The Milky Way

There are two Bunuels: the cheeky Bunuel who makes movies filled with blatant symbolism and surrealism attacking religion and sexuality, and the narrative Bunuel, who makes more subtle films which approach these same issues in more mature ways.

The first Bunuel, the Bunuel of L'Age D'Or and Un Chien Andalou, was definitely at work on this project. The coherent narratives of Los Olivados, Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, Exterminating Angel or even Discrete Charm of the Bourgoise.

Bunuel loved ambiguity and abstraction. He loved making people feel uncertain of things in all his movies - yet many of them maintain a serene, smooth surface nonetheless - there may be dream sequences in them, and things out of the ordinary happening, yet they don't jump around in the madcap way this movie and L'Age D'Or do, constantly making the viewer adjust to a new scene with seemingly no relation to the last, which is afterwards resolved when the pilgrims appear and reinstate continuity.

The two pilgrim characters are our tour guides through a patchwork of historical vignettes involving important religious events.

The highlight of the film for me was when a priest is talking to a man and a woman through a locked door, locked on the advice of the innkeeper presumably to keep the chaplin from coming into their rooms and preaching to them, and the chaplin is talking to them about how Mary could have given birth and remained a virgin. He thinks of an example of this: like light coming through a window. Bunuel cuts from the priest sitting outside the room to the couple inside the room, and suddenly the priest is sitting inside the room talking to he couple. In the next shot, he is outside, and the following shot, inside again. A superb example of cinematic irony.

I'm actually not quite sure what i thought of the film - its certainly not among my favourite Bunuels (Discrete Charm of the Bourgoisie, Exterminating Angel, Los Olivados, L'Age D'Or), but its the sort of film that clearly rewards repeat viewings. As another reviewer commented, a knowledge of religious history reaped rich rewards from it, which makes me wish i knew a little more than i did.

Clifford's Commendations: Like with any Bunuel film, if you're christian, and you get it, you won't like it! If you're not christian, it'll help if you know some christian history to get all the laughs and satire on offer. Without this knowledge, from personal experience, the film has fruits to offer, but you won't enjoy it as much as many other Bunuels.

-He who commits sacrilege with an impious movie.

-Let him be an anathema!

By the late sixties,Louis Bunuel,who was an atheist,thanks to God,did not take himself seriously anymore.However this work ,"Le Charme Discret de la Bourgoisie" "Le Fantome de la Liberté" or "Cet Obscur Objet du Désir" were not that much different from "Nazarin " "Simon du Désert" "Viridiana" or "La Mort en ce jardin" .One thing Bunuel's oeuvre does not lack is unity.

"La Voie Lactée" deals with religion.If you've been brought up a catholic,if you have a good knowledge of the gospels ,it can help you appreciate such a film crowded with incident,taking place far away on a road with two pilgrims on their way to Spain (St Jacques de Compostelle),or long ago in Jesus Christ 's times.There is an ironical "documentary prologue" at the beginning of the film - a trick the great director had already used in "Hurdes" when,out of the blue,he began a lecture on the mosquitoes.And if the message is not clear enough,the last message reads "all documents,theories and quotes from the gospels " are historically accurate! In his final movies,Bunuel shows his great sense of humour;Jean-Luc Godard ,he is not.He is so much better!An intellectual director whose work is accessible to anyone.Whatever he films,a spoof on the wedding feast at Cana or George Marchal fighting a duel with Jean Piat (and one of them saying " My liberty is a phantom!!!) because of a disagreement about theology, students cursing the heathen ,he rules.

Bunuel tackles the Christian dogma :his priests and holier-than-thou characters such as the butler in front of his luxury buffet or the headmistress of the chic girls school are often contradicting what they said before .And the humble people they meet ask sometimes relevant questions ;dig this one: "what will become of the host (our Lord's body) in the human stomach?".And Bunuel does not confine himself to the Christian religion:"nowadays",the vicar says,"the entire world is catholic! " "What about the Muslims?the Jews?" "The Muslims ARE catholics;so are the Jews ,mainly the Jews." The scene of the crazy priest might have been borrowed from the Fernandel sketch of "Le Diable et Les Dix Commandements " by Julien Duvivier (1962).The scene at the inn,-perhaps inspired by Autant-Lara 's anti-clerical "L'Auberge Rouge"- with its priceless tale of a Virgin Mary's miracle and the mystery of the passing of the hours of the night will be used again in the "Fantôme de la Liberté" with gusto.

