"Thank God, I am still an atheist," claims Director Luis Buñuel. On that rock he has built his crutch—a lifelong obsession with Spanish Catholicism. In a career that spans four decades and nearly 40 films, Bunñel, now 69, has occasionally abandoned the object of his love-hate, as in the erotic trivia of Belle de Jour. But such lapses are brief. With The Milky Way the grand old unbeliever returns to his favorite theme in a magical mystery tour of the dogma, hypocrisy and glories of Christianity.
From the llth century through the Middle Ages, European pilgrims worked their weary way to the tomb of the supposed apostle James in the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. In Spain, the path of St. James is a synonym for the Milky Way. Now, in the 20th century, two weary mendicants dodge cars and trucks as they retrace the ancient route.
Asylum Attendants. These days the shrine should be easily accessible. Actually, it is harder to reach than heaven. The bearded old wanderer Pierre (Paul Frankeur) and his young companion lean (Laurent Terzieff) are magnets for metaphysical flashbacks. A caped gentleman from another century lectures them on piety, gives them money, then disappears down the road—with a dwarf that suddenly appears at his side. A chauffeur gives them a lift, but when one of the pilgrims mutters "Ah, God," the men are unceremoniously booted out of the car. Seeking shelter from a storm, the beggars are transported to the 14th century, where a heretical sect seeks salvation through orgy. At an inn, a priest (Francois Maistre) defines the dogma of transubstantiation—and then is carried off by a pair of asylum attendants.
Many of the episodes—and actors —are charged with a peculiar magic that dilates space and annihilates time. Centuries collide; the imagined becomes surreal, as when Jean daydreams of the Pope's assassination—and the shot is clearly heard by a passerby. Or when a nun's self-sacrifice becomes actual crucifixion. But where he should use a No. 3 paintbrush, Buñuel too often employs a palette knife. What is intended as subtle Human Comedy becomes broadly laughable, as when Jesus and his disciples run through the woods in chromo-colored sequences, or when Mary miraculously appears after a hunter has shot a rosary from a tree branch, or when an unintentionally effeminate devil (Pierre Clementi) pops up in the back of a wrecked automobile.
Cluttered with Buñuel's standard paraphernalia of stigmata, deformity, mud and fire, The Milky Way offers no unified vision, no system of thought or style. The lack of cohesion is deliberate, claims Buñuel: "Mystery is the essential element of every work of art. If a work of art is clear, then my interest in it ends."