The Phantom of Liberty (1974)

Waste of time

Nice effects though.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

If you're not familiar with surrealism, this is a must watch as its 100% concentrated surrealism will keep you entertained and confused throughout the entire movie.This was my first Bunuel movie so I didn't know what I was expecting but certainly not this. The movie was organized in episodes or tableaux's. Every episode continues after one another and contain their own essence and message. They question the concept of reality. what is reality? is it what you make of it? how was it establish? who made the rules? My favorite tableaux has to be the scene where the family switched the role of the bathroom and dining room. It completely took me off guard, I was pleasantly surprised. And that's when I truly understood surrealism. To me, that scene was the definition in surrealism. why do we do the things the way we do?This is was a brilliant movie and I will surely watch every one of sir Bunuel's movies. This was my gateway to surrealism. Hopefully, it's yours too.

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.

What's wrong is wrong and what's right is right, no? No. Not in Buñuel's surrealist outlook of society. His in your face attitude over subject matters such as incest, religion, and all around things that would be labeled as taboos leave you squirming in discomfort. As uncomfortable as you might feel and as strange as it all may seem, Buñuel puts you in that position for a reason. Why is it wrong for a nephew to love his much older aunt? Why is this man being treated like a celebrity and given freedom when he has gun down innocents? Why was the head of the police losing his mind and why was he still allowed to make decisions? He makes you place your moral conventions front and center and question everything you've ever been taught. Buñuel asks "What would the world be with total freedom?" Would it be like this?What's right is wrong and what's wrong is right

I felt like the movie was very enjoyable but very confusing plot wise. If I watched the movie without any prior knowledge of it I probably would of thought it was a bunch of randomly scattered skits, or a day in the life of an alternate universe. It had me in suspense the whole time. I never knew where it was going to go, or which character the camera was going to follow. The acting made it feel as if that was actual life and not a joke. As if it was possible as a serious series of events. My favorite scenes where with the police and how they were very hypocritical and childish. Showed a different view of police than the respectable flawless man.