The Phantom of Liberty (1974) User Reviews

Buñuel continues to impress with this surrealistic, violent comedy

[braugen · 9/10 · 1 July 2003]

The master of surrealistic cinema, Luis Buñuel, changed his approach to the bourgeoisie after "Tristana", and his last three films are all comic and prevail through a mixture of pure surrealism, extreme irony and the one consistent theme of Buñuel's auteurship- hatred of the ruling classes.

"Le Fantôme de la Liberté" is perhaps Buñuel's least accessible work since his first two films, "Un Chien Andalou" and "L' Age d' Or". It is a thematic continuation of "Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie", where the seven protagonists just couldn't finish, or even start, a meal. This is a strong metaphor for Buñuel's view that the bourgeoisie is a dying class, and that not even a violent revolution is needed to remove the bourgeoisie from power and wealth. They are perfectly capable of doing so themselves, through their indulgence in pathetic etiquette and decaying sense of morality. "Le Fantôme" is not funnier than "Le Charme", but it is harder to understand, and this is exactly what Buñuel and Carrière wanted after the success of "Le Charme" at the previous Academy Awards.

In "Le Fantôme", not even the characters are consistent throughout the film. This film is like a relay, where one member of the ruling class passes the stick to the next, and never comes back to the vision of the audience. They just leave, like Buñuel wanted them to, perhaps, but in this film is an important factor because it confirms Buñuel's non-human view of the people of this class. His was a collective hatred, and this film reflects his collective view of the bourgeoisie. The film contains absurd, surreal incidents, like priests playing cards while smoking and drinking, parents reacting to postcards of famous buildings given their daughter by a stranger as they were obscene and a writer killing tens of people from his sniping-position at the roof of a building. The writer is found not guilty, and the continuing mix-up of characters, two actors competing for one role makes for a very confusing narrative. Or maybe the "story" is just a mockery of traditional storytelling in film. Resnais and Robbe-Grillet made "Last Year in Marienbad" just to prove that telling stories is a bourgeois thing and not necessary for modernist or revolutionary cinema.

This film is actually based on a painting by Francisco José de Goya called "El Tres de Mayo" (The three in Mayo), and "Le Fantôme" starts with a short episode of how Buñuel depicts the incidents during the Napoleon Wars. But it's the theme of Goya's painting that Buñuel is concerned with, and this film is more than a mockery of the bourgeoisie, it is also an attack on communist doctrine which all over the world only seems to take from the people what is was supposed to give to the people: Freedom, and also an attack on leftist defeatism. The glorification of the defeat is perhaps the modern Left's biggest problem, which only leads to a move away from power. "Down with freedom!", Buñuel's revolutionaries shout- and the firing squads start firing at the dying revolutionaries.

A Delicious Surrealistic Satire to the Moral and Costumes of the Society, to the Family and to the Church

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 5 May 2005]

Through many episodes with some linking points since 1808 in Toledo (Spain) to the present days in France, Bunuel presents a delicious surrealistic satire to the moral and costumes of the hypocrite society, to the family values and to the church. I liked very much some parts, like, for example, the hypocrisy of the priests in a hotel, praying for the health of the father of a guest in a moment, and drinking and playing cards like gangsters in the next moment. The bourgeoisie family sat on toilets in the dining room and producing crap while having a conversation is fantastic, reflecting his opinion about the dominating class. The little girl that "vanished" for her parents is a great critics to the behavior of most families. The hypocrisy of the justice, reflected in the segment of the sniper. It is amazing the interpretations each segment offers to the viewer through the symbolism of Bunuel. However, this movie is recommend for very specific audiences. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Fantasma da Liberdade" ("The Phantom of the Liberty")

Liberty is a concept by which we measure our laws..

[dbdumonteil · 9/10 · 2 July 2005]

Although Bunuel was to make one more film,"cet obscur objet du désir" ,"phantom of liberty" would remain his testament,his last sigh ,to mention the title of his memoirs.

The key to the movie is the segment dealing with the naughty gendarmes,the sociology teacher and Margaret Mead's books.Law must not be taken for granted,it depends on where and when you live.Something which would seem unbearable to us is nothing but natural to other human beings.The whole movie walks this fine line,being built around this very concept.It is Bunuel's most accessible movie and it's completely mad,which is fine with me.Its construction is not unlike Max Ophuls's "la ronde" (1950) as a new character provides the connection between the segments.It's not really free-form ,in the sense of the nouvelle vague ,nothing Godardesque here and anyway,Bunuel possessed something Jean-Luc will never have:humor.And the screenplay displays care and respect for the audience.One should point out Jean-Claude Carrière's importance in Bunuel's last works in France.

