Seems the point was to shock, to laugh at ourselves, to point out our taboos (toilet use vs. eating, sex), our fears and our contradictions.
I had a good time at this movie; sometimes I laughed out loud, sometimes the absurdity was enough. But, however well the points were made, I have to ask, is this enough? Who didn't have a difficult time remembering this film a few days later?
8/10
I never once thought too much into it, other than it is extremely absurd and wonderful. If anything, it just shows the stupidity of most people, especially rich ones and that to them nothing is absurd if theyre all doing the same thing.
I remember a lot about it and its been years since Ive seen it, not just days. The first scene where the little girl gets handed pictures and theyre made out to be taboo, but theyre really just pictures of buildings. That is probably an example of how stupid censorship is.
I remember the part where a man and a woman are sleeping and a bunch of people just walk by their bed including an Ostrich and the mailman. I'm not quite sure what that was supposed to signify...maybe that life's passing you by???
I remember the scene where parents are missing their daughter and take her along with them to show what she looks like. I think that just shows how stupid people are in general. It might also show just how little parents, especially rich parents, pay attention to their kids)
I remember the scene (funniest of all) where people are at a dinner party and take their pants down and sit at the toilets at the table, and after enough chit-chat they one by one head to a little room where they actually eat. I think thats an attack at the bourgeois society more than anything with their meaningless fads and trends. No matter how ludicrous something is, if an "influential" rich person is doing it, its bound to catch on.
Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to
Possibly the most relevant scene of the film was the police academy class wherein the professor talks about the relativity of social conventions. The anthropological approach is apt. Note how no one is paying attention to him. The scene itself embodies silliness, absurdity and bureaucratic idiocy, and serves as a formal explanatory note for the scenes you mentioned (which were also some of the most memorable and funny to me as well).
Funny, thats the only scene I DONT remember...
Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to
i thought this film was brilliant, like most of louis bunuel's films.
I cant really say what its about, other than he was obviously setting out to shock the viewers, and perhaps attack the rigid rules that we have in society which for us define what is the norm.
Napoleon, who invaded Spain in 1808 and sat his brother Joe on the Spanish throne, declared, with fake Revolutionary rhetoric, that he came to "break the Spanish people's chains".
Spaniards, however, did not want to be "liberated" by foreign invaders. They liked their own age-old institutions. And so the war-cry of their resistance against Napoleon became "¡Vivan las ca'enas!" ('Long Live Our Chains!') People would wear decorative chains on their clothing to signify their opposition to the usurper and their loyalty to Spain's legitimate King, Ferdinand VII, who was greeted, upon his return to Spain, with the enthusiastic cry of "Long Live Our Chains!"
If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard, It can also be like a chicken-pox mark.
I very much second this statement. It signifies the beginning, and the end. In both, the people do not want to be liberated; and are shot at for this request. And in between, one and a half hour, also people do not want to be liberated either. If it is the presumption of the reason for the heart problem of the nurse's father, or the 100 other items: no liberation. Except the - also imprisoned (socially) - professor of sociology who tries so hard to convince everyone that everything is not more than a societal and temporal arrangement.
Bunuel at his best here!
It's simply the shock of opposites, the destruction of Aristotles's principle of non-contradiction. It's a similar "move" as the one done by James Joyce in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (Joyce was a precursor of surrealism in many aspects) called the logic of dislocation.
Remember Lautréamont's famous quote: "Beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!"
<<Who didn't have a difficult time remembering this film a few days later?>>
A few days? You're kidding right? A few years maybe. Are you in the habit of getting stoned while you watch films?
It is very simple. The film opens with Goya's painting "3 May 1808" about the executions of Spaniards. Someone shouts "Vivan las cadenas" (hail to the chains). The French soldiers where supposed to bring freedom to the enchained Spanish people.
The same painting appears at the Police Inspector's office when the parents go there to report the missing daughter that is accompangning them.. Later on, this inspector arrests one "Prefet de Police" that went to the Cemitery and tries to open the coffin of his dead sister..A second "Prefect de Pollice" appears (played by Michel Picolli). He desmisses the inspector and both "Prefects", after drinking a scotch, go happily to the zoo to disperse a protest. We do not see the protesters, but hear one shout "Vivan las cadenas" and the sounds of shots and cries of victims. Just before the "prefects" comment: "if some animals are killed, too bad for them..."
"Bunuel was everything, but arbitrary.." says (in French) Jean-Claude Carriere in a "Proposito de Bunuel" a documentary that accompanies the Criterion DVD of "Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie". I say Bunuel was never "funny"...
I'm confused by the line "Bunuel was everything, but arbitrary."
