Simon of the Desert

The ascetic Simón Stylites spends six years, six weeks, and six days perched on a small pillar in the Syrian desert. A crowd of monks and peasants gathers around him, seeking guidance and miracles. A wealthy family erects a taller pillar nearby to honor him, prompting the move.

The invitation to relocate is accepted and Simón is led to a much taller pillar. His aging mother asks to stay near him until her death, and he allows it but refuses to acknowledge her so as not to distract his prayers. A quiet tension develops between filial duty and spiritual focus.

Monks attempt to bestow holy orders on Simón, but he rejects the ceremony, insisting he is an unworthy sinner. He declines institutional recognition in favor of personal ascetic devotion. The crowd struggles with the tension between miracle-worker status and humility.

Simón leads the crowd in the Lord's Prayer, but a woman interrupts to ask him to heal her husband, whose hands were cut off for stealing. He prays and the hands reappear, yet the reaction is underwhelming. The monks stay to pray with him but depart after he chastises one for admiring a passing woman with a jug.

Satan appears, disguised as a young girl from a future time, attempting to tempt Simón with earthly pleasures and jabbing him in the back. He banishes her by appealing to Christ, reaffirming his vow to resist worldly temptations. The encounter tests his isolation and resolve.

Brother Matías interrupts Simón's prayers by delivering lettuce and water. Simón grows frustrated at the distraction, realizing he has momentarily forgotten his body and now longs for the soil and his mother. The physical hunger pierces his spiritual routine.

During a prayer on asceticism, Trifón confesses to planting cheese, bread, and wine in Simón's sack, swearing he did not place the food himself and railing against the Church. Simón exhorts the Holy Ghost to reveal truth and exorcises Satan from Trifón as the others carry him away. The monastic community is unsettled but restored for the moment.

Satan returns, this time dressed as God, flattering Simón and trying to lure him with the promise of earthly pleasures. He resists the deception once he sees through the mask, and decides that his penance will be to stand on one leg from then on. The moment marks a new, stricter phase of his vow.

The monk who once looked at the woman visits Simón to seek forgiveness and warns that the Antichrist is approaching Rome with an army. He laments humanity's endless conflicts over ownership and fears Simón has become detached from the world. Simón blesses the monk before he departs.

A coffin slides across the desert toward Simón's pillar, and Satan emerges, transporting him to a crowded nightclub in 1960s New York City. They sit at a table in modern dress as a live rock band performs on stage, jolting him with a completely different reality.

In the nightclub, a man asks Satan to dance while Simón watches with detached interest. Satan explains that the crowd is dancing what she calls the 'Radioactive Flesh.' When Simón contemplates leaving, she tells him he must 'stick it out till the end.' The separation between sacred vow and worldly spectacle becomes stark.

The film closes on an unresolved note, with Simón suspended between monastic austerity and the electric immediacy of modern life. He remains physically immovable atop the pillar as history and culture surge around him, leaving the ultimate fate of his faith and vow open to interpretation.