In "discreet charm of the bourgeoisie" ,humor which was latent in the former works (the dogs in "Viridiana" ;the pineapple in "Nazarin" ) came to the fore."Phantom" is probably not as strong as the previous work:it's sometimes uneven and some segments (the old aunt and her nephew)drag on.But most of the times,it's a delight.Bunuel's usual targets ,the Church and the Army are both given a rough ride .But social conventions ,"normality" are too.

A bevy of great actors take us to a magical mystery tour (Bunuel's regret was that too many movies lack mystery) Here he focused on the secret of the passage of the night hours ,wherever the action takes place ,in Brialy's and Vitti's bedroom or the inn where the guests are weird to say the least (the scenes in the inn recall those of "la voie lactée,1969).And the ostrich in the couple's room ,we find it back at the zoo,for the finale,when repression rises.When we bury our head in the sand ,French people call it "ostrish politics"! Bunuel was a great man.Everything he did is crying to be watched.When the movie was released,probably upset by the huge commercial success ,some critics called it "Bunuel' s holiday homework".Time proved them wrong.In 2005,"phantom" is solid as a rock.

The great Bunuel

[David_Moran · 10 September 2007]

What can one say after watching "The phantom of liberty"? if you want to make films of your own, you can only be jealous with the power of Buñuel at directing the most simple everyday situations with a surrealist twist without thinking twice and flicking an eye. his hatred of the bourgeoisie is evident here even much more in then in his masterpiece "The discreet charm...". and the reason is: in that film there was a plot, a reason, a context which within things were happening, and the viewer could relate to things that happened earlier in the film. but in this picture there is no line, not one story, but stories that don't even intertwine with one another. just a collection of fragments, some strange, some funny, some totally impossible.

The freedom that Bunuel takes upon himself is backened with a lot of responsibility. one has to be responsible and not losing the viewer. but this freedom is exactly the same that he had as an artist while making "Un chien andalou", or "Archibaldo de la cruz". it's just that this time there is an attack at yet another bourgeoisie item: order. stories claim order. so is the ruling class.

So Bunuel and Carriere decided to attack the order of storytelling itself. it's a very tricky business to do on film, but if you understand the way dream works, no problem. let's go straight ahead. and so much fun is promised.

Just like any other Bunuel film, there are no special effects, no overwhelming shots, no camera or editing tricks. just an attack, there is no other way calling this, on reality of the mind, of the eye and of order of things. it is only when you release yourself from social rules that are false, fake and immoral, you can become free again. only when you see your fellow man and his suffering, you can become moral. only when you cry against social injustice, you can justify the revolution of humanity against greed and the wars it inflicted us into. if you'll keep on crying "death to freedom", you are in danger of becoming one of them bourgeois guys. and it's so easy, my god...

Surrealism at its best

[surreal24b · 10/10 · 28 July 2000]

One of Buñuel's greatest films. Scene after scene arguments are used as beautiful excuses to subvert reality and attack established and hypocritical institutions with acute humor and surrealist means. If you have a taste for surrealism and absurd humor (i.e. Monty Python, Marx Bros., etc.) this movie cannot be recommended enough.

One small correction: the sniper is not sentenced to death but to capital punishment which results in something altogether different from death (and far more sarcastic).

"On a flimsy ground of reality, imagination spins out and waves new patterns."

[Galina_movie_fan · 10/10 · 3 November 2005]

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.

The Dissolution of Form and Function

[hasosch · 10/10 · 19 July 2007]

Luis Bunuel's "Le Phantôme de la liberté" is a movie whose episodes are only loosely connected, because the watcher is a part of the society whose liberty and freedom is a phantom. Moreover, it is man who watches this movie that also creates the story – not on the screen, of course, but in her or his mind. This is a movie that does never go out of your mind.

The clue scene is in the episode where Margaret Mead's books are mentioned. And in fact, since this movie deals with liberty and with persons of very different cultural, religious and aesthetic backgrounds, it is a sociological movie. It was Mead who gave the direction to the late cybernetician Heinz von Foerster's (1911-2002) work: Second-order cybernetics. It is called "second order" because this theory has an environment in which subject and object have a space of liberty. Only in such an environment-based logic it is possible to reflect to oneself. And this is exactly what happened in Bunel's core-scene: The teacher speaks to his students that laws have exceptions because they are depending on man, and man is depending on evolution. Therefore, there can be no laws at all, because they also stay and fall with evolution. And if they are no laws at all, then they are no causal relations. And if there are no causal relations, then form and function vanish, exactly like in Bunuel's movie. But the most important point is that this conclusion is reflected in the movie itself. The teacher who makes this self-reflection moreover has much in common with Bunuel, so for example, when he criticizes the standard level of human life in Spain – as Bunuel did in an interview.

