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"Bunuel's Finest Achievement"

Written By: David Heslin

Luis Bunuel was a director whose work spanned decades, countries and styles, yet, throughout, maintained a keen eye for satire and a talent for presenting surreal imagery.

This film is possibly the best example of these aspects, and is arguably his best. The dinner table scene related by the teacher is one of the most hilarious scenes I've ever watched, and like most of the comedic scenes in the film, never falls flat. Although the movie is essentially a collection of skits, they are tied in effortlessly, and do have common themes running throughout (the hypocrisy of authoritarian organizations, particularly clerical).

I think this is a really good example of Bunuel's work, for those who have heard or read about him and want to find out more. Sure, many will recommend Un Chien Andalou, which is an undisputed masterpiecek, but The Phantom of Liberty is a very different film made at a different time, and epitomises Bunuel's later work (after his return to Europe). Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in world cinema, or generally, those looking for humour with a purpose.

"Ostrich..."

Written By: Grigory's Girl

This film is my favorite of Bunuel's work. It's similar to a full length Monty Python episode, except it's in French, and the women are much better looking. It's very funny, surreal (of course), and strange, yet it makes a great deal of sense. The scene where people defecate in public and eat in private is hilarious, the scene where the priest gives children normal cards to play with, but the adults think they're pornographic is great too. The monks playing poker is quite a vivid image as well. Does this all make sense? Of course it does. All of Bunuel's films make sense in their own way. The final shot of an ostrich is a great way to end this film. I remember showing Bunuel's final film, That Obscure Object of Desire, to my sister, and as open minded as she is, she hated the film and the ending. She probably would have hated the ostrich ending in this one. For those who think Richard Linklater's Slacker was great should watch this film. The story structure (such as it is) of Slacker is exactly like the one here. Slacker is a good film, but The Phantom of Liberty is far superior. I love later Bunuel. This film, Discreet Charm, and Viridiana are my favorite Bunuel films...

""On a flimsy ground of reality, imagination spins out and waves new patterns.""

Written By: Galina

This excellent collection of satirical vignettes is my kind of movie - crazy, dark and comical, it goes any direction it wants and does not follow any rules. When we try to grasp for the meaning, it is like a ghost, a phantom that "leaves us with a wisp of vapor in our hands" and disappears - very much like the liberty, the freedom the humans try to find but instead could only see its phantom disappearing. The film follows many characters on its way shifting effortlessly and playfully from the central ones to the minor ones making minor ones the central and going back and forth from one time period to another. It opens in Toledo during the Napoleonic occupation then jumps to the modern day Paris. It could've gone anywhere and introduced me to any character - it still would've been enormously interesting because it was made by the master who had never lost his curiosity, his inquisitive mind, his memory that consisted of the strange and amazing images, his sense of humor, his childhood dreams, his fantasies, dark and shining and who was able to throw them all on the screen like no one ever was able or will be able to do. To understand Bunuel completely would be as impossible as to catch the Phantom of Liberty - he will be always one of the best and unsolved mysteries in the Art of Cinema.

"Spectre of Marx"

Written By: blockhed

Harpo, Chico and Groucho, that is, more than Karl. Amusing and entertaining through and through, but not the pinnacle of Bunuel, which, in my eyes, is Tristana. But I've only seen 6 or 7 of his films. The extra feature, The Celebration of Chance, is invaluable. Bunuel's works are greatly helped by the commentaries of Jean-Claude Carriere. Carriere remarks that the title is an allusion to Marx. The truth is that the pursuit of liberty (or the idea that it can ever be attained) is, and has to be, illusory; and the movie medium actually accentuates the doomed nature of the search. No matter how much you twist and turn, invert the world, run counter to convention and reverse reality, the prison which fetters human perceptions can never be escaped. This is not exactly new. In fact there is a passage in one of Lewis Carroll's lesser known works, where the crowd shouts something like: Longer hours! Worse pay! Illogic has always had its adherents, and the non-sequitur has been known for centuries. Bunuel enjoyed the freedom in this film to do exactly what he wanted, and in one sense it is an expression of the fact that even with this freedom, to ignore plot, character development, cause and effect, the movie-maker is still constrained --- by something. The wish to produce a work of art, perhaps? Taken to its absurd extreme, the artist would end up in total solitude creating a work which he instantly destroys. The film has to be seen, however, and the one star has only been removed by a personal desire to be perverse. Wonderful cinematography, perfect performances, superb scenes and dialogue.

"The transposition and breakthrough of the reality may become an awful nightmare!"

Written By: Hiram Gomez Pardo

What would it happen if you break the neck to logic, conventional social principles set out of context and play with the sense of the words meaning? What if you bet to exchange certain components of our quotidian way of thinking, becoming a messy puzzle? How amount of truth are you able to bear?

That far premise that enlightened the mind of Luis Buħuel in The exterminating angel, reappears with major vigor, irreverence and petulance. This genial Spanish filmmaker simply disorders the rules that govern our real world through dreamy, cynical and surrealistic vignettes, where the Status Quo can be demolished with a simple lash of fingers. Costumes, moral, ancestral codes, elemental logic, pattern behaviors are broken with impeccable cold blood, perhaps to intend us to convince us we can live another different world , just rearranging the basis that support the enormous building of our normal behavior.

The initial shot comes from a Goya painting and finalizes with the astonishing feared ostrich trying to hide from us in the zoo.

Knowing the heavy burden of surrealism that always accompanied Don Luis, and being perhaps the lonely Ambassador in the Sixties of that discolored flag, many elements might escape your solid and logic perception, just turn around it and think it over.

A glorious imagination ` s triumph.