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Personally, I have no memory of the film itself. Only a distant image, the parish oratory hall seen through my child's eyes. This is the snapshot that reappeared in my mind a few days ago when someone asked me if I had already seen this film. I wasn't sure, so out of curiosity, I borrowed it.
The plot: in a small Spanish village, a group of friars arrives and decides to renovate and settle in an old, abandoned fortress. One day, one of them finds an abandoned orphan. As time goes by, they all grow fond of him.
Meanwhile, the little darling has grown up, he's five years old, and he gets into mischief to the despair of the friars. Marcellino is forbidden from climbing the stairs leading to the upper floor, to prevent injury from the work tools. To ensure his obedience, they tell him that a big man lives upstairs who would take him away. Naturally, our little rascal is irresistibly drawn to the allure of the forbidden and discovers that the room contains a crucifix with a life-sized Christ.
Spontaneously, the two begin to talk, and Marcellino, thinking Jesus is hungry, brings him some bread and wine that he regularly steals from the kitchen. The friars begin to suspect something, and one fine day one of them decides to follow him, but it will be too late...
My interpretation: I have no idea how this film was received by the critics, the church, and the audience in general. I know that for me it wasn't a coincidence to have seen it again at this particular moment in my life that allows me a clear view of many aspects of the reality surrounding us. To begin with, Marcellino throughout the film speaks with an imaginary friend who is none other than his spirit guide. Marcellino therefore has remarkable mediumistic abilities, which fully reveal themselves when he converses with an enlightened spirit represented by Jesus himself, who, to reward him for his generosity and altruism, wants to fulfill his greatest wish, which is to embrace his mother. Jesus chooses to grant him bodily death and take his soul to higher worlds so that he can be reunited with the mother he never knew during his few years of earthly existence.
Logically, one would think that the friars find the lifeless body of the child at this point. Probably in the movie, it is implied that Christ took everything away, otherwise, how to cry miracle! How to justify that the good Jesus could have killed a poor child? And if it had been another entity that gave him death? Would they have called it a demon?
No, my dear sirs, this film is not just a Christian fairy tale, it is much more!
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