Bunuel is cinema's first official surrealist and so he has a head start on exploring the subgenre's parameters even if he is naturally its most dated example. But he also grew into a a powerful narrative director who could restrain himself to commercial and technical prowess to sell a message. Here he is in the twilight of his career (the man started in the 1920s!) and Phantom is a radical mixture of seemingly normal, bland TV style cinema and Luis' roots in dream logic and absurdist satire. This and Discreet Charm were immensely popular arthouse hits in France & America, so some of it is not expected but in keeping with the aesthetic trajectory we associate with the 70s, or at least its counterculture.
The film is a loose anthology of episodes tied together by characters and themes but not having a central plot. It may have been influenced by Monty Python's Flying Circus but Bunuel is an obvious influence on SNL's early years. Each sketch is hip, sexy, political and ironic, but not played for easy laughs. Bunuel doesn't care if you don't find it funny. Thats actually the point: to find this absurdity depressing and too real to be funny. Its an amazingly successful exercise to be as ridiculous or gross or awkward while still holding a mirror to the audience. Maybe the points will fly over the head of the layman but the keen veteran director lets the film still work on an infantile level as pure entertainment.
I've seen only 4 films from Bunuel and I can't think of a director with such a broad command of narrative. With Un Chien Andalou he captures the insanity of dream analysis with silent footage. With Viridiana he explores the dark psyche of the feminist condition. With Death in the Garden he presents a great American-style thriller with radical political implications and with Phantom he takes us on a mellow, formal experience of the immaterial & the unfathomable curiosities of human behavior and polite society. He's one of the true masters of the form.
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