Two itinerants embark on a pilgrimage across time and space in Luis Bunuel's 1969 film The Milky Way (La Voie lactée). Bunuel uses his talent for surrealism to show up hypocrisies and absurdities in Christian doctrine and interpretation as his two heroes stumble across scenes of importance to Christianity throughout the centuries. It's funny but Bunuel's dry humour also has some of the impressively awful mystery of his subject matter.
The itinerants, Pierre (Paul Frankeur) and Jean (Laurent Terzieff), first encounter Alain Cuny playing a sinister man in a black hood and cape.
Quoting from scripture, the stranger gives Pierre money only because Pierre already has some money, and he makes a prophecy apparently based on Hosea--the two wanderers will have children with a prostitute. The man walks away and a dwarf inexplicably appears at his side.
Bunuel's surrealism complements the strangeness of placing religious ideas in realistic scenarios. Christ (Bernard Verley) remarking that he comes as a sword in a conversational tone highlights how bizarre the statement is. Arguments between a priest and another man in a tavern about transubstantiation show an increasingly untethered rationalisation of ritual. And yet, in episode after episode, the realistic contexts also serve to show how these abstract concepts are deeply connected to human behaviour and history.
My favourite scene is almost pure surrealism, though. Another pair of travellers stay at an inn after one of them has a vision of the Virgin Mary. When the innkeeper takes them to their rooms, he urges them not to open their doors if they hear a knock, not even for the innkeeper himself. They shrug and lock their doors. While one man is undressing, a beautiful woman randomly appears in one of his twin beds and remarks that she hopes she isn't disturbing him. Meanwhile, the priest and the innkeeper knock on the door so that the priest can explain more about the Virgin Mary. True to his promise, the man won't let them enter the room, but the priest randomly teleport in during his improvised sermon anyway.
The whole scene tantalisingly hovers on the edge of meaning. It's magnificent.
Perhaps Bunuel's point is to show how insensibly people keep two ideas in their minds at once. The priest lectures on the purity of the holy Virgin while a man and woman who are total strangers to each other are in bed. Albeit twin beds.
The Milky Way is available on The Criterion Channel.
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