Luis Bunuel’s late run of films is one of my favourite
streaks by any filmmaker – I don't know that anyone else ever achieved such sustained,
unmediated self-expression, marked by such unfussy cinematic elegance. The Phantom of Liberty is a consistent
astonishment, fundamentally a
loosely-linked collection of sketches, all of which challenge some aspect of
convention or perception – in its most famous bit, the guests at a dinner
party sit on lavatories around the table and discreetly absent themselves to
eat in private. Its sequences subtly vary in their relationship to reality: in some
cases providing a relatively simple reversal of expectations (the “dirty
pictures” revealed as mere tourist postcards); in others savagely firing at
religious sanctimony (monks who embrace booze, smokes and poker but recoil from
sexual display); in others suggesting a mass breakdown in perception (a little
girl who everyone counts as disappeared, even as they acknowledge her
continuing presence); an episode involving a call from a dead sister gives the
dislocation a psychic dimension. The film belongs securely to the living rooms
and fancy offices of the bourgeoisie, except that suddenly Bunuel shows us a
mass shooter gunning down random victims, and we’re dropped into real streets
and markets and cafes, into real disruption (of a kind of course that doesn’t
seem dated at all), and it’s clear how the film isn’t just a semi-affectionate
ribbing, but rather a suggestion of a malaise spreading out from the
establishment, a toxic discharge from so much self-absorption and
self-congratulation and under-examined reliance on hypocritical moral precepts,
of a kind that brings us down whether we know it or not (the film’s most
pointed political dialogue actually addresses the environmental consequences of
increasing population). Phantom doesn’t
feel revolutionary or anarchic – it’s too comfortable with its settings and
people for that – but it’s never complacent, wondrously ventilated by Bunuel’s
timeless assurance.
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