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Director: Luis Buñuel
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude
Carrière
Cast: Adriana Asti; Julien
Bertheau; Jean-Claude Brialy; Adolfo Celi; Anne-Marie Deschodt; Paul Frankeur; Pierre
Lary; Michael Lonsdale; Pierre Maguelon; François Maistre; Hélène Perdrière; Michel
Piccoli; Claude Piéplu; Jean Rochefort; Bernard Verley; Monica Vitti
Rationality leaves the room when
an emu enters it, something I first learnt from Luis Buñuel's The Phantom of
Liberty. I've also learnt that, from his later films, I prefer the more
overly scenario structured and stranger films to his dramas, not to dismiss the
later, as they are excellent too, but that the director of Un Chien Andalou (1929) kept the talent of that legendary short
film and showed it in these more overtly unconventional productions. Time has
made the targets of his films far less subversive and funnier at points than
others, but the absurd depictions of banal reality still stand out strong, his deliberately
profane scenes less shocking than the cynicism of the modern world.
The Phantom of Liberty is one of his most experimental works from
the end of his career, built from a series of dreams rattled off between him
and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière
which take on a vignette form. This is taken in a still radical direction
however in how every segment is interlinked by following different characters that
appear in previous segments, creating an ever widening web as they reoccur. In
terms of any theme, this elaborate web featuring a sleuth of Buñuel alumni collects together numerous
obsessions from morality to social behaviour, hypocrisy to his usual desire for
the morbid.
The thing is that, like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972),
this is for me one of his best films as, reverting back to his older surreal
work and hitting a great creative structure here, he manages some of the best
moments in this particular work by merely changing one little detail in an
ordinary circumstance and just happens to create something surreal as a result.
An obvious joke, whilst more shocking today, is a man giving photos to two
young girls in a playground. It is telegraphed early these photos will be banal
but reacted to like they are obscene but, even now that in the modern day this
joke would be quicker in being told, there's still a better result for me in
letting the punch line drag out, especially as the answer is inherently weird
in itself - why Buñuel and Carrière choose
lewd photos of European architecture, and what that symbolises if anything, is
itself truly stranger.
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The simplicity of telling these jokes becomes inspired - the nocturnal nightmares of one man involve the emu, time rushing forwards and a postman who only delivers mail he's in bed, whilst the most famous sketch has people sat on toilets whilst eating is considered obscene. Then there are the more blackly humorous or just completely dark moments which add layers to the proceedings. As much as having priests, after consoling a woman over a lost loved one, eventually drinking and gambling with her is funny, as is Michael Lonsdale in arseless leather chaps wanting to be spanked in front of said priests, the darker and more poignant stabs stand out to as a sharp change of pace which stand out as much. They come in moments such as a male character realising his doctor's been hiding the fact he has cancer and slaps him, a reminder that, even at his lightest, Buñuel still descended into both the follies of human behaviour and its moments of bleakness. Then there are the moments which are unique his and Carrière's idiosyncrasies - most comedies don't have a prologue set in the past, in which a statue of a deceased lord takes offense to a knight lasciviously touching the statue of his late wife nearby, which is never resolved on purpose as it smash cuts to the then-modern day and gets to the main film itself.
Both in terms of the absurdity of
life and, in the title, prodding at the general elusiveness of freedom, it
follows Buñuel's long withstanding
animosity with organised groups in general. Not just an axe to grind with Catholicism but
everyone - the police are literally children, posting pins on the teacher's
chair, the upper classes are distracted or involved with nude incestuous piano
playing, the middle class are too distracted to notice their missing daughter
is right near them (even admitting her existence to her), and the only innocent
characters there being the children and (occasionally) the lower classes. And
it doesn't stop the film having politics - even if the ending is strange,
because it's the police coming down on people to prevent them from moving about
in a zoo, it's still the police in full riot gear charging unseen group of bystanders,
violence heard off-screen whilst we see images of animals. And of course, even
more troubling as a sketch in the current day, thre's the entire segment of the
man who decides to find an isolated room in a skyscraper and start taking
random bystanders out with a sniper rifle, an uncomfortable image for good
reason considering the history of gun shootings that have taken place just in
the United States in the 2010s, but pertinent in its darkness in how even when
given a trial with a death sentence he merely gets to walk off (and sign
autographs) as a figure for the public to look up to.
By this point, Luis Buñuel whilst at the end of his
career was still learning new ways to make his films, a greater fluidity being
found with this production alongside decades' worth of experience beforehand
allowing him to make films like this with a greater ease. An awareness of how quickly
ideas were being put together for The
Phantom of Liberty for me as a viewer adds so much more to its original
virtues I already adored. Certainly, his trademarks by this point - bright but
calm aesthetic, minimal editing and camera movements, an absolute lack of a
musical score - is digestible here alongside the episode nature of the film,
but it allows him instead to focus on keeping the viewer on their toes with
these ideas and absurdities. The humour's still incredibly dry, like one of
Bunuel's beloved martinis, but openly it's both one of his darkest but funniest
films as a result.
Abstract Spectrum: Surrealism/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
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