The Milky Way

Two tramps, Pierre and Jean, set out from Paris to walk to Santiago de Compostela. Everyone they meet on the road has to do with a heresy, a dogma or a miracle: a policeman, a waiter, a child, or Jesus himself. There is no rule of time: the road they walk is modern France, but the doors they go through open onto the middle ages, the seventeenth century and scenes from the gospels. Luis Buñuel directs, from a screenplay written with Jean-Claude Carrière. The structure is not a road film but a catalogue. Each stop corresponds to a specific theological dispute in Christian history: the trinity, the virginity of Mary, free will, the two natures of Christ. Buñuel does not invent them; the sources are real and the arguments really took place in the history of the church. The attitude is mocking but it is not simple anticlericalism. Buñuel treats heretics and the orthodox with the same lack of solemnity; what is funny is not belief but the certainty of the answers given to it. It is taken as the first of Buñuel's late French films and is grouped with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty; all three share the same scattered, episodic build. Who it is for: viewers who like Buñuel and cinema that mocks theology. Who it is not for: most of the references want a knowledge of church history, the narrative is scattered on purpose, and there is no bond with the characters.