Another interesting point is that the physician's name is Dr. Pasolini. Bunuel's movie was released in 1974, thus just at the time when Pier Paolo Pasolini started to film his last work "Salo", in which (amongst many other marvelous events) there is the famous or infamous scene where people are forced to eat faeces. But faeces play an important role in Bunuel's "Phantom of Liberty" (so the English title of this movie), too: The teacher explains his friends how many kilograms of faeces a human produces daily, and since there are so and so many billions of people on this world, this makes so and so many tons of faeces per year. Then, the teacher has lunch in the restroom (one of the most famous scenes of this movie). And finally, in his regular bar, the teacher explains the girl who resembles to his sister that this sister died because her intestines exploded. This three-times occurrence of faeces, the mentioning of Pasolini and the insight that form and function must abolish only because of human evolution leads the critical watcher to a conclusion about the sociology of human life that is not too far away form that of Pasolini: All mankind is able to produce is faeces.

Although Bunuel made one more movie ("Cet obscur object du désir", in 1977), he considered the "Pantom of Libery" his testament. Pasolini's testament was the "Salo". Bunuel still lived nine more years after his "Phantom", Pasolini was killed shortly after the postproduction of "Salo". Pasolini was radical and consistent, Bunuel still had kept his sense of humor (the "Phantom" ranges under "comedy", at least officially). Perhaps in the end, it was the humor that let Bunuel alive, while its absence killed Pasolini. Or was Bunuel's humor gallows humor? He drank himself to death.

Seeing things differently

[cmartin271 · 6/10 · 16 December 2011]

Here is a film where I can understand that those who love Surrealism will see this as a masterpiece. However, although I find The Phantom of Liberty to be funny, I could simply not watch this over and over again. This isn't to say it is a bad film. However, it is like an absurd piece of art that you will either love or hate. I can only appreciate it for the fact that it did make me stop and think about the socially constructed world we live in. When something has the ability to question why is it we do things a certain way, credit must be given. The problem I have with this is that Bunuel appears to have made a movie where his social satire carries throughout a movie with no real purpose. This for me makes it a little tedious to sit through.

Bunuel walks a razor line between comedy and tragedy, coming out with few marks as always

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 27 October 2005]

Luis Bunuel's final film from an original screenplay (by him and collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere), The Phantom of Liberty, befuddled me so much more than the other Bunuel films I've seen that I had to turn it off after twenty minutes, thinking I'd get back to it at some point. I finally did, and it turns out to be maybe not one of Bunuel's absolute best, but it has many memorable moments in his twilight years as a surrealist master. The strange thing is about this film, and I've come to realize it more after seeing Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie again recently (my favorite feature length film of his), is that there is such a line that is walked, like a tightrope walker holding an elephant in one hand and a thumbnail in the other, that one wonders whether this should be taken totally seriously or just with the general hysteria and (crucially) absurdism that laces much of Bunuel's work in his post Mexico period. Sometimes, much like with The Exterminating Angel, it's a little frustrating, even once one understands that having no structure to the film is the point.

For example, in one of the segments that make up the film's loose structure, a woman is visiting a group of Priests out in a house on the outskirts. Much of this sequence is rather serious, dealing with a young man's lusting for an older woman, the rousings and thoughts of the old priests...and then it suddenly, finally, breaks up the tension with an S&M gag! This is very tricky ground that Bunuel covers in the film, and for the most part he ends up pulling it off. At times I wondered if a film like this would work in other hands. It wouldn't; there's a sense of pacing that makes the film seem rather serious, but (as it says on the back of the original video box) it owes as much to Monty Python as it does to the old-school 20's surrealism that got Bunuel up off his feet and into the cinema scene. Sometimes I laughed cause I felt terribly uncomfortable, other times because there was a real pay-off. But in reality, the Phantom of Liberty is the kind of film where many times you just stare and go 'huh, what'? And I mean that as a compliment.

By the way, the film also has two other interesting factors to note, one about an "infamous" scene that did leave me laughing hard, and another more of historical note. The scene where the rich people sit around the table, toilets as their seats, pants down, doing their business, is true absurdism at a peak of intelligence. The other note is that if you wonder if this structure has ever been repeated or expounded upon, Richard Linklater's first film Slacker comes closest, though with a much different tone and style of comedy. Here, we get the upper class, religion, old-time armed forces (gotta love that statue slap the guard in the 19th century segment), and the struggle between keeping with dreams or reality, or both. This is the kind of film that almost puts me off with its irreverence, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't stunned and amazed by the audaciousness as well.

