The Phantom of Liberty
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Movie Reviews of The Phantom of Liberty
Movie Review: Exhilarating satirical surrealist show from Luis Buñuel
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm told by fellow film enthusiasts that Buñuel's later films do not show this Spanish master at his best, that his earliest films---his famous collaborations with Salvador Dalí, for instance---show an edgier, more fascinating Buñuel. Whatever. I saw his 1974 film THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY for the first time recently, and I immediately fell in love with it. There are those who swear by his more popular 1972 Oscar-winner THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, but somehow I think THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY is even more entertaining than DISCREET CHARM.
There is no plot to speak of in PHANTOM: this film is basically a collection of surrealist sketches that finds Buñuel playing with all kinds of different ideas and different images. Monks pray for a woman's sick father, and then play poker with the woman and smoke. A group of people sit around a dinner table on toilets, and go to the bathroom to eat in private. Two parents desperately try to find their missing daughter---even though she's right there in class when they call her name. In the universe Buñuel concocts in THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY, anything goes.
The amazing thing about this movie is that, instead of seeming like an irrational series of surrealistic sketches, THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY has a broad theme to support its free-form structure: it's Buñuel's comic vision of freedom run amuck. Sure, the idea of liberty is appealing to everyone...but, as Buñuel seems to be suggesting, even freedom has its limits. The opening scene of the movie is set in Toledo, Spain in 1808, as Napoleon's troops attempt to liberate the Spanish and are greeted with cries of "Down with liberty!" There can be times when we want the assurance of authority, rather than the freedom to act in whatever way we please.
Buñuel doesn't take a stand one way or the other, really; he's just an artist who is intrigued by the idea, and his interest fuels the free-form structure of the film, and its content. Almost anything and everything he can think of---within the bounds, I suppose, of the same themes he covered throughout his long and illustrious film career---is thrown into this movie, and while some viewers may perhaps prefer the comfort of a movie with some structure, I found its elegant chaos exhilarating.
Only a master filmmaker who had absolute confidence in what he was doing would dare make a movie like this. I think Buñuel pulls it off triumphantly here; somehow, he makes the movie seem almost logical, the way it progresses. THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY is a sheer delight. Highly recommended.
Movie Review: The transposition and breakthrough of the reality may become an awful nightmare!
Summary: 5 Stars
What would it happen if you break the neck to logic, conventional social principles set out of context and play with the sense of the words meaning? What if you bet to exchange certain components of our quotidian way of thinking, becoming a messy puzzle? How amount of truth are you able to bear?
That far premise that enlightened the mind of Luis Buñuel in The exterminating angel, reappears with major vigor, irreverence and petulance. This genial Spanish filmmaker simply disorders the rules that govern our real world through dreamy, cynical and surrealistic vignettes, where the Status Quo can be demolished with a simple lash of fingers. Costumes, moral, ancestral codes, elemental logic, pattern behaviors are broken with impeccable cold blood, perhaps to intend us to convince us we can live another different world , just rearranging the basis that support the enormous building of our normal behavior.
The initial shot comes from a Goya painting and finalizes with the astonishing feared ostrich trying to hide from us in the zoo.
Knowing the heavy burden of surrealism that always accompanied Don Luis, and being perhaps the lonely Ambassador in the Sixties of that discolored flag, many elements might escape your solid and logic perception, just turn around it and think it over.
A glorious imagination ` s triumph.
Movie Review: "On a flimsy ground of reality, imagination spins out and waves new patterns."
Summary: 5 Stars
This excellent collection of satirical vignettes is my kind of movie - crazy, dark and comical, it goes any direction it wants and does not follow any rules. When we try to grasp for the meaning, it is like a ghost, a phantom that "leaves us with a wisp of vapor in our hands" and disappears - very much like the liberty, the freedom the humans try to find but instead could only see its phantom disappearing. The film follows many characters on its way shifting effortlessly and playfully from the central ones to the minor ones making minor ones the central and going back and forth from one time period to another. It opens in Toledo during the Napoleonic occupation then jumps to the modern day Paris. It could've gone anywhere and introduced me to any character - it still would've been enormously interesting because it was made by the master who had never lost his curiosity, his inquisitive mind, his memory that consisted of the strange and amazing images, his sense of humor, his childhood dreams, his fantasies, dark and shining and who was able to throw them all on the screen like no one ever was able or will be able to do. To understand Bunuel completely would be as impossible as to catch the Phantom of Liberty - he will be always one of the best and unsolved mysteries in the Art of Cinema.
Movie Review: Ostrich...
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is my favorite of Bunuel's work. It's similar to a full length Monty Python episode, except it's in French, and the women are much better looking. It's very funny, surreal (of course), and strange, yet it makes a great deal of sense. The scene where people defecate in public and eat in private is hilarious, the scene where the priest gives children normal cards to play with, but the adults think they're pornographic is great too. The monks playing poker is quite a vivid image as well. Does this all make sense? Of course it does. All of Bunuel's films make sense in their own way. The final shot of an ostrich is a great way to end this film. I remember showing Bunuel's final film, That Obscure Object of Desire, to my sister, and as open minded as she is, she hated the film and the ending. She probably would have hated the ostrich ending in this one. For those who think Richard Linklater's Slacker was great should watch this film. The story structure (such as it is) of Slacker is exactly like the one here. Slacker is a good film, but The Phantom of Liberty is far superior. I love later Bunuel. This film, Discreet Charm, and Viridiana are my favorite Bunuel films...
Movie Review: Bunuel's Finest Achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
Luis Bunuel was a director whose work spanned decades, countries and styles, yet, throughout, maintained a keen eye for satire and a talent for presenting surreal imagery.
This film is possibly the best example of these aspects, and is arguably his best. The dinner table scene related by the teacher is one of the most hilarious scenes I've ever watched, and like most of the comedic scenes in the film, never falls flat. Although the movie is essentially a collection of skits, they are tied in effortlessly, and do have common themes running throughout (the hypocrisy of authoritarian organizations, particularly clerical).
I think this is a really good example of Bunuel's work, for those who have heard or read about him and want to find out more. Sure, many will recommend Un Chien Andalou, which is an undisputed masterpiecek, but The Phantom of Liberty is a very different film made at a different time, and epitomises Bunuel's later work (after his return to Europe). Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in world cinema, or generally, those looking for humour with a purpose.
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