christopher-underwood I can fully appreciate that the great film maker, being a surrealist and anarchist, must have had mixed feeling after his Discreet Charm movie was such a hit amongst the bourgeoise, even my parents saw it back in the day at the local Odeon, the only film of his they would ever see. His 'revenge' then is this sublime mix and match outing with sequences of varying lengths which tend to end with one of the participants rushing off to start another. That the scenes don't join up in any accepted way causes confusion and some frustration ending in anger for some and unrestrained glee for others. What amazes me as much as anything about this film is that I have never seen it before and yet must have seen just about every other of the genius director's films. Hey ho, perhaps I'll watch it again to make up for it. Hope I haven't given away too much of the 'plot'!

chaswe-28402 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.

lreynaert Much ink has already been spilled on this seemingly enigmatic film by Luis Buñuel. Hereafter, an attempt to analyze some of the obvious and hidden aspects of this masterpiece. The film uses two notions of the word 'phantom': specter (menace) and illusion. The film also plays on many levels: political, religious, social, mental / physical, symbolical, psychoanalytical.Political The slogan 'Down with liberty' is heard at the beginning and at the end of the film. Its message is clear. First, we witness a staging of the famous Goya painting 'The Third of May, 1808' where Spanish prisoners, shouting this slogan, are shot by the French Republican army. 'Down with liberty' means here 'Down with the French Republic' and its sans-culottes, the defenders of the progressive motto 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'. At the end of the film, the spectator vaguely hears a crowd (apparently a manifestation) which shouts the same slogan. The film was shot during a period when the Communist Party in France still had important political and social clout, especially through its trade union. This party was at that time heavily influenced by a totalitarian state, which was fundamentally opposed to certain freedoms, including political ones. 'Down with liberty' means here also 'Down with the French Republic'.Religion, Justice Religion (Catholicism) was (is) also threatened by liberty and the sans-culottes. The viewer assists at a desecration of a church and of holy bread by the French Republican army. In addition, for L. Buñuel, representatives of the Church are corrupt: in the film, monks play cards and drink alcohol. A sniper kills people indiscriminately in the street, apparently to sow panic among the population; so, it's a provocation (an utmost topical issue). He is condemned, but the sentences of the judges are not respected. To the contrary, the sniper is set free and congratulated by the judicial administration and by part of the population: down with liberty of justice. Physical and mental life A challenging aspect of the movies by L. Buñuel is the dissociation between the physical (time, space) and mental (sentiments) reality. One can see a perfect example of this dissociation in another film by L. Buñuel (An Andalusian Dog), where a father slaps his son, followed by the text 'thirteen years later' and the action continues. In other words, in a split of a second (the slap) the son becomes thirteen years older (psychological time). This dissociation is (perhaps) an explanation of the sequence of the film where a girl disappears while being present. She is physically present, but not mentally for her parents.Illusion Freedom is an illusion in matter of instincts (like for the animals of the zoo). In this regard, scenes of sexual deviances are constants in the films of L. Buñuel as are dream sequences. Other psychoanalytic elements in this movie are anal fixation (a dinner where the guests are sitting on a toilet) or a split personality (the two prefects at the end of the film). Liberty as an illusion is the basic outline of the screenplay: the journey of the characters is all the time disrupted by unforeseen encounters, accidents or bad weather.The end of the film is a shot of an ostrich head, as if L. Buñuel exhorts the spectator: don't put your head in the sand like an ostrich, but do face head-on the (hidden) reality as the bird on the screen.Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato ?

RONALD ADDINGTON At first viewing, this is a movie that will be difficult to understand. Luis Bunuel's surrealist masterpiece is by no means an easy film to digest for Western audiences. It is seemingly disjointed, schizophrenic and unclear, but do not let that prevent you from viewing it. It will leave you thinking, if not anything else.In a series of stories that appear to have nothing to do with each other, we are being taken on a tale that is attempting to prove to the audience what happens when society has unrestricted freedom. The film in itself is a treatise on this type of freedom – the way it is filmed and constructed is meant to be without conventional restraints. In that sense, it is a definitive work of meta-fiction. Every scene in this story is meant to challenge conventional thinking and what we perceive to be societal norms. Bunuel, with each scene and character, is challenging the form of story in film itself. Where one scene and character(s) start and seemingly end with no clear conclusion, another ones starts by the actions of a character and carries over into an entirely different scene and set of circumstance. It's like a mix of Inception, which I won't claim to understand, and films like Crash and Babel – where stories and characters all interact with each other. What makes Phantom of Liberty so unique is that there is no standard ending. The characters we see don't always have finite conclusions to their stories. Often times, they just go off-screen and never appear again. But their message and the social commentary/implications of the scene and character has already been made. There is no need to connect to the characters to figure out the intentions/meaning or to be spurred to dig deeper about the implications of the random stories – Bunuel makes more of a commentary on society in a 15 minute scene with five random characters thrown together in a seemingly absurd situation than some directors do in their entire careers over multiple films. Not everyone will understand it, or get it, or appreciate it, but it is the undisputed masterpiece of the surrealistic genre. I personally give this film a 6 or 7 when it comes to entertainment value, but it is near perfect in its innovation and style.