jzappa It's not a film that has all the answers. It's a film that casts doubt on all the answers we've had. Early in the film we hear the line, "A religion without mystery is not a religion at all. A heresy that denies a mystery can attract the weak and the shallow, but can never blot out the truth." My ears perked up. I was keenly interested in a film that was going to confront both religion and its opposition head on.Two modern-day travelers are on the road as the film opens, from Paris to Spain. It's the customary episodic framework of the poor enduring as transient vagabonds feeling purpose in heading in a particular direction. It's also the even more customary fable of the wandering adventurer and his companion in search of revelation and virtue. Spanish-born absurdist filmmaker Luis Bunuel juxtaposes these narrative customs into a sort of cinematic reality existing in a unique dimension. The pilgrims are contemporary but time and space chaperon them in a continual instant and an all-encompassed earth science.The protagonists of blasphemy and tradition portray their ideals in age-old Palestine, in the Europe of the Middle Ages, in the Age of Reason, and in today's hotels and fashionable restaurants, and on its boulevards. The Holy Virgin, her son Jesus and his young brothers, an arrogant ecclesiastical headwaiter and his submissive workers, a bleeding child by the roadside, the pope facing a firing squad, the Whore of Babylon ambushing ramblers, the Marquis de Sade, the Jansenist fencing with the Jesuit, Satan himself decked out as a rock star, an overzealously formal schoolmarm and her programmed little students chanting anathemas, self-righteous bishops and demented priests on the lam, this panoramic cast of characters, in itself a smirking take-off of Hollywood's epic ensembles, somehow expresses the barren conceptions of Christian dissent. Is there such a thing as the Holy Trinity? Was Christ God, man, and Holy Ghost one after the other, at the same time, or was he invariably just God the Father disguised as a human, so as to be seen? Was Jesus solely the mortal embodiment of a supreme spirit? Was his anguish then just facade? Because if he experienced pain at the hands of mortals, was he a god? Was Christ merely a smidgen of God's psyche? Are we free to discern between the exploits of Jesus the man and the teachings of Christ the god? Was Christ indeed two men, one born of God the Father, the other of Mary the Mother? Did Mary become pregnant in the same manner that light exceeds through a window glass? Did Jesus have brothers?As Buñuel conceives visual substance to these religious contemplations, he does so with far- flung ability in banter and farce. The escaped lunatic believes that Christ is in the host like the rabbit is in the pâté. The pope's death by firing squad is something we'll never see. The debate of doctrine by the hostile maître d' and his waiters is in the royal practice of slapstick comedy. The dueling clerics clanking swords for Jesuitical piety and Jansenistic sin are a comic rendition of the vintage MGM swashbuckling jousts pared down to knowingly meaningless and irrational argument.However, side by side with the broad comical tone, Buñuel is here tussling with the inconsistencies between faith and faithlessness. The young heretic who dons the hunter's garb and shoots at the rosary receives it back from the hands of the Virgin Mary and lets tears cascade down his heretical face. Really, as Pierre tells Jean when lightning strikes, God knows all, but we don't know what he knows. Buñuel apparently favored scenes which could just be pieced together by the ends in the editing room, producing long, mobile wide shots which follow the action. He aggregates all of these significations and implications into a streaming, uninterrupted visual existence recognizing the curious obscurities of both the comformists to the approved form of Christianity and the professed believers who nonetheless maintain contrary theologies and reject church-prescribed doctrines, while prosecuting the dogmatic certitudes of both. How else could you do it? It's a concept for a film that could only befit a surrealist.

MARIO GAUCI 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!

birthdaynoodle I'm blown away by most of Buñuel's other films; but in comparison, I find "The Milky Way" a little bit flat. Maybe I'm too uncultured. I enjoyed watching it and I do think it's a good film, but it doesn't rank up there with my all-time favorites.It's not that it bothers me that the film criticizes the Catholic Church non-stop. I think he does so brilliantly in "Nazarin" and "Simon of the Desert", to name just two. Those films raise essential questions which continue to ring loudly in my mind. Here, the joke's especially on those who take religion very literally and are obsessed with all the technicalities, but pay no attention to the more important, spiritual substance. I've met plenty of people of the sort, and their fanaticism (sometimes very innocent, sometimes perverse) can indeed be funny – especially while seen through the eyes of Buñuel, whose humor tickles in a very particular way.The problem is that "The Milky Way" seems to alternate between very boyish jokes and some very highly educated and well-researched humor regarding the Church and its followers, without really venturing into the dark, subtle, slippery mystery of Buñuel's other work. One doesn't quite get lost in "The Milky Way" in the same wonderful way that one does in "That Obscure Object of Desire", "The Exterminating Angel", "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" or "Belle de Jour". Compared to those labyrinths, this film seems a bit wafer-thin (no pun intended).

Kienzle This masterpiece is Bunuel at his best. It draws from the confrontational and revolutionary fire present in his Mexican films like "Il Brute", the intelligent and informed humor of his earlier religious farce, "Simon of The Desert", and I believe serves as a living picture of the transition his work seemed to under go between the more vivid and shocking Dali inspired surrealism of his early carrer (the obvious example being "Un Chien Andalou") and the more subtle and organic magical-realist influenced surrealism of "That Obscure Object of Desire". This film is certainly not light however. While there are no razor blindings or ant infested ears, the pope does fall victim to a firing squad of radicals. In fact I believe Bunuel succeds in leaving the viewer much more disgusted and upset by confronting him with the stark realities of the Catholic faith, and after all isn't that what surrealism is all about? It must be said that in order to understand and appreciate this film one must have a very good understanding of a variety of religious thinkers and of the history/practices of the catholic church. If you don't have such a background but are still lucky enough to get a chance to view this film, by all means take it, more likely than not it will inspire you to investigate the matter further and Bunuel conveniently mentions the names of all most all the writers he references in the film so take that list to a library, read up and watch it again, you won't be disappointed.