SIMON OF THE DESERT   1965
Directed by Luis Buñuel
45 minutes
In Spanish with English subtitles

Simon of the Desert, the last of Luis Buñuel's Mexican films, is his wicked and wild spin on the life of devoted ascetic Saint Simeon Stylites, who lived on top of a pillar in the middle of a barren desert landscape for six years, six months, and six days, in order to prove his devotion to God.

But of course in Buñuel's version the devil shows up in the guise of a beautiful blonde bombshell, trying to distract Simon with her own voluptuous sexuality, the devil's motorized coffin, and a dwarf who steals away his flock. A skeptic's vision of human conviction, Buñuel's short and bittersweet satire is one of the Spanish filmmaker's most scandalous works of biting surrealism. It's beautiful, subversive and probably the major inspiration for Monty Python's Life of Brian.

+
DOSTOEVSKY'S TRAVELS  1991
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
52 minutes
Various languages with English translation

The well-known Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski (Eda, Cold War) started off making small screwball shorts for British television. That's when he made this little gem. It's part documentary and part fiction, in other words is actually a documentary that's been tweaked.

The great grandson of the famous Russian writer Dostoevsky journeys from Saint Petersburg to Germany to give some lectures. What becomes clear immediately is that he doesn't give a damn about the writer, his only interest is trying to get money to buy a Mercedes car. Watching the film unfold is hilarious, also because we recognize so much truth in it's searing commentary on the world today.

The other thing that becomes clear is the banality of German culture, the trite questions they ask, and the overly romantic importance they place on him as they go on eulogizing about the eternal Russian soul. The whole movie is a gas, totally hysterical as it pits the 19th century Russian writer's philosophical and spiritual culture against the crass commercial world we are living in now. For the director this was also a bitter comment about the transition of Russia as the Soviet Union fell and it plunged into capitalism.