Is your perception your reality?

[eschranck · 7/10 · 15 December 2011]

Before seeing this film, I had no previous exposure to "Surrealist" cinema, or even heard of Luis Buñuel. "Phantom of Liberty" is comprised of several tableaux each linked together by the underlying idea of freedom. It addresses the absurdity of social conventions, questions cultural taboos like monogamy, and exposes the innuendos and criticisms of the Catholic school system—to name a few.

It's incredible how a film can bring to your consciousness so much that lay within your subconscious. In the beginning of the film, a middle- aged man gives two young girls some photographs. Instinctively, I thought, 'He's a pedophile,' when in actuality he had given them postcards of French architecture. Bunuel addresses what we have all been conditioned to feel as a result of our societal and cultural influences.

I enjoyed this movie mainly because of the surrealistic elements. The direction, the acting, and the stories were all meaningful, I was entertained throughout. See it!

Buñuel's Amusing Surrealism

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 10/10 · 22 February 2011]

In "The Phantom of Liberty" you get only what the title says: illusions of freedom that can be scary, strange, humorous and unusual just like phantoms; and the only liberty presented here is the one created, written and directed by its genius Luis Buñuel. Everything is surreal like in most of his works, the viewers need to be open minded all the time and accept everything that it's on the screen to fully appreciate the masterpiece presented in your front.

There's no destination, no endings to the numerous characters presented, and to some might not have sense at all. We are introduced to characters that experience dangerous, strange, funny experiences that makes them all free of society impositions, moral structure and other restraining things. The transitions between the stories and figures is one of the most original and interesting ever presented in a motion picture of all time; first we see one character and his story, someone appears with him and from that point we start to follow the other intrusive character and this presentations goes on and on until the abrupt closure.

Figures like a eccentric hatter (Michael Lonsdale) that invites four monks, a woman and a teenage to his hotel room where he is dominated and spanked by his woman in a S&M fetish; a strange doctor (Adolfo Celi) that keeps saying that his patient (Jean Rochefort) is perfectly fine to later tell him that he has cancer, and offering a cigarette in the following moment; this other man and his wife trying to find out the disappearance of the daughter at school but she's right in front of them (terrific joke that in the hands of another director could be ignored, or don't have any sense of humor); these and other bizarre figures are among the figures and situations showed in a harmonic combination of humor and surrealism, yet with a serious intensity that allows to watch the film without looking for answers, or that tempestuous anxiety of finding a message in it. It makes you interested simply because the director tried to make miscellaneous vignettes of absurd situations that begins like an ordinary story, then to become a weird, funny and different story than anything that you ever seen in films.

If you enjoyed or were intrigued by "Belle du Jour", "The Exterminating Angel", "Un Chien Andalou" or "L'Age Dor" and other Buñuel works this is a great challenge for you. It's very unconventional like his other pictures but it offers more than just being a different film. It makes you ask how genius can a man be by doing such an artistic and plausible statement on the strange side of the human condition that knows how to get attention from the viewers. No other director succeed it so well in doing all of this than Buñuel. 10/10

Mixed Feelings

[gavin6942 · 6/10 · 25 January 2016]

One of Luis Bunuel's most free-form and purely Surrealist films, consisting of a series of only vaguely related episodes - most famously, the dinner party scene where people sit on lavatories round a dinner table on, occasionally retiring to a little room to eat.

Luis Bunuel said, "Chance governs all things; necessity, which is far from having the same purity, comes only later. If I have a soft spot for any one of my movies, it would be for The Phantom of Liberty, because it tries to work out just this theme." I know I am in the minority, but I do not quite see the appeal of Bunuel's later films. I love his early work, such as "Age d'Or" and "un Chien Andalou", but the later more political films... I do not necessary appreciate them. This one and its partner, "Discreet Charm", I just cannot identify with... maybe a second viewing?

A horrendous mess

[funkyfry · 2/10 · 26 December 2006]

I suppose there are a number of ways that this film could be defended, and while it's not my place or purpose to anticipate all of them, I will guess that the first line of attack is to say "you didn't understand it" or the second if that failed would be "you are politically pre-disposed to dislike this film." So I just wanted to establish right away, not so much that I necessarily "understood" the film, but that I consider one of the film's greatest weaknesses to be the fact that it must be intellectualized in order for value to be derived. There is a constant filter between the audience and the film, caused by the film's all too transparent surrealist technique.

