Film

The Milky Way

Name: The Milky Way
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 1969
Cast: Paul Frankeur, Laurent Terzieff, Alain Cuny, Édith Scob, Bernard Verley

Other titles called The Milky Way: the 1936 film.

Absurdist comedy
Strange

Buñuel's caustic spiritual odyssey follows two vagabonds trudging toward Santiago de Compostela, encountering theological absurdities, perverse strangers, and the divine in grotesque forms. It's a picaresque fever dream that treats Christianity's contradictions as cosmic comedy. For anyone who wants to see faith interrogated with surrealist malice and black humor.

TMDb rating

3.6

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Viridiana1962

Another Buñuel masterpiece that weaponizes surrealism against Catholic pieties. Viridiana inherits an estate and tries to do good; the film systematically dismantles her virtue with baroque cruelty and perverse humor.

But The sexual violence and transgression are genuinely unsettling, not softened by the satire. It's intellectually ruthless and emotionally cold.

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazel's alien-predator film shares Buñuel's taste for the uncanny and his refusal to explain itself. Long, hypnotic, grotesquely beautiful—it transforms a genre story into a philosophical experience.

But The plot is skeletal. Most viewers find it pretentious or tedious; it barely indulges conventional narrative tension or emotional catharsis.

The Holy Mountain1973

Jodorowsky's surrealist odyssey rivals Buñuel in ambition and transgression. Two seekers climb a mountain toward spiritual enlightenment through a gauntlet of nightmarish, alchemical ordeals. Pure visionary excess.

But The imagery is deliberately revolting and obscene. There's no restraint, coherent philosophy, or reason to trust that meaning exists beneath the provocation.

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The wildcard

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Nights of Cabiria1957

Both follow peripatetic seekers encountering grace (or its absence) through random strangers and social rituals; both films view spirituality as lived experience, not doctrine.

Fellini's prostitute-protagonist wanders Rome encountering saints, con men, and miracles with the same picaresque logic as Buñuel's pilgrims. Both films treat spiritual hunger as the human condition, not theology.

But Cabiria's suffering is genuine and heartbreaking; the cruelty of her world is played without Buñuel's satirical distance. Some find it sentimental where The Milky Way is mocking.

L'Avventura1960

Michelangelo Antonioni's philosophical wandering through a Mediterranean landscape mirrors Buñuel's pilgrimage structure. Both films prize existential aimlessness and social observation over plot resolution.

But Seventy minutes of island ennui before the actual story begins. The deliberate pacing will bore anyone expecting drama or suspense.

Stalker1979

Tarkovsky's spiritual journey through a mysterious zone asks metaphysical questions with patient, luminous intensity. Like The Milky Way, it's obsessed with faith, desire, and what enlightenment might cost.

But It moves at a glacial pace and trusts silence and emptiness over dialogue or event. The transcendence is earned through boredom, not despite it.

Mulholland Drive2001

Lynch's non-narrative fever dream of Hollywood uses surrealism to expose psychological rot and delusion. The logic is emotional and symbolic; coherence isn't the point, truth is.

But Interpretation becomes work, not pleasure. The dream-logic will frustrate anyone wanting a solvable mystery or linear sense-making.

The Name of the Rose1986

Eco's medieval murder mystery is steeped in theological debate and institutional critique. Like Buñuel, it uses narrative to interrogate faith, knowledge, and the Church's corruption.

But It's a genre film, more puzzle than philosophy—safer and far less formally adventurous than The Milky Way. Some find the exposition heavy-handed.

Pickpocket1959

Bresson's ascetic film about crime and spiritual grace strips cinema to essentials. A petty thief's journey toward redemption parallels the pilgrims' spiritual searching, but through theft and prison.

But The acting is deliberately non-professional and emotionally flat. The austerity alienates viewers expecting psychological depth or dramatic crescendos.

PlayTime1967

Tati's labyrinthine comedy constructs a world of bureaucratic absurdity and human kindness. It shares Buñuel's interest in social satire and the grotesque beauty of ordinary folly.

But It's a comedy with minimal plot, most humor in the background, and no dramatic payoff. Patience and repeated viewing are prerequisites, not optional.

Amarcord1973

Both films abandon linear narrative for picaresque structure; both use sex, violence, and the grotesque to critique institutional power (Church and State). Memory and digression are the form.

Fellini's episodic memory-film of Fascist Italy constructs meaning through surreal images and comic carnivalesque rather than plot. Like The Milky Way, it's structured as a pilgrimage through social absurdity and collective delusion.

But The narrative is deliberately fragmented and non-chronological. It prioritizes visual and emotional impression over coherence, which many find undisciplined rather than liberating.

8½1963

Both depict the search for meaning through encounters with archetypal figures (the Madonna, the charlatan, the sage). Both use comedy and grotesquerie to ask whether enlightenment is possible or just a beautiful delusion.

Fellini's director-protagonist spirals through creative confusion, spiritual hunger, and phantasmagoric encounters. Like The Milky Way, it's a journey through psychological and spiritual labyrinths where strangers embody competing philosophies.

But It's formally demanding—a film about artistic paralysis that recreates that paralysis through repetition and digression. The self-reflexivity exhausts some viewers.