Living on top of a marble pillar and seeking penance for unexplored sinful actions of the past is unduly spiritual, but is it enough? Simon (Claudio Brook) is that pillar dweller, an ascetic who prays to God though he often forgets the lines of prayer. As any ascetic would, Simon abstains from any indulgences that includes rich foods (lettuce will do), flirtatious women, trimming his long beard, and almost anything that could shake his confidence in God. Simon also expresses his disgust over a cleanly presentable, shaven priest to whom he insists should have a beard and ought to be excoriated. Simon's tough.
Luis Bunuel's "Simon of the Desert" is often very funny in an offhanded way and also deeply spiritual in every sense of the word. Simon just prays to God and occasionally performs a miracle such as healing a shepherd with stumps that change into newly formed hands. Simon is also granted a higher pillar for his continued penance (6 years, 6 months and 6 days in the shorter pillar) and for performing other miracles. Bunuel does not point out the absurdity of all this nor does he mock religion - he is satirizing religion but not the practice of it. Prayer is taken seriously and it seems to have its own undisclosed rewards for Simon who just wants God to ascend his human body to a heavenly spirit. Occasionally, there are temptations from Satan in the form of a girl in a sailor suit, to a female bearded shepherd who holds a lamb and then kicks it out of frame and even a coffin that slides through the desert to the pillar revealing a woman holding her breast! Satan in her few incarnations is played with beaming, sexually carnivorous delight by Silvia Pinal.
The ending is a howler but not necessarily a narrative obstruction as it leads to Simon with a trimmed beard, modern clothes and a pipe inside of some 1960's dance arena where young kids move to a rock n' roll dance called "Radioactive Flesh." Satan has brought him here temporarily but Simon is not amused or finding any joy in this. He clearly wants a simpler life without noise or music, simply no indulgences. He has a higher power as a healer and a worshipper of God but is he still human? For a wicked, some might say blasphemous comedy that certainly preceded the comic riches of "The Life of Brian" and the solemnity of "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Simon of the Desert" is a special kind of subversive comedy - essentially a dignified and equally comical cinematic treat.
