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The Appropriate Tune - "Under the Milky Way" by The Church
If we consider Alejandro Jodorowsky surface level ‘weird surrealist filmmaker’, then the next step deeper would be Luis Buñuel. Debuting in 1929 with the infamous silent short film Un Chien Andalou and working all the way up until the late 70’s (primarily in Mexico but also Spain, France and Italy), Buñuel built his career on challenging society’s views on sex, religion, politics, surrealistically or otherwise. A very successful career I might add at least from a critical standpoint; He’s won the Oscar, the Palm d’Or, the Ariel, the Cesar, and dozens of other nominations and so on. In terms of critical acclaim he’s actually more successful than Jodorowsky, but then Buñuel never had a documentary about not making Dune or had Moebius draw his comic books, so in terms of pop culture he’s a nobody.
Not to throw shade at Jodorowsky, he’s cool.
Buñuel has been on my radar for quite some time, and originally this spot was taken by one of his most famous films, 1961’s Viridiana. When it came time for the review though, I just didn’t feel like getting into something too heavy. So instead I’ll cover one of his least decorated films, as a compromise. I mean if the Berlin International Film Festival likes you, that must mean something. Let’s see if it does.
Released in 1969, The Milky Way was directed by Luis Buñuel, written by Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carriere and produced by Serge Silberman, a collaborative effort between France, Italy and West Germany. Paul Frankeur and Laurent Terzieff star as Pierre and Jean, two vagabonds who are hitchhiking their way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the burial place of St. James and a popular pilgrimage destination since the Middle Ages. Along the way they visit many strange places and come across stranger people, all of whom have their own opinions of Christianity and its various aspects and that their vision is the correct one. What is true and what is false? What is reality and what is fiction?? All these questions and more will not be answered on this journey!
If you read the wikipedia article for this film, one of the first things it’ll tell you is that it’s based on picaresque novels, a literary subgenre originating in feudal Spain which centered around the adventures of lower class people in a corrupt society. Which based on my viewing is accurate; Pierre and Jean are vagabonds and the world which they move through is not exactly clean. Filtered through the camera of Buñuel however, time and space quickly deteriorated. Pierre and Jean will start a scene in the modern day, walk into a medieval Spanish village and then come back to the present at the end. Some actors play multiple roles, scenes will have characters wearing modern and period clothing in period settings, and sometimes the movie abandons our protagonists entirely to focus on some other characters. It’s one long cinematic fever dream, as is surrealist tradition, and like the audience our two cosmic hobos are just moving along and experiencing it.
The picaresque style is there to facilitate the main thrust of the film, which is an examination of Christianity, particularly Catholicism. Just about every character that Pierre and Jean come across is representative of some philosophical school of thought relating in some way to Christianity, Jesuits, Jansenism, even the Marquis de Sade pops in there at one point, and their conversations and debates are lifted straight from their writings. If you’re anything like me much of this will go over your head because you don’t have much knowledge or interest in the development of Christian theological writing, but given his history with the subject perhaps that is Buñuel’s point; That it’s all just people more interested in intellectual masturbation than emulating Jesus. None of it has much of a bearing on the lives of regular people, represented here by Pierre and Jean, who are more interested in where their next meal is than theological debates, and are often ignored or treated with derision by these Christly scholars. Even Jesus himself doesn’t come across as all that great, which is perhaps for the best. An imperfect symbol of an imperfect religion.
If you’re not tickled by this deconstruction of Christian theology though, the film loses a lot of its appeal. It’s strange certainly, absurd even, but it’s a very mellow strangeness. Compared to the psychosexual intensity one can find in a Jodorowsky or Lynch film it’s positively lethargic. Pierre and Jean aren’t the most engaging characters ever written, which makes sense as they’re mainly passive observers, and the rest of the characters are mainly mouthpieces through which the thrust of the satire is delivered with the occasional gag on the side, so there’s no one to really latch onto. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens, as Homer Simpson once said, and you continue watching less to see if Pierre and Jean ever actually make it to Santiago de Compostela and more to see the circuitous path of the narrative. Less ‘It's more about the journey than the destination” and more of a morbid curiosity.
So The Milky Way is a film divided into two; As a piece of art, I found it to be a well researched and well written piece of surrealist social satire. As entertainment however, as a story that is meant to connect with the audience, I found it to be cold, maybe even dull if I were in a bad mood. I think that’ll be the main factor in your enjoyment here, figuring out how you balance those two aspects. I didn’t hate the film though, and on a technical level, acting, cinematography etc. it’s solid, so The Milky Way gets a mild recommendation. Try it out, although you might want to avoid inviting your Christian friends over for a viewing. Unless they’re Protestants I guess, but they might enjoy it for the wrong reasons.
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