The Milky Way (1969) - Luis Buñuel

Buñuel had begun for the sixties what was his final stage, the final stage of his film career, finally had been able to get the long-awaited repatriation to European soil, the filmmaker was back to shot in Europe in a stable and sustained basis, with all the means that this meant, it was time to reach its highest audiovisual heights. Buñuel decided to make this film during a presentation of Belle de jour (1967), and together with his then-habitual Jean-Claude Carrière, he elaborates a work of his own, and with great rigor in its elaboration, usual in the spanish, generating a script based on many illustrious texts and encyclopedias of the subject, theology, diverse heresies to complete this bizarre and surreal story. It is the singular story of two individuals who embark on the traditional road to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, the well-known pilgrimage journey to seek absolution and free the soul from sins, but on that path, a very diverse collection of characters and events will get happening, many even in another space and time. One of the most personal works of the director, addressing one of its traditional topics, religion, Christianity, of course from the singular buñuelian magnifying glass, with the touches of a surrealism that the director had already curdled and evolved.

                 

We see a quick introduction to the history of Santiago de Compostela, traditional site of pilgrimages around the world. We see two vagabonds, Pierre (Paul Frankeur) and Jean (Laurent Terzieff), walk on a highway, receive alms from an individual, then board a car from which they are soon evicted. Two individuals then have heated religious discussion about Eucharist and transubstantiation, the vagabonds attend Rome, they see how Priscillian (Jean-Claude Carrière) was restored in his power, in gnostic meeting. In a hotel, the head waiter, Richard (Julien Bertheau), talks about his Christian beliefs, while the Marquis de Sade (Michel Piccoli) talks to a girl about his heresy. Then we see Jesus (Bernard Verley), his mother Mary (Edith Scob), is the multiplication of bread and wine. Pierre and Jean continue on their way, walk along the highway, attend an unforeseen accident, in whose car they see an Angel of Death (Pierre Clémenti), we see a nun submit to martyrdom, she is crucified as Christ. Later, a Jesuit (Georges Marchal) and a Jansenist (Jean Piat) fight for the concepts of freedom. They attend a preaching of a story about the Virgin, there is another story about despising lust, they find a prostitute on the way, they follow her, and a last sequence with Christ takes place, he heals the blind.

The beginning of the film is correct, where the parallel is drawn and we are told what is Santiago de Compostela, Campo de Estrellas (stars field), the title of the film's Milky Way is justified, the path to seek absolution, pilgrimage; likewise it fuses in a great way, with a great ellipsis, the antiquity, that old map, with the contemporaneity, its cars and highways. It was noticeable that Belle de jour's production was still fresh then, that initial sequence is a good summary, an advance of what the film will be and its temporary jumps, without doubt that narrative freedom, how free it was to chain and structure the story practically to pleasure was something that pleased the director. As in that film, the severe narrative freedom leads to that rapturous liberty to capture and merge different spaces and times, that freedom is certainly what allows infinity, the infinite versatility of possibilities in the film, as it was done in the past, a collection of diverse stories of space and time, just to give an example, and with the obvious distances from one case to another, we have Leaves From Satan's Book (1921) by Dreyer. Thus, we have Priscillian and his faithful, in the fourth century, or the duel between the Jansenist and the Jesuit, discussion that happens in the seventeenth century, also the spanish bishop with his faithful leads us to the sixteenth century. The core of the film is the subtle and serene parade of heresies, a journey that transgresses the temporal space barriers, seen symbolically in the pilgrimage journey undertaken to Santiago de Compostela, the Field of Stars, the Milky Way, unbeatable scenery certainly for the intentions of the iberian. And the filmmaker portrays key figures of Christianity, the Eucharist, the transubstantiation, are captured in the film in the manner of Buñuel of course, and with a naturalness that helps the surrealism to develop just more fluently, naturally, simply, with worldliness. Thus, the initial discussion on transubstantiation, which ends with the priest being imprisoned, is therefore a discussion that unfolds anodynely, in a mundane way, bringing this whatt is portrayed to everyday, common life. But apart from figures, it also raises questions, whether God is a single entity, or is fragmented in the Holy Trinity, to name an example.

