The Milky Way

Luis Bunuel and Jean-Claude Carriere made The Milky Way in 1969. It is about neither the galaxy or the candy bar, but instead the name of the road used by pilgrims to visit a town in Spain, Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of St. James are supposedly buried.

That sounds simple enough, but this film is anything but simple. It's one of those films that really need to be annotated, like that old show Pop-Up Video. We focus on two pilgrims, and it appears to be in the present day, as there are cars, etc. But throughout their journey time is slippery, and they find themselves at various heresies throughout Catholic history. This is an art film made for theologians.

I know nothing of the history of heresies, but was never bored by this film. I was ably assisted after watching it by a piece by Ian Christie, who explained just what in god's name was going on. At one point, the pilgrims stop in an inn and witness an argument between a policeman and a priest about whether mass is transubstantiation or consubstantiation, and when the policemen catches the priest in a contradiction the clergyman throws hot coffee in his face.

Later, they will stumble upon what looks like an orgy, which turns out to be a gathering of the Priscillian society, sometime in the early years of the millennium. In a wry scene, they come across a church where a nun is going through crucifixion, wishing to experience what Jesus did. It turns out this was the philosophy of the Jansenists, and they were firmly opposed by Jesuits, so Bunuel as a Jansenist and a Jesuit literally duel with swords over the issue.

The film is surrealistic, if you hadn't gathered, as in one scene in which a man enters a room in an inn and is told by the innkeeper never to open the door. He finds a beautiful young woman in the other bed. A priest comes knocking, but the man does not open the door, but at times during the priest's questioning the cuts go from him being in the room to not being in the room, without explanation.

There are also appearances by the Virgin Mary and Jesus himself. We first see him starting to shave, but his mother tells him not to. Late in the film he encounters some blind men, and tells them the opposite of what most of us imagine Jesus standing for.

So what to make of this film? Of course Bunuel, being Spanish, was very indoctrinated in the Catholic religion. Some found it puzzling, because it seemed to be, despite its surreal nature, a very pious film. Still, it does feature a dwarf (that's usually Fellini's gambit). I have no idea what it all means.