Is it saying, as the comma would imply, that Bunuel encapsulated everything there is in the universe, but also happened to be arbitrary?
....Or is it saying that Bunuel was not arbitrary-- but indeed happened to be "everything" else? That he was "everything but arbitrary"?
The first explanation is what your sentence seems to say, literally. But the context seems to support the second. Which one is it? I'm a little muddled on your statement.
That is what it literally reads. My guess is the English isn't the person's first language. Many languages ALWAYS seperate clauses with commas, and some people continue to do that when they learn English. Of course, I could be wrong and the poster will read this and get offended.
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It's interesting that the line, "Vivan las cadenas" (Long live chains), quoted in the beginning after Goya's 'El Tres de Mayo' painting is left out of the Criterion English subtitles. I missed that line until I read about it on here, I find it difficult to read in one language and listen in another at once! But this adds another dimension to the film - how the bourgeoisie are content living their lives chained to absurd social standards.
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Who didn't have a difficult time remembering this film a few days later?
For me, with Bunuel's films, there is always one extraordinary image, often something very simple and evocative, that stays with me forever. It's been 15 years since I saw The Phantom of Liberty, and the image that I can't forget is the flash of nudity, the older woman's body looking young and beautiful (obviously a double) under the candlelight, as seen by her young lover.
Possible. (the 'young' flesh.)
I for one considered it not as the young body seen by her lover, rather the young embodiment of the virgin that she had told earlier that she was. Kind of confirming, that really 'no man has ever touched me'.
I'd have to say this film was not as effective as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, but it was an entertaining ride just the same. Many of these sketches are amusing and enlightening, but several (such as the aunt-nephew thing) really slow the film down and waste the viewers time...surrealism of this kind should flow consistently and this film stumbled a few times. I was also a little surprised by the film's lack of bite.
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Not true - that's never the case really. Someone doesn't just wake up and think, "I'll make a film today with a load of random scenes in it" and even if they did, Freud would tell you they would choose them for a subconscious purpose.
To me, the film seems to be about the search for freedom amid the constant hemming in of society (especially class and the church - as usual with Bunuel), mostly conveyed through satire. Some react to it with violence and struggle but most of us are ostriches who put our heads in the sand (hence the final image and the noise surrounding it).
The famous scene around the dinner table seems to be satirising our conventions about how we are unwilling to talk about a simple bodily function, yet wax lyrical about the act that leads to it (eating).
Personally, I think it's genius, and every time I come back to it I see new things in it.
Also the scene where the couple are looking through the 'pornographic' cards which are actually of holiday locations shows us that we act revolted by pictures of sex or nudity, whereas they are just as natural a part of life as the scenery on the postcards, which we are indifferent to when we look at.
I cannot even begin to decipher the meaning of the film, yet I did notice that everything seems to appear in pairs throughout the film, for example there are two ostriches (one in the man's bedroom, and the one at the end), two visits to the doctor (the man telling the doctor about his experiences in the night, and later the one who is told he has cancer), two important pairs of policeman, two massacres (at the beginning and at the end), and so on. I don't pretend to have a clue why this is or why it is so important, but it is definitely there if you look for it.
Shakespeare used the same technique. Could it be connecting the two scenes? In Bunuel's case, probably much more complex than that.
shareFor most part of the film, I think it may just want to tell us that the conventional value is not definite. Well, but why would people try to ask such a question? maybe for some of us who strive for the truth, are stuck in the middle of the world and this film just to show them the truth. Of course, till now, like the law of conservation is universal.
Add to this, people who realize that will be liberated, maybe ;)
I think this movie is closely aligned with the work of French philosopher Michael Foucault, who was writing around the same time this was made. The ideas of institutions such as family, military, police, medical, educational, social (also tying into the conventions and taboos of sexuality), etc. are constructs related to the relative "episteme" (knowledge) of a place and time. They may also be constrictive, so the title indicates liberty is a "phantom" in all these institutions and things that affect our perception of the world.
shareWhat I took away from it was how arbitrary ans silly so many of our social codes are. Why do we act with such repulsion towards a nude body? Why are so many natural things so disgusting to us? Why do we allow ourselves to be governed by rules that make no sense?
I think the point, if you can call it that, was to make people look at their everyday lives, and wonder why they do the things they do. He takes the mundane and makes it surreal, to point out that - like the title suggests - there is no real freedom, unless we choose to find it for ourselves. We are, as a society, governed by archaic rules and our own Freudian underpinnings.
I haven't watched the movie in a couple of years, but I remember some scenes vividly - the dinner/toilet scene, the poker game, the postcards, etc. So, for me at least, this movie has stuck with me pretty well.