In 1959's Nazarin, the devout Christian Nazarin, after being believed by two ignorant women to be the coming of Jesus, is unable to redeem them and the sufferings of the multitudes.
But at least at the end of the film, Nazarin's two transformations of "reject/accept" suggest that he once again defeated doubt with faith, and that Christianity, while not saving sentient beings, at least saved itself.
However, in 1961's "Veritina", director Buñuel's thinking about religion is completely caught in the dilemma of doubt.
Religious belief is naturally useless to poor beings, but for the originally devout nun Villitiana is no longer "eternal to our Lord", she seems to be unable to save herself.
This masterpiece that helped Buñuel win the Palme d'Or at Cannes is actually Buñuel's own thinking and cognition of Catholicism.
He was born in a small Spanish village called Calanda, for which Bunuel once described it in his book:
"In Calanda, no one will change anything, the old way of life, the old order, everything is passed on from parent to child, from generation to generation, no one knows what is called change, progress." 」
The stagnant childhood memories were in Buñuel's, inseparable from the Catholic order and faith, and until he went to university in Madrid, Buñuel was immersed in Catholic culture.
And this kind of director's own brand is projected into the film "Veritina".
In the film, the protagonist, Veritina, is also a girl who grew up in a convent, and she has no doubts about the teachings of Christianity.
However, the uncle suddenly wanted to see her, and her peaceful monastic life was broken.
Villidiana had little contact with her uncle, who had been her patron of studies and life at the convent.
Reluctantly and puzzled, she spent several days with her elderly uncle, who, when she was about to return to the convent, offered to keep Villidiana with him forever and become his wife.
Buñuel arranges an incestuous and abnormal erotic relationship here, although this character relationship has been involved in his previous "The Girl" and later "Day Beauty", but this time it seems more uncomfortable and the moral impact is stronger.
In Buñuel's image, although his elderly uncle is in love with Villitiana, what prompts him to do so is not the sperm on the brain, but the nostalgia for his ex-wife.
In his eyes, the charm of Veritanna is that she and his ex-wife look so similar that he takes out his wife's previous corset dress to try on, and in the mirror, he is like a tragic figure in Li Yu's twilight memory.
But after exhausting all means to keep the beautiful niece, the uncle finally hanged himself, leaving all his possessions to his former illegitimate son and Villitiana.
He thought that he could redeem his soul with wealth and make Villitiana forgive him, but as a nun, Veritina made a worldly choice, and she did not choose to forgive.
She used all of her inherited property to provide relief to homeless people, beggars, elderly prostitutes and the disabled.
She mistakenly believed that she had been raped by her uncle and lost her virginity, so she could not continue to be a nun, but she still chose the way the nun behaved and became a secular "virgin".
However, Buñuel did not choose the story development of "Utopia" here, allowing Villitiana to redeem all the lower "righteous people" with "ill-gotten wealth", not only so that they can have no worries about food and clothing, but also can do their best to realize the value of life and build a paradise with Williana as the center of faith.
Buñuel chose to pit the secular and religious, and let the "evil" of the lower class invade the "good" of the upper class.
In Buñuel's view, the poor and hungry lower classes have an inertial desire for pleasure, and once they have tasted the taste of abundance from extreme poverty, they have encountered a good "virgin" who does whatever they want.
So they just have to pretend to be grateful, act motivated, and do whatever they want, because they have a natural protective barrier: I'm poor.
As soon as they seize the opportunity, such as the fact that neither the bastard and Veritina are in the manor, they begin to act recklessly, using religious loopholes to eat and drink like gluttony, overcompending their past of poverty.
In order to show this absurd relief and excessive profligacy, Buñuel chose to plant vulgar gimmicks on elegant parodies.
In the climax of the film, the group of gluttons plan to take a group photo in order to commemorate everyone's ability to eat at the high-end table, and just when everyone is worried about not having a camera, a wandering woman says: Her mother gave her a natural camera.
At this time, there are many homeless people lined up on the side of the table, they have different postures, but the composition is exactly the same as da Vinci's famous "The Last Supper".
Just when we felt this pungent irony, the promiscuous woman lifted her skirt and pointed the private parts of her lower body at the people in the horizontal column, indicating that her "natural camera" had just opened the "shutter" to take a group photo of everyone.
This anarchist chaos in the absence of those in power (Veritina and illegitimate children) is inseparable from Buñuel's early experiences.
As a young man, he experienced the Spanish Civil War, when the Spanish Communist Party, fascists, and anarchists wrestled with each other, and as a surrealist, he was originally more inclined to anarchist groups.
But as this force gained strength, their lawless and wanton destruction discouraged Buñuel and he resented the so-called "anarchists" ever since.
And the chaos that Villiana presents in the final part is the projection of this consciousness.
But Buñuel is not bent on showing the moral imbalance of the lower class, he wants to use his strength to use this irredeemable image of Catholicism to make a more concrete presentation, and the object he really hopes to focus on is the protagonist of the film, Villitiana.
The girl, who was almost raped by the tramp she had relieved at the end, became the most tragic figure, and she had lived in the monastery with the vision of being a nun for life, but she was broken by the lie of her uncle;
But when she was willing to use all her wealth and energy to help the poor, she was counterattacked by the hungry wolf and became a farmer who woke up the winter snake.
So in the end, the ring of thorns, the cross, and the holy leachings she had previously attached to in prayer had all become incinerators in the fire, and did she still have faith?
Buñuel did not answer the question directly, but let her knock on the door of her uncle's illegitimate son in a daze.
She and her cousin, who had always been interested in her, planned to have fun at night, playing playing cards, which are known as "secular people" who are only attracted to them.
She was eventually pushed farther and farther away by the image, and finally discarded by the invisible God in a corner of the world...
This time, religion did not save anyone.