A life consumed by faith, or maybe the lack of it. An arid and futile quest. Such is the story of Nazario, the lonesome protagonist of Luis Bunuel's masterpiece - Nazarin.
Essentially this movie tells of the sonorous emptiness that takes the form of human flesh, one that cages itself within what we call “life”. Like a perjured witness, it leads us into a make-believe world, a world of illusions, replete with those glittering playthings we endow with fancy names: “faith”, “hope”, “love”, and above all, “God”….
This movie is not a confessional, it does not deal with the “true” or the “false”. Neither is it a work of art. This is no creation at all. For every creation to exist there must be one who creates it, and those who perceive it. But over here, none exists. Not even life or lifelessness. It's that voice that keeps on whispering about a stream of cold and soothing water running very close by. The poor traveler believes in that voice, to the extent that he can hear the gurgling sounds of some flowing brook. He is trapped in a room with a million mirrors, but he can't see himself in any of those. And he is forbidden to break the mirrors, though he doesn't know that. And in the end, the thirst perishes him, or maybe he perishes the thirst, whichever way you choose to look at it.
Entwining the relentless animosity faced by this ‘priest' Nazario, there are these characters - like the prostitutes, like Beatriz and her visions, like Andara, who, along with Beatriz, had chosen to follow Nazario in his quest, the guards and inmates of the prison, the dying lady who would rather make love to her husband than have a priest talking to her about God, the lady who had offered watermelons to the broken man…. They appear like flickering candle flames, like flitting images from a distant and unknown world.
Throughout this ‘movie', if it can be called one that is, Bunuel weaves those visions of Marquis de Sade which had shaken the very foundations of our conscience two centuries back. God is not dead, and this is because, he never existed. One can choose to create a living God, one who heeds our prayers and heals our pains, or maybe a blind God who prefers to remain a mute spectator to all the sufferings and miseries. One can worship Him, or spit on Him. The faith is real. But God is not. And once that realization dawns, faith sinks down into the sands, like a dead stream. And the thirst remains. It haunts. It kills.
Nazario stares - deep and hard, into the wounds of the dying inhabitants of a village devastated by plague. He tries to offer them kind words - not to soothe the dying, but to soothe his own inner-self, his own thirst. For faith, which had already shown signs of decaying, seeks assurance. Like a child, it seeks milk from her mother's breast. But the child never had a mother. It was borne out of nothingness. And unlike many men and women who go through their daily motions and jugglery, Nazario ends up realizing this.
The dying have nothing to lose. Hence, they shun him. Hence, the lady, in her deathbed, would rather make love to her husband than have a priest talking to her about God. And before death, the only true feeling that exists is that of thirst. And nothing else. In this way, Nazario realizes the futility of his quest.
But he can not go back. His house had been set on fire. Everything had long since been devoured. He is a prisoner now. The fruit-seller lady offers him watermelons, with the words “May God be with you”….. And he breaks down. Finally. He knows that his thirst can never be quenched. Finality has been attained. Finally.