The cast is a who's who of the French actors of the era:Laurent Terzieff,an intellectual thespian ,is cast against type as an uneducated tramp (but the films suggest he might have been a revolutionary man);Edith Scob is the perfect Virgin Mary;Delphine Seyrig, the future stand out of "Le Charme Discret ..." has only three minutes to shine ,and she succeeds brilliantly .Plus Michel Piccoli,Julien Berteau,Alain Cuny,Bernard Verley,Denis Manuel,Pierre Clementi and many more.

Do go on a pilgrimage to Saint-Jacques de Compostelle with Luis Bunuel!

In view of its subject matter – the gleeful put-down of Christian dogma, a lot of which is contradictory anyway (explaining the flood of religious sects we have all suffered from!) – this has always been the one Bunuel film that is perhaps hardest to warm up to; more than any other of the director's work, its relentlessly didactic nature requires one's full attention throughout – and, needless to say, the experience can be somewhat daunting (it's definitely not the ideal choice for a beginner!). However, THE MILKY WAY is still a milestone in the Surrealist director's career: his previous effort, the chic and sexy BELLE DE JOUR (1967), had performed exceptionally well at the box-office – hence, Bunuel was given carte blanche on the next one; typically, he responded by delivering that which, on the surface, amounts to the exact opposite of what was expected of him: a distinctly uncommercial venture!

That said, one can't very well overlook the director's approach to the material: it takes the form of a picaresque odyssey dealing with two men's pilgrimage from France to the burial site of a revered saint in Spain, and their many bizarre adventures along the way; Paul Frankeur and Laurent Terzieff appear in the lead roles. They meet scores of people who either help, hinder or simply baffle them – a few of these are actually historical figures (such as the Marquis De Sade, incarnated by Michel Piccoli) or even symbolic ones (say, Pierre Clementi's brooding Satan); most, however, are clergy (even if one proves to be a fugitive from a lunatic asylum!) or common people with a vested interest in Theology (for instance, the maitre d' played by Julien Bertheau – who, after imparting much spiritual wisdom to his 'congregation', denies food to the weary protagonists)!

The journey is interestingly book-ended by the duo's meeting with, first, a man (Alain Cuny) who predicts they will each have a child and, then, a whore (Delphine Seyrig) who offers herself up for the task; what ties the two scenes together is that both strangers supply the same cryptic names to the proposed offsprings i.e. "Ye Are Not Of The People" and "No More Mercy"! Incidentally, the film's episodic structure would be adopted again by Bunuel (indeed, it's improved upon) in two subsequent films – both sublime and uproarious – namely THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972) and THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974); in fact, one could say that these three films comprise a trilogy whose loosely interrelated narratives (in which, literally, anything goes) basically encompass all of Bunuel's many and varied concerns over the years. THE MILKY WAY is certainly the most intellectual of the director's works, but it's all stylishly deployed (he'd retain the deceptively glossy look of BELLE DE JOUR, for which some would subsequently accuse him of selling out[!], throughout all his remaining efforts) and undeniably hilarious for those not offended by blasphemous irreverence.

