The Milky Way is unique in Bunuel’s film history and resonant with his ideas and beliefs. Starting off, two pilgrims are traveling on the road from Saint Jacques in Paris to Santiago in Spain. It is the traditional plain format of the down and out, surviving as road bums. It is also even more similar to the traditional tales of the knight and his squire who search for faith and honor. By blending all the following concepts, Bunuel created a filmic time space. The pilgrims are contemporary however, time and space accompany them constantly. The protagonists of heresy and orthodoxy act out their beliefs in ancient Palestine and in early medieval Europe. There are many instances within Milky Way such as the Holy Virgin, her son Jesus and Christ’s kid brothers duel the Jesuit dressed as a rock star, a bleeding child by the wayside, a wildly stiff child and her robotic pupils, the pope facing a firing squad. Such scenes in itself are a grasping of Hollywood’s parodies.
As Bunuel gives visual reality to these theological abstractions, he does so with vast resources of wit and humor. But along with the comedic sense, Buñuel is here grappling with the contradictions between faith and faithlessness. The young heretic who wears the hunter’s item and shoots at the rosary receives it back from the hands of the Virgin Mary and lets tears stream down his face. Also, as Pierre tells Jean when lightning strikes, God knows all, but we don’t know what he knows. Bunuel brings all of these meanings into a seamless visual continuum respecting the mystery of the orthodox while denouncing the groupthink ideas present at the time..
Geoffery StJulien 