Phantom Of Liberty (DVD)
APPROX. 0 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1974 - MPA RATING: NR
" Nothing can be anticipated and, as a result, virtually every event in the film comes as a refreshing surprise.
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It is redundant to describe a Luis Bunuel film as strange or eccentric – that´s what the term "a Luis Bunuel film" means. In fifty years of filmmaking, Bunuel produced a body of images and ideas that willfully embraced absurdity and contradiction (all with a healthy dose of perversity), while actively resisting conventional interpretation. In "Phantom of Liberty," his penultimate film and the follow up to his Oscar-winning "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972), Bunuel just went plumb crazy.
At least that´s what many critics believed at the time, as the general consensus was that the film was a disappointment. In many ways, "Phantom" is a quintessential Bunuel film, relying on the twin engines of sacrilege and fetishism to propel the narrative (such as it is.) Sacrilege: French troops ransack a church and chow down on holy wafers to help cure the munchies. Monks play poker with religious medals ("I´ll open with a virgin.") Perversity: A young man spirits his much older aunt off to a hotel for a weekend tryst, a traveling businessman in the same hotel invites the poker-playing monks and another woman into his room to watch his secretary whip him, bare-ass naked, into an orgiastic frenzy (as everyone leaves in horror, the businessman cries, "At least let the monks stay!")
We´ve seen these images repeated in various forms in many Bunuel films, but "Phantom of Liberty" elevates the insanity to a whole different level by fracturing the narrative into multiple short stories with constantly shifting protagonists. There is no main plot and no lead actor. Bunuel flirted with a similar strategy in previous films, but takes it to a new extreme here. Jean-Claude Carrière, long-time Bunuel collaborator and one of world cinema´s most prolific screenwriters, describes the film´s strategy as one which abandons each story just as it becomes interesting in order to follow another less interesting one. That´s only half accurate, as most of the stories are quite compelling and lead up to a brilliant conclusion.
It´s pointless to try to recount the events of the film. I´ll just try to give you a taste for what the movie is like. In one section, the parents of a young girl are called to school because their daughter is missing. As the teacher tries to explain what happened, the young girl in question tugs on her mother´s hand. Mom tells her to keep quiet; they´re busy looking for her. Later, the girl is taken to the police station where her parents report her missing. The policeman points to her and asks, "Is this the girl that´s missing?" and asks her what her name is so they can search for her. She is simultaneously present and missing: one officer wants to take her along to help search for her.
Bunuel films an impossible contradiction, and we catch at least a hint of his purpose here. Many critics have described the film as dream-like and, indeed, Carrière and Bunuel allegedly wrote the film by telling each other their dreams each. I think "dream-like" is an apt description of "Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" in which a dinner which never quite materializes is repeated over and over, but I view "Phantom" in a very different light. Where "Discreet Charm" is based on the strange and circular logic of dreams, "Phantom" is consciously constructed in direct opposition to the logic of reality; call it anti-logic. A sniper who executes multiple victims on the street is arrested and put on trial. A stern-faced judge sentences him to death whereupon an officer unlocks his handcuffs and shakes his hand, setting him free. In another scene, guests sit around a dining table on toilets. They relieve themselves while chatting excitedly, but a man excuses himself and, with great embarrassment, asks the maid where the dining room is. It´s at the end of the hall, of course.
Each story is connected, however tenuously, to the previous one: a minor character from one story leaves the room and the camera follows her into the next story, leaving the old one behind. The plots of each mini-story do not, however, necessarily relate to one another. Bunuel consistently works against convention and reason, and thereby liberates the film to proceed from moment to moment delightfully unfettered by expectation. Nothing can be anticipated (OK, except for the kinky stuff – it´s Bunuel after all) and, as a result, virtually every event in the film comes as a refreshing surprise.