I suppose a good example would be the scene with the people sitting around a table, each on an individual toilet doing his/her business. One man retires from the table to go to the seclusion of a small compartment to eat. The audience is immediately taken out of the film while an intellectual process takes place by which the audience member will analyze what he's seen and figure out its "meaning". Which is pretty easy to discern I suppose, as he's basically talking about the arbitrary nature of social convention, which seems to be part of a larger critique of social manners and behavior. The entire movie is full of "clever" skits like this.... sadly this scene seems to actually be considered a highlight of the film. It's not unintelligent necessarily, and I can see that Bunuel has a "point" -- but the film has very little or no actual cinematic value. The film's humor is not very appealing to me, there are no sustained characters, and the cinematography is reminiscent of a Jess Franco movie.

Bunuel apparently thinks that his social satire -- such as it is -- will sustain the entire film despite the lack of story and logic. But even satire has its own internal logic, whereas this film does nothing but debunk and present evidence for various ideas that should already by painfully obvious to most thinking people while providing nothing in the way of an alternative value structure. It's thoroughly deconstructionist and I just do not believe that process has much intrinsic value. I found myself sitting through so much garbage -- for example sustained shots of a bird's head looking at the camera -- that would need to be deciphered or translated through a mental process before they would have any value at all, that's what I'm trying to say.

There's a whole section of the film where there is a search for a "missing" girl -- even though the girl is right there in front of the parents and police. Yes, the scenes made me think about the fact that some people out there somewhere -- presumably aristocratic folks who the director and writer dislike -- probably don't pay much attention to their children even though they would probably throw a fit if the child was gone. But what a painfully drawn-out and pretentious way to make such a statement!

question what you've always taken for granted

[rogierr · 3 August 2001]

Buñuel seems to be even more brilliant without the screenplays by Salvador Dali (un Chien Andalou, l'Age d'or, both 1930). Of course Jean-Claude Carriere is not a small name either, but Buñuel must be the great mind behind this masterpiece. Fantome seems to take off right from the premises of 'Le Voie lactee' (1969), as people seem to move in mysterious ways and mysterious things happen to them, there sometimes even seems to be time-traveling. Anything can happen along the way. But whereto leads the way? Who knows the direction and if so, does that direction make sense and to whom?

Yes, this film raises a lot of questions and that must be Buñuel's greatest power: question what you've always taken for granted. In any way, Buñuel continues his 'unrestricted creativeness' as someone on IMDb named it. Absurd, bizarre, subversive, anti-clericism, magic realism, surrealism, sophistry, you name it! Everything is in here. He seems to have returned to the experimental years (1929, 1930) completely. He probably thought he could get away with that because Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972) won an Academy Award for best foreign picture and Buñuel figured that everybody would be going to see this film, no matter how off the wall it was.

In Voie Lactee is a heated conversation between a catholic and a Jesuit about personal freedom that comes to a mysterious compromise when the Jesuit exclaims: 'Ma liberte est un fantom!' That is worked out here in Fantome de la liberte for a wider audience, in that we don't have to know much about the differences between catholics and Jesuits to be able to understand what's going on. Well, maybe most of the time. The other part it is just plain fun to watch and get your world turned upside down (That's why Catch-22 (Nichols, 1970) is my personal favourite film).

Cinematographer Edmond Richard (Charme discret de la bourgeoisie 1972, Cet obscure object du desir 1977) who should have won an Academy Award for 'Le Proces' (Welles, 1963) demonstrates that he can collaborate with Buñuel fabulously in Buñuel's last three films. Still I feel I'm missing the point of this film by a long shot. But that just gives me a reason to see it again soon! For now I'm just very thankful that someone recommended this to me.

10 points out of 10 :-)

one of the funniest among Bunuel's many masterpieces

[framptonhollis · 10/10 · 25 July 2017]

There is no denying that "The Phantom of Liberty" is a flat out WEIRD movie filled with surrealist gags and head scratching visuals, but does that make it a good movie exactly? It depends on whom you ask, many film buffs are certainly huge fans of Bunuel's odd, quirky, and mindbending style while the casual viewer may simply dismiss his work as being pretentious nonsense disguised as "art". Personally, I side with the former view, and while watching "The Phantom of Liberty' I gleefully relished in Bunuel's bizarre glory. This certainly is not a film for those seeking a clear definable plot or a series of light, cliché jokes; instead, it is a wild ride through Bunuel's vast imagination. It is a series of comical scenes, much like Bunuel's previous work "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", rather than being a film with any real plot. Similarly to Linklater's "Slacker", the film just follows character after character once the camera seems to get bored with them and their comical vignette is done. Otherwise, however, this film is nothing like "Slacker" and, instead, mostly mirrors every gem of surrealist comedy one could think of. It sort of works as a culmination of everything Bunuel has made as he shows off his signature style, aware that he is approaching the finale of his career. Sense is thrown out of the window and is replaced with ostriches, toilet bowls, and architectural imagery that is perceived as being pornographic. Bunuel playfully mocks religion as always, while also breaking countless taboos, stuffing his film with just enough violence and sex to both shock and amuse (often at the same time).