Some more of the film's indelible images involve: Frankeur thinking of himself as Jesus about to shave off the trademark beard and being dissuaded from doing so by Mary (Edith Scob); Bernard Verley, then, is endearing as a thoroughly commonplace (if snobbish) Christ – his chilling last words (taken from St. Matthew's Gospel), that he came to cause discord within the family unit and that woe befall anyone who loves somebody else more than him, must constitute one of the most wicked finales to any film!; Terzieff's casual swearword costing them a lift by an ultra-conservative driver; his own jinxed nature (wishing a man who has bypassed them to die horribly in a road accident, which happens soon after), ditto when daring God to strike him with lightning and being amazed by the practically instant reply from on high; later, during a school activity in which little children are indoctrinated in religious intolerance, Terzieff also loudly imagines a group of revolutionaries (the events of May '68 were still vivid in people's minds) executing the Pope – played by Bunuel himself! – via firing squad. Incidentally, the director's own voice is heard – reciting a prayer in Latin! – on the radio of the aforementioned burning car; in the same vein, co-scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carriere – a regular Bunuel collaborator – makes an infrequent appearance before the cameras as a decadent bishop presiding over an orgy in the forest (another sequence that is exclusively in Latin). Two more stalwart presences from the Surrealist master's canon are Claudio Brook, playing another high-ranking church official exhuming the body of the saint – to whom our heroes (and, we are told, thousands every year) have come from afar to pay tribute – so as to excommunicate him in view of facts which have only just come to the fore(!), and Georges Marchal, seen dueling for his steadfast beliefs, but the point of the discussion is so muddled that it's soon forgotten by the participants – by the way, a crucified nun is also prominently featured in this scene! For the record, this film contains one of Bunuel's most famous dictums (spoken by an undefined character during a transcendental sermon by a particularly insistent priest), namely "My hatred of Science and Technology almost brings me to the absurdity of a belief in God"!

According to the extras on the Criterion DVD (these include an elaborate trailer, an introduction by Carriere, an interesting interview with noted film critic Ian Christie, and a 37-minute featurette which is given its due elsewhere), the conception for the script came at the 1967 Venice Film Festival after a screening of Jean-Luc Godard's LA CHINOISE, the Nouvelle Vague exponent's full-blown induction into the realm of Political Cinema. Incidentally, it's also said here that THE MILKY WAY garnered the best reviews of Bunuel's entire career!

Two impoverished hobos travel on foot through France, en route to Santiago-de-Compostella, in Spain. They are on a spiritual pilgrimage. Along the way they walk into one self-contained story, absorb its value, then leave, only to walk into another self-contained story. The film's structure is thus episodic. And each episode or vignette highlights a parable about some facet of religious belief.

The encounters are set in different eras of history, as for example the time of the life of Christ, or the fourth century A.D. In each little story, inhabitants pontificate their certainty of religious belief that often contradicts other beliefs held with just as much certainty. Thus, differences in abstract religious dogma translate into aggressive and militaristic behavior, to stamp out opposing beliefs.

Throughout the dialectic narrative, a central theme seems to be the casting of doubt on old, rigid belief systems in general, and those of the Catholic Church in particular.

Visuals are competent, though fairly conventional. The script is talky. Acting and dialogue trend stagy and stilted. Music is irrelevant.

Aimed at an audience of the intellectually curious, "The Milky Way" is a message film that can be frustrating for viewers who want everything spelled out clearly. And that's the whole point. Contradictions and logical fallacies in belief systems ensure absolutely a lack of clarity; hence, a narrative journey, or way, that is confusing, opaque, cloudy, or ... milky.

Le fantôme de la liberté (Buñuel, 1974) seems to take off right from this film as if it were a sequel, visually and conceptually. This film however is much more determined to denounce the contradictions and hypocrisy of different religions, while Fantôme has even more artistic freedom. Also this is much more coherent and if there is any danger of getting heavy-handed, Buñuel knows how to joke himself a way out using illusionism or a mild shock-treatment. It is simultaneously very rational and miraculous. The anti-clericism and subversive desires frequently come to the surreal surface. I can't help but see this as an inspiration for Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' (1979), because that film also remotely feels like an off the wall road movie in which anything can happen.

The subject matter was sort of tough for an atheist (heretic?) like me, but the humour with which Buñuel lets the characters throw the crucial differences between religions at each other is hilarious. E.g. in the middle of a duel between a Catholic and a Jesuit: 'Prior will is mere impulse. My thoughts and my will are not in my own power ... ma liberte est un fantôme.' 'What does freedom mean anyway? How can I be free if what I do is determined in advance?' etc. And why would all the personnel of a restaurant be caught up in an eloquent discussion about the existence of God while they are at work? See for yourself. Cinematographer Christian Matras (also Le Grande Illusion, 1937) continues to improve Buñuel's visual style using zoom-pan-zoom shots for instance, but keeps it sober.

9/10