In this way, the VI century is fused vigorously, the gnosticism of Prisciliano, it is undoubtedly the Buñuelian style, a questioning as fervent as no other one, to the religion, these questions will flow copiously, and also naturally, in a very similar way to the style of the spanish, simple but harsh questions, almost like Father Lizardi in Death in the Garden (1956), Nazarín (1959) or, of course, in Simon of the Desert (1965). The questions, the inquisitive questions faced by his characters, was something inevitable in almost all the films of the filmmaker, but in this opportunity, the nature, the origin of these questions, is entirely religious, an inescapable subject for the filmmaker, of rigorous Christian formation in his childhood; it is his script, his story, his religious obsessions, a work that is very much his. Again, the protagonist character of Buñuel undertakes a journey that will mean discovery, but in this case, different from Viridiana (1961) and Nazario, there is no fall, now there are diverse adventures, of different times and characters, far away chronologically, but close and united in another aspect: the subject of heresy and Christian questions. However, Buñuel was not known for giving us certainty in his films, on the contrary, many of his most famous endings, such as Belle de jour, responded, in his own words, to his own uncertainty, to his own lack of certainty of the filmmaker regarding the outcome for his characters in what he raises, but also regarding the questions he poses; shares the director, lets us share in his uncertainty, his acid lack of certainty. On this occasion, like the young priest who asks a more experienced one, there are inquisitive questions, which the filmmaker makes to himself, but again, there will be no answers, the debates are shaped, not the solutions; nevertheless, debates are quite well documented, because the master delved into recognized texts, such as History of the Spanish Heterodoxes of Menéndez and Pelayo and Manuscript found in Zaragoza, among others; the director documented a lot on the subject, sometimes it is even said that he transcribed literally many of the dialogues and parliaments of the characters on which he relied. There is a constant reference in the film to the idea that on earth is better than in heaven, a Gnostic thought is postulated, a very buñuelian concept is also prefigured, the fact of a human being meditating not to be the real owner of his actions, that freedom does not exist, that liberty is a ghost. By hating science and technology, will end up approaching God, says a character, the characteristic irony of spanish continues to reinforce the idea of ​​Gnosticism.

It is interesting that, according to the theme portrayed, Christ is shown earthly, without his divine aura, chewing, laughing, doing nonsense, walking awkwardly, in effect, it is a gnostic, trivialized and mundanized story, the path is marked in a way of the picture. Jesus performs final miracle, returns sight to the blind, but says, disturbingly, that he does not bring peace, that he will alienate parents and children, daughters and mothers, he says to those who follow him, like blind. Buñuel can finally portray with his corrosive style the religion, the Christianity, and he does not restrain, there is the powerful figure of the execution to the Pope, the questioning of the church, something nothing strange in Buñuel, it acquires very strong features here, we also have the shot to the rosary of the Virgin, the usual self-confidence of the director to face Christian symbols and figures. Some characters are warmly sketched, insinuated, like the young mute on the road, with scars in the manner of stigmas, recalling Christ; others see Satan in the old man who takes them to ancient Rome, and we have the emergence of another important historical figure in the Buñuel work, Sade, to whom will be possible to see merged with the other stories thanks to another escape of space and time. His winks will never disappear, Jesus Christ, in the scene of the virgin telling him not to shave, adjust the blade, in the manner of An Andalusian Dog (1929), the priests made skeletons, of The Golden Age (1930). While the eternal figures for a moment are absent (incredible but true, in the film we can not find a female with self-confidence showing off their ominous thighs and calves), we have clear the wink of the feet at a certain moment. We will see more than once the image of individuals walking on a highway, a road with a blue and clear sky background, an image that would become repeated in his later exercises, the director had finally reached his final aesthetic. Technically it does not reach the mastery of recent films, such as The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), because the background, rather than the form, is all this time. But that is why the genius in the style of the iberian is not absent, we have the sequence of the priest speaking to a small congregation, among them the vagabonds, speaks to the camera with traveling included, the character looks at us, in a pleasant technical resource rarely seen in the spanish. Another resource, again the priest talking to a couple about how to please the virgin repudiating the lust, the priest is outside but at the same time inside their bedroom, at the foot of their beds. Buñuel, already in the final stage of his career, has a consolidated group of actors, who will accompany him to the end of his filmography, we have Michel Piccoli, Georges Marchal, Delphine Seyrig, Julien Bertheau, all always well directed by the master, and Jean-Claude Carrière, the co-writer, repeats as an actor in a brief foray. The end was perfect to the structuring of the work, finally have reached their destination, Santiago de Compostela, again we take as a reference to Belle de jour, that ending that connects perfectly with the beginning, turns the feature into a capicúa picture, everything ends articulated, like a cycle that repeats itself, after all witnessed, we return to the beginning, the subject who said that they must find a prostitute, the prostitute is finally found, and repeats what the initial subject said, wants to engender children, and call them "you are not my people" and "no more mercy", phrases that continue with what is captured in the film. Buñuel was already in the final phase of his film career, his style is almost finished, his art is powerful, some of his major exercises were close to being done, and this is an exemplary film of the maturity achieved by the master from Calanda.