An Abstract Abridgement of Surprises

[jzappa · 10/10 · 21 November 2010]

Things first started going awry, Luis Bunuel joshes, when Napoleon's troops came to liberate Toledo. In the opening scenes of Buñuel's truly anarchic comedy, The Phantom of Liberty, the military execute those who would not be liberated. "Down with freedom!" exclaims one of the condemned. It is the bellow of an overpowered society. The French and American revolutions have let freedom ring on a powerless world, and eternally the population will be incapable of depending on the totalitarian assurance of church and state.

We meet characters, they face a calamity concerning madness, indiscretion, tragedy, sexual obsession, social idiocy or each said alternative, and then, when the root of the predicament is uncovered as an absurdity, the characters intersect with a fresh lot of characters we then follow. Buñuel's camera repeatedly enters a scene with one array of characters and departs with another, a method that was used again in Slacker. This brilliant celebration of chance and insignificance has, in some sense, "a beginning, middle, and end." However it also has numerous other films with beginnings, middles, and ends streaming within it, around its sides, and plunging across it. Its heredity in the episodic structure are even more clear-cut than in the intersecting dreams in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

A disappearance of a little girl is reported to the police by her parents, despite that the girl is physically present though none of the adults admit to her presence, yet still able to see and speak to her. And the partly Oedipal love of the aunt and nephew at the hotel, the comparable fixation of the police commissioner for his dead sister, the gambling of religious medals by Carmelite monks, the autograph seekers swarming around the convicted (and simultaneously released) mass killer, the massacre at the city zoo—a handful of The Phantom of Liberty's nonstop, deadpan absurdities—designate how willingly the human animal preserves an existence completely opposite from its principles over and above its greatly publicized capacity for reason.

It'd be outrageous to recount the "plot" of The Phantom of Liberty, because the film's an abstract abridgement of surprises. You find yourself strongly wondering what'll come next. If I tried to explain them, Buñuel's intermingling but disjointed narratives would seem incomprehensible. Nevertheless his film is oddly eloquent; it has the delicate authenticity of a dream. Buñuel seems to incorporate an impression of shamefaced sadomasochism in his films. His characters are often grown-ups trying to be mischievous children. His fixations are staged with such fastidious timing, with such a guffaw in spite of decency, that we must laugh.

The most remarkable thing about the movie is the way Buñuel pilots us fluently from one madcap fable to the next. We should be winded but we aren't since his editing makes everything appear to ensue with inexorable reason. Naturally it doesn't, though that's liberty's burden: If people want freedom, they shouldn't be required to trust in anything. The Phantom of Liberty is a masterpiece, a victory by a filmmaker defying virtually hopeless barriers and inconsistencies and acing them. It's extremely witty, yes, though keep in mind: With Buñuel, you only double up when it stings.

Buñuel sensed a rational senselessness at work in human dealings. Life has no morals, and the sorts we contrive for ourselves is totally subjective. Buñuel, moreover, never lost touch with the predominance of unconscious instincts. He was, basically, a satirist of human foolishness. At the conclusion of his life, Buñuel had accomplished such grace in his filmmaking that he could take his ingenious pastiche on any trajectory that dawned on him, along the course of last night's dreams, visions from youth, signs of impending doom, or anywhere he cared to. It might be the frankest portrait I've ever seen of the search for truth and the simultaneous need to reject it once you've grasped it.

A deliciously magnificent potpourri of irrational vignettes

[Afracious · 10/10 · 7 April 2000]

This wondrous and admirable picture begins with Napoleon's troops invading Toledo, Spain in 1808, where a group (including Bunuel) are facing a firing squad. Then an officer tries to kiss a stone statue lady, and is struck by an adjacent statue's arm. The film then moves to present day France, and a man giving postcards to children, who he tells, don't show them to adults. You see the postcards contain the shocking images of structural landmarks. The short stories begin and disappear quickly, with one of the characters exiting a scene, and leading off into another different location. The viewer doesn't have long to think, and is suddenly thrown into a new unusual episode. Other memorable scenes include one where guests sit on toilets at a dinner table, then ask to go to a small cubicle to eat on their own. One where a sniper shoots many people, and when tried in court and found guilty, is sentenced to death. His handcuffs are then removed by police, who shake his hand, and outside a gathering of people ask for his autograph. My favourite scene is when a couple are told to go to their daughter's school, because she has vanished. They arrive there and find her in class, the school register is read out, and she replies, then they take her to the police station. The police sergeant then questions the young girl about her height, weight, and so on, then calls an officer in and tells him to look all over the city for this girl, the officer then replies "Can I take her with me?". Marvellous. It is all quite superb. It would be unfair to describe all the scenes, you really have to see this picture and allow them all to soak into you, preferably after several viewings of the film. A picture made with utter abandon and liberty. Classic Bunuel. One of his very best.

