Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

From Spain to Mexico to France (' I 960-1 9 7 7) 245their way, a series of characters from all ages and places representingthe principle heresies of our culture. The title comes from the ideaof the original name of the Milky Way-Saint John's Way, so calledbecause it directed wayfarers from all over northern Europe to Spain.Once again, I worked with Pierre Clementi, Julien Bertheau,Claudio Brook, and Michel Piccoli, but I also discovered DelphineSeyrig, whom I'd bounced on my knee when she was a little girl inNew York during the war. And for the second and last time I alsoput Christ himself, played by Bernard Verley, on camera. I wantedto show him as an ordinary man, laughing, running, mistaking hisway, preparing to shaveto show, in other words, all those aspectsso completely alien to our traditional iconography. It seemed to methat in the evolution of contemporary religion, Christ occupies adisproportionately privileged place in relation to the two other figuresin the Holy Trinity. God the Father still exists, of course, but he'sbecome vague and distant; and as for the unfortunate Holy Ghost,no one bothers with him at all anymore. He must be begging atroadsides by now.Despite the difficulty of the subject, the public seemed to likethe film, thanks largely to Silberman's superlative public relationswork. Like Nazarm, however, it provoked conflicting reactions. CarlosFuentes saw it as an antireligious war movie, while Julio Cortharwent so far as to suggest that the Vatican must have put up themoney for it. These arguments over intention leave me finally indifferent,since in my opinion The Milky Way is neither for nor againstanything at all. Besides the situation itself and the authentic doctrinaldispute it evokes, the film is above all a journey through fanaticism,where each person obstinately clings to his own particle of truth,ready if need be to kill or to die for it. The road traveled by the twopilgrims can represent, finally, any political or even aesthetic ideology.Just after the movie opened in Copenhagen (in French, withDanish subtitles), a caravan of gypsies~men, women, and children-whospoke neither Danish nor French drove up to the theatre,