The Phantom of Liberty review

The Phantom of Liberty Review

“The Phantom of Liberty”, also known as “Le Fantome de la Liberte” in it's native France, was released in 1974 and was directed by Luis Bunuel, a well known surrealist film maker. The Phantom of Liberty was one of Bunuel's favourite films of his career and was the penultimate film he made before his death of cancer of the liver in 1983. Like Bunuel's other well known film, “Un Chien Andalou” (made in 1928 and co-written with Salvador Dali), it is a surrealist film which attacks many institutions and bourgeoisie values.

Bunuel himself says that “The Phantom of Liberty” explores several themes, these being:
 “The search for truth and the need to abandon the truth as soon as you have found it”
 “The implacable nature of social rituals”
“The importance of coincidence and personal morality”
 “The essential mystery of all things”
The film is split up into 12 vignettes and are linked by chance encounters with other characters that appear throughout the film in the vignettes. The film attacks the church, the police, the army and discusses transgressive themes such as necrophilia, paedophilia and sado-masochism. Some of these attacks on institution are sometimes subtle, (the closing scene of the film in the zoo is a good example of this as it shows animals in a zoo while sounds of the Napoleonic war from the beginning of the film can be heard, which also acts as a sort of bookend to the film), while at other times can be very explicit such as the police classroom scene and fox-hunting in tanks are blatantly obvious in what they are implying and to what sect of society.

The characters themselves are all middle class and act as a form of blank canvas in order to represent a certain part of society such as doctors, teachers or the police. By doing this, Bunuel can easily mock and attack the “offending” institution he feels he needs to. One such instance being the Roman catholic church. During the scene at the hotel, a group of monks are seen drinking and smoking as well as gambling. The monks also use various holy items such as rosaries to place bets on their game. The film's characters do not question it and carry on their lives as if this happens on a day-to-day basis. The blank canvases allow comments, like the afore mentioned one, to be made easily and somewhat quickly. The blank canvas of characters subsequently have no personality seeing as they are used in order to convey a message, if they had personalities then it would be very difficult to do this.

An exploration of transgressive themes also make the film for uncomfortable viewing. One such scene I found slightly uncomfortable to watch was that of the incestuous nephew and his aunt. I was not prepared for the scene that eventually unfolded in which the aunt is seen fully nude and the implication that they both sex. Seeing as we live in a day and age in which incest is seen as wrong and disgusting, watching it made me feel uncomfortable but Bunuel should be praised for tackling the subject to a certain degree as it is very taboo subject. Another transgressive theme, paedophilia, is also discussed. This is done by building the audiences expectations of an abduction or that the photo's are indecent. However, the audiences expectations are knocked down when no abduction takes place and that the photo's are of buildings. This is very clever and completely unexpected, but works and displays surrealism at work.

The film itself is surrealism at it's maximum potential, much like “Un Chien Andalou”. Scene's such as the little girl's supposed disappearance and the toilet dinner party sequence, this film is surrealism without any limits. The fact that none of the vignettes are linked in any sort of way other than by showing a background character who turns into a lead character, there is no real clear sense of structure of narrative. I feel that the film benefits from this as it makes the film much more surreal and disjointed. Due to no clear structure, the film could be seen as more of a collection of short “drama stories”. However, it could be argued that the film does follow some form of narrative being that it is a stream of consciousness and that the film progresses through chance occurrences.

It is worth noting that some of the scenes in the film were taken from Bunuel's own personal experience such as when the doctor avoids telling his patient that he has cancer of the liver, which was based on Bunuel learning he had a cyst on his liver. With this in mind, the film could be seen as semi-autobiographical but nonetheless is still a surrealist film.

I personally found the film intriguing simply due to the fact that it is such a strange film. As I am not used to watching surrealist films, I was not quite sure what to expect from it (at one point I was expecting rampaging elephants to be fired from the sniper's rifle but I was very wrong, thankfully). Instead, it was a surprisingly entertaining film, even if boring in a few places due to a lack of music and uneventful sequences like the police commissioner and his sister, but it would not be my first choice of film to watch for fun but it did vary wildly to my first expectations of the film. The mix of black comedy and irony with a serious message works surprisingly well seeing as it is a surrealist film. I feel that if I were to watch it again, I might enjoy it more seeing as I would know what would happen and not expect such strange things from the film as I would have already have seen it. On second viewing, I would probably gain more from it, possibly understand more of it's deeper meaning and explorations of the themes it presents to the audience.

1 comments:

  1. danyulengelke said...

    Great review!

    We're linking to your article for French Surrealism Wednesday at SeminalCinemaOutfit.com

    Keep up the good work!  


 

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