hilarious

[urlysun · 10/10 · 3 August 2009]

We can have the sense of freedom but are we actually free to do anything out of our own will? Maybe not everything. Like the title says 'The Phantom of Liberty', but who is liberated? The phantom? A phantom can be sensed but it has no existence. Bunuel is trying to send us a message through his film with a surrealistic touch that the idea of freedom that we think we have does not really exist. Bunuel's film goes against symmetry and he demonstrate it to us very well through this film. Everything is the opposite of what society wants us to be like. Bunuel creates these surrealistic films to raise eyebrows and for us to ask certain questions. The film was silly, shocking, entertaining and I had a great time watching it.

Great Surrealism Although Not My Cup of Tea

[Shawnabaca · 6/10 · 2 June 2012]

I want to start out by saying what I really loved about this film. I love the surrealism. What I appreciate the most is the director's creativity and use of transition shots and his setups. I love that he can take a simple subject matter and twist your thoughts swaying it towards another meaning taken out of context. I think a lot of people do this in reality, we think we hear something and our imagination takes us to the worst case scenario.

The cinematography is fantastic. I love the colors and the beautiful shots leading us from one scene to the next.

I'm sure what I'm about to say next is going to have Buñuel fans throwing cyber tomatoes at me. The first few story lines I was totally engaged in and felt like "Ha... there's a laugh at me for thinking that's what it was." Classic example would be the little girl with the photos.

I felt very bored very quickly with this movie, mainly because I didn't feel connected to any of the characters nor did I feel satisfied with any of the story arcs reaching a denouement. I'm am certain I will have someone comment on this review saying, "How can you not see the artistic value in this movie." I assure you that I see a lot of artistic value and pure genius of the filmmaker's vision for the movie and with that I cannot argue. For me, I tend to like stories that have a beginning, middle and end. I was left unsatisfied with the ending of this movie. Just not my cup of tea.

How sick you are of conventionalism

[inigovik · 10/10 · 17 June 2009]

"I'm sick of Symmetry" a character says in this film, and here we have one of the last works of Luis Bunuel's surrealistic fantasies that brings a story after another with a never ending that mocks the ignorance in which societies live in; It's just amazing how Bunuel exposures the conventionalism to which we are so accustomed and makes of any place a more decadent and irrational angle of the world. Comedy is just the perfect condiment that guides you and distracts you through a series of events that never have sense for the first time. Bunuel's humor is always taken to the profane as many judge, but indeed is just another evidence of how reality often times makes us uncomfortable even in our own privacy. A must see film without a doubt, it mirrors your emotions, it drives you mad, drives you sad, and challenges your morality.

An Anstraction of events.

[johnandrewberardo · 7/10 · 14 December 2007]

I love watching movies that I walk away from having to think and understand what just unfolded in front of my eyes. Yet, I hate it when I just don't understand it. The Phantom of Liberty is a film that most people will feel that way about. Luis Bunel directs a film that unfolds like a dream. If you think about it, dreams make sense until you wake up. The Phantom of Liberty is a film that doesn't pass moral judgement of the extremities of good and evil. It's in the middle.

One character connects to another character in stories that are completely irrelevant. As a millennium baby, I found it very difficult to stay in tune as the story jumped around constantly with out tying together. "Random" is a word that would best simplify this film. Bunel does a fantastic job thinning down the line between what's real and what isn't. He allows his characters to act out their fantasies and desires without moral judgement. (Most of the character's desires involve sexual oppression.) I got the overall message that the director sent my way, but my entertainment level was on and off. Films "now'a'days" have to be faster and exciting, or be slow and make a sense. The Phantom of Liberty was a big abstract message that one could really appreciate, but not necessarily enjoy. It's like eating your vegetables, do it, they're good for you.

