To an Unknown God 1977

José, a middle-aged magician, leads an elegant, discreet life and keeps an occasional affair with Miguel, a young politician who finds it more convenient in Madrid’s high society to marry than to admit his homosexuality. José is a man whose thoughts are deeply rooted in his childhood in Granada during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the spring of 1936.

Now in his fifties, José returns to Granada to relive that past, back to the time when he fell in love with Federico García Lorca and carried on a youthful affair with one of Lorca’s lovers. Memories surge—of earlier sexual conquests, Lorca’s murder at the hands of Francisco Franco’s agents, and his own early homosexual experiences. The film makes clear that José’s life has been colored by his obsession with García Lorca, a kind of personal god to whom the film is dedicated.

José makes two trips to Granada. In the first, he seeks out a woman equally obsessed with Lorca’s memory and steals a photograph of the boy who accompanied his first sexual encounter; in the second, he returns to Madrid for a party in search of his youth, and there he meets a pianist with whom he had sexual relations many years earlier, though the pianist no longer recalls him.

Back in Madrid, José wrestles with a past that refuses to stay buried and searches for some measure of peace. While listening to a taped recording of Lorca’s Ode to Walt Whitman, he longs to face the rest of his life in solitude, even as his former lover Miguel returns to his bed and wishes to continue their affair.

Ultimately, José confronts his loneliness and comes to terms with his world, realizing that he is truly alone in their world, alone with his God.