A dwarf tends to his sheep and a young monk who praises Simon skips around the desert like a teenage maiden in a movie by D.W. Griffith.  One monk accuses Simon of over-eating and has a seizure.  Satan appears again, this time as a half-naked woman in a weird self-propelled casket -- it wriggles over the desert like an snake or iguana.  Satan gets up on the pillar with the Saint and cuddles with him.  A plane appears and we next see the Saint in New York City sitting in a rock and roll club with the young woman who is also Satan.  A band plays some aggressive and wild-sounding dance music.  Simon asks for the name of the dance and Satan tells him that is "Radioactive Flesh."  He wants to get back to the desert but has lost his way.

Simon is not much of saint -- he's really more a self-mortifying masochistic eccentric.  It's not clear whether he's just a contrarian or an idiot.  At the rock club, he is dressed like a European existentialist -- he wears a black turtle neck and smokes a pipe morosely.  Clearly, he's not configured for joi d'vivre.  (The only thing he likes doing is blessing people and animals and things -- at one point, he works a piece of meat stuck between his teeth out of his mouth and is about to bless the fragment of food before changing his mind and flicking it away.  Bunuel's point, I suppose, is that sainthood is much overrated.  Our modern saints are gloomy existentialists frequenting joints where loud music is played.  The movie is shot with absolute objectivity.  Figuero poses Simon against the sky in commanding, if futile, postures.  A vast stony desert extends to barren mountains.  New York is all canyons of dark brick and sooty metal.  Oddly enough, the rock and roll music at the end is excellent -- it's a savage instrumental piece that makes the dancers lunge about moronically; the music sounds a little like the uncompromising and thunderous instrumentals by Link Wray.  The bitter joke is that it doesn't take a whole lot of temptation for the Saint to completely lose his way.