Truly Surreal and Irrationally Rational

[mjk61089 · 10/10 · 19 December 2008]

This was Luis Bunuel's final and most personal work, which he completed while he was in his 70's. Bunuel was always interested in the surreal and dreams, "Phantom of Liberty" especially. The movie constantly shifts in narrative, beginning to develop some story or character and suddenly switching to another minor character as the scene peaks in interest; the minor character is then developed in a new scene. Each situation is more ridiculous and surreal than the one before it. One of the early scenes in the movie is a creepy looking man in a park who shows some pictures to little girls and tells them not to show any adults. When the girl's parents find the pictures they are disgusted to find images of famous landmarks. It challenges our assumptions in a brilliant way; the viewer assumes that the pictures are inappropriate and sexual in nature and that the man in the trench coat at the park is a pedophile, when in reality the pictures are of buildings and landmarks. My favorite is the "dinner scene" where people sit defecating together at a table and individually excuse themselves to privately eat in a little "bathroom." When a little girl at the table tells her mom that she is hungry, her mom warns her not to talk like that at the table.

The movie is filled with the sort of irrationality that is completely rational. It's strange, twisted dream logic that shouldn't make sense, yet it does (like the little girl who is simultaneously lost and sitting right next to her parents, who politely ignore her while worrying about the whereabouts of their daughter). And yet to Bunuel, these things are completely real; dreams and fantasies are a part of our individual realities, so why shouldn't they be portrayed in movies? This movie is a lot of fun and is a truly surreal experience.

Freedom is an Illusion

[chaswe-28402 · 6/10 · 1 August 2016]

It was I.B.Singer who said "Of course I believe in freedom and free will. I have to believe in them. I have no choice." No doubt Bunuel was predestined to make this pointless film about Liberty. It consists of a daisy chain of disconnected, or tenuously connected, episodes that merge into each other in an accidental and meaningless manner. The popular American word is "segue", a musical word, often linked with "seamlessly". I can't remember hearing any music in this film, however. Was there any ? Its only logic is its illogicality, which gets tiresome, if you think about it. It isn't necessary to think about it though, as each episode is fairly interesting on its own, and you wonder what he'll dream up next. The net result, unfortunately, is a feeling of vacuity. The ultimate sensation is one of dissatisfaction.

Senselessness is the aesthetic blight of the last century, ever since Duchamp presented us with his fountain in 1917, voted the most significant work of art of the last 100 years. Some people see The Phantom of Liberty as the ultimate motion picture. The bird at the end is not an ostrich: it's a rhea.

You Wanna Know What This Movie Actually Is?

[alexreynard · 3/10 · 28 February 2013]

I watched this last night, prepared for (as it was described to me) 'an attack on societal rituals and storytelling itself'.

Instead, I found myself falling asleep.

I'm someone who likes a wide variety of movies. Foreign films, surreal films, transgressive films: love 'em. But they have to be done well. The Phantom Of Liberty isn't. If it's an attack on anything, it's the most timid, polite attack I've ever seen. It doesn't say anything original and it doesn't even say it loudly enough to cover up that fact.

Also, its supposed themes don't come across. There's not enough happening in the movie to hang them on! The content of this film is stretched nylon-thin. Scenes are padded out to agonizing length; either taking too long with the setup or belaboring the point to new frontiers in redundancy. Supposedly, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière wrote the film by telling each other last night's dreams. Someone should have informed them that nothing in the world is more boring to have to sit through. If this movie meant a lot to Buñuel, that's great. But he failed at conveying why these ideas should be important to me also.

But there are bright spots. A few good ideas and punchlines. But as I was watching, I realized exactly what this movie really is: IT'S A MONTY PYTHON EPISODE WITH GLACIAL PACING. Am I wrong? Think of all the movie's cleverest, most surreal ideas; aren't they exactly the sort of things the Pythons would think up? The dirty photos, the gambling monks, the toilet table, the missing girl, the celebrity sniper? The difference is, they would have either added more material instead of just presenting the premise and then doing nothing clever with it, or they'd have made the joke without lingering on the punchline until it was dead and buried. And the kicker is, they were doing this same material four years earlier!

Is this what it takes to make art-house critics fawn over lowbrow humor? Add eighty minutes of tedium?

There's a certain class of films which I detest: ones that coast by on name recognition. If you watch a boring movie and assume that there must have been some deep, deep meaning going on that you didn't catch, because obviously the director is such a genius, you're letting them get away with a lazy film. They might indeed have had deep layers of meaning, sure. But if the cues to them are so vague that the audience has to go sift through books and articles to have someone else explain it to them, it's the same as if the director had said nothing at all. Because if a movie is vague enough that the audience can't hope to even get a *feel* for the meaning as they're watching it, then that's a movie so vague that anyone can slap their own intellectual-sounding analysis onto it and look real smart. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a movie with indecipherable meaning just isn't made very well. If you think I'm wrong then why aren't you defending Zak Snyder's Sucker Punch?

Luis Buñuel, I accuse you of the worst crime a surrealist can commit: being dull.