"Simon of the Desert's little Bible stories are twisted evocations of the dumbing down of faith by postmodern Christian anxieties and hang-ups." - Ed Gonzalez

Bunuel films the action beautifully, adds a number of creative touches--esp. to Simon's encounters with the Devil--and pretty much plays it straight right up until the ultra-surrealist ending. Simon is a three dimensional character whose fall is handled in too straightforward a fashion. Bunuel's lack of imagination with regard to religious characters is more striking than ever here. While he is profoundly aware of the life of faith, he seems only able to imagine it ending in despair or failure.

Interesting, but thanks to the abrupt ending, this felt more like food for thought than a film with one message. Not that movies must have messages, but considering how much of this one is spent on critiquing the Catholic church, the ending felt rather like "and those guys too."

Deliciously subversive work. I can't decide whether it's a shame we didn't get the feature-length version, or whether it's perfect as it is.

There's nothing particularly wrong here, it just feels like an idea that barely gets off the ground.

I saw this a long time ago, but I didn't know the name of it. It showed up as a recommended film when I visited Criticker today. I never thought I would hear of it again.

questions the religion if i think very simple

In a way I'm happy that the funding fell through and Bunuel had to abbreviate the film; I don't see how he could have improved upon it. It's about as fun and accessible as surrealism can get. Funny as hell, too.

Really cool... wish it had kept going!

One of Bunuel's best - and greatly underappreciated. Simultaneously attacking and displaying a strange sense of affection for religion, piousness and (overly extreme) selfsacrifice. Oh yeah. And the final dance-off (!) is one of cinema's finest.

SOTD is truncated, incomplete, and barely known - but it is the one Bunuel film I continually return to. This has something genuine to say about the falseness of altruism, the relationship between Man and God, and the death of the Enchanted Age. Or I'm reading too much into it. God bless Bunuel.

One of Buñuel's best movies. Everything about bunuel's Cinema, you can find in those bright 43 minutes!

946

Bunuel's anarchic humor was never more pungent, his visual style more subtly formal, his gibes at holiness and purity more telling.

I liked this one a lot. It's brief, captivating, heavily allegorical without feeling like it's allegory first and story second, and also quite funny. The ending comes out of nowhere but fits perfectly. Another thing I like about it is that while it clearly satirizes Christianity to some extent, it's also something of a blank slate for you to write your own religious interpretation onto. You could distill the film down to an interpretation that both Christians and non-Christians can agree on.

This may be a very unusual case where severe budgetary problems encountered in the course of production actually resulted in a better movie. Superb ending, of course. To me, it seems that Denis's "Beau travail" is in fact, in an abstracted and uncanny way, a remake of this movie.

Interesting movie. It's tempting to call it a good slam on religion until you realize that it could also easily be interpreted as a PRO-religion film. Arts and Crafts students can spin that all they want about how you're supposed to know Bunuel etc. etc., but I'd argue that kind of ambiguity is a failure to communicate

# 872

A funny and surreal skewering of organized religion.

A slight film, but a memorable one.

967

I don't get it.

11 Nisan 09, 16:00. atlas sinemasi. 28. ist. film fest. & en son 27.ist. film fest'te 'el topo'yu izlerken yasadigim, icimdeki sinema coskusunu tekrardan aciga cikaran bir film. boyle filmleri ancak yilda, iki yilda bir izleriz. beyazperde'de izleme sansini yakaladigim icin cok mutluyum. Simon 2010'lara gelse de ayni seyle karsilasacakti. *Bunuel'in su ana kadar izledigim en iyi filmi. favorim. http://sineofrenik.blogspot.com/2009/04/28-uluslararas-istanbul-film-festivali_5495.html

A bedtime story for nonbelievers. With the flat, desolate setting and the up-tilted views of the aloof holy man, the movie is composed of about three-fourths sky; and against this luminous backdrop Buñuel's mixed-nuts characters stand out like the over-defined figures in a Sunday School play -- priests, pilgrims, the poor, the infirm, the malformed, and, in various disguises, the ubiquitous Devil.