La voie lactée (1969)

English title: The Milky Way.

Second viewing; first one was between the beginning of 1983 and the end of 1986.

Two wanderers follow the Way of St. James, an ancient pilgrimage road which crosses France and ends in Santiago de Compostela (Spain). They encounter many people along the way, and go through many incidents, all somehow related to the history of dissensions in and from the Catholic Church.

It is like a History of Catholicism through its heresies. Mostly an intelligent film, occasionally funny, but also occasionally frivolous, like in the joke about Jesus' beard. Upon my original viewing, I didn't enjoy it as much as now, and I vaguely remember having then reasoned that making fun of religion is unfit for a Catholic and irrelevant for a nonbeliever. I now think this is a wrong assessment of the film. To begin with, what is done here is not simply "making fun", but rather postulating an alternative history of one religion, by the angle of its problematic, or, if you prefer, more interesting points. And the kind of events and ideas depicted are exactly the stuff surrealism is made of.

Rating: 58 (up from 38)