MIM Movie Review

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

"Nazarin"
Directed by Luis Bunuel
92 minutes, 1958

Winner of the 1959 Cannes Festival award, "Nazarin" is about a Catholic priest 
who some start referring to as a saint when two people recover from near-death
illness after seeing him. Much of the movie is about economic hardship as the 
father gives away all his money and lives amongst the poor.

One redeeming quality of the film is that the father takes a hard line defending 
science and not encouraging religious superstition; however, he finds that 
wherever he goes the people already support superstitions including those 
regarding him. The more good deeds he does, the more favorable superstitions 
arise regarding him as do unfavorable secular slanders against him.

Many people confuse the attitude of the father toward the poor with communism in 
general. The father lives a Christian communist lifestyle, but he is not 
Marxist, because Marxism is a plan for organizing the government  and economy, 
not merely living one life. Although this film is about the conditions of the 
poor in Spain, the film's politics lead in the wrong direction.