The Milky Way

The milky way follows two rugged travelers on their road trip to a holy pilgrimage sight. The two characters Pierre and Jean carry the audience through a seemingly odd train of disconnected mythical events that are placed all through out different times in history. Besides the seemingly supernatural instances such as the two protagonists coming upon a caped man who makes a claim about who they will bare children to, the characters in virtually every situation they find come upon some conversation about the nature of God, free will and religions role in society in general. The film harbors an almost Monty Python like humor when it comes to the characters interactions with each other and the mythical events that happen around them as discussed Nochimson’s “World on Film” Seemingly profound and odd events happen all around Jean and Pierre yet they themselves are not interesting characters at all as they are not shown to do anything besides hoard as much food as possible and give interesting philosophical arguments shallow explanations to each other (Nochimson,2010,P.294). The directors Humorous approach towards religion becomes quite apparent as the defenders of religion in the film showcase arguments ripe with logical fallacies. In one scene a man preparing a fancy party says that people cant doubt the existence of God…because it says so in the bible, in another scene a catholic priest makes the absurd claim that people belonging to other religions were actually Christians. Jean and Pierre at the end of their long travels through a landscape disconnected by any consistency in time and space end up in the hands of the prophecy that the caped man they came upon foretold. The film doesn’t really offer any points of contemplation or discussion and almost seems to be a work of art for itself in that the whole journey fulfills what it says it was gonna do at the beginning of the film.