Luis Bunuel has made some pretty strange movies in his time. All of his films are of the surrealist tradition -- his first film was Un Chien Andalou (1928), co-directed with Salvador Dali, and Bunuel has never looked back. Interestingly enough, it was his much later work that really got people interested in him -- his most famous movies include Belle De Jour (1967), and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgouise (1972). He followed those films with The Phantom of Liberty, which is the strangest of them all.

The film’s “plot” can’t be described in typical fashion. Basically, the movie merely consists of a bunch of surreal situations laced together. That’s it. That’s all. There’s no message to convey, no big ideas to discuss, and no real way of talking about the film about giving away one of the segments in its entirity. I suppose I shall reveal some bits, however, if just to give you a sense of what I mean by surreal -- a couple of notourious bits include a scene in which the rituals of eating and of bathroom usage are reversed, and a scene of a dirty old man at a children’s park who gives postcards to the little girls (“Show them to your friends but never to grown-ups.”), but the postcards are not what you’d expect.

The real charm of this movie, however, is that the movie doesn’t feel like a series of disjointed sketches. Everything flows easily from one thing to the next, because Bunuel understands how movies are “supposed” to work. The first surreal scene, for example, turns out to be a book that the nanny for one of the little girls reads at the park. After this, we get the scene with the dirty old man. Then we get the scene back in the house where it is revealed what the postcards consist of. For the first ten or fifteen minutes, everything seems to be “normal”, in that we have a situation, and a number of characters to follow. But then, when the little girl’s father goes to the doctor, the doctor follows this with a chat with his nurse, and then she leaves work for the day. And then the camera follows her, complety disregarding everything we’ve just seen. Of course, anyone not already aware of this film probably will not realize until about halfway through her wacky adventures that this might not have any relevance to the previous situation, since most film viewers naturally assume some sort of cause and effect in a movie storyline. The movie flows together so well, though, that there’s never an awkward or clunky moment, although many people will certainly feel awkward when witnessing some of the bizarre events on-screen.

The film is fun to watch, if only because you will be alternately confused, amused, and frustrated by what happens. Some of the segments are quite funny, while others seem to have potential but are simply baffling, mainly because Bunuel will often move on to something else just as we expect something more from the previous segment. Of course, much of the usual Bunuel stuff is here, from strange fetishes to attacks on religion and other elements of establishment.

Some of this material can come off as a bit trite, since there really isn’t any point to any of this other than to witness what amuses Bunuel so. Much of the content, despite its surreal nature, isn’t all that surprising. Of course, the religious stuff is obvious -- the monks at a hotel pray to a saint, then in the next shot, are playing poker, using relgious ornaments as their winnings. It’s not excatly a new thing to make the religious establishment look like hypocrites, but I suppose it might have been more of a big deal in 1974.

Some of the content, however, does have some power, and even can be disturbing (and often funny at the same time, too). Surely, the scene with the dirty old man and his postcards is creepy (especially nowadays with all the high-profile child abductions in the news), but, if you know that the payoff isn’t what you would normally think it would be, the scece is horribly amusing. Also, there’s scenes involving weird fetishes that are, well, pretty weird.

Overall, this isn’t a film to watch if you want a coherent story or safe images, but if you’re in the right mood, and you already have some knowledge of Bunuel, you can surely give this film a chance. While The Phantom of Liberty is not Bunuel’s very best, it was definitly much more entertaining than the other film I watched that day, the Canadian film Bye Bye Blues, a far more quaint and safer production. So prepared to be confused...... and possibly entertained.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV