The Phantom of Liberty (1974) review

Wonderfully absurd stream-of-conscious effort from Buñuel, one that suffers from ADHD and continuously shifts its narrative's focus from one group of people to another, from a man who gives little girls 'obscene' postcards of landmarks (including the Taj Mahal, that pinnacle of smut) to a group of police officers who act like children and mock their instructor to a police commissioner who gets a phone call from his dead sister. It shows a world full of contradictions and twisted rules - my favorite, of course, is the sniper who is convinced of murder, given the death penalty ... and then freed and accosted in the hallway for his autograph (the death penalty, in effect, is to have to continue living on Earth). The clergy and bourgeoisie get their share of abuse, but what I like about this particular film is how virtually no one is spared; Linklater's Slacker is highly indebted to this film.