Mistérios de Lisboa

Sprawling and convoluted it is, the 4-1/2 hour film by Raul/Raoul Ruiz Mistérios de Lisboa [Mysteries of Lisbon], 2010, just as the 19th-century novel by Camilo Castelo Bronco on which it is based is said to be. The film is, however, incessantly engaging. It starts as a story of an orphan Joao, which as it unravels leads to another and then to another but ever returning to Joao. It left some viewers mystified, or else confused, and struck them as infinitely boring; but it received accolades from critics and film buffs.

What has not been sufficiently emphasized in the published reviews is its visual magnificence. By this I don’t mean the beauty of the shots per se; they are certainly exquisite, each and every shot, in framing, mise-en-scene, point of view, and palette and lighting. By visual magnificence, I mean that this is a film that is thoroughly a visual narrative, as distinguished from an illustrated narrative that most narrative films are, where filmed images provide visual details as fillers to the story. Viewers accustomed to the latter get impatient with films without a narrative closure; they say, “Nothing happens” or “It just goes on and on,” because they see films as stories enacted by recognizable actors they like impersonating the characters in a suitable set and decor, They are illustrated story books, even if technologically sophisticated.

Ruiz insistently tells the story with filmed images. They are beautiful but also strictly functional, each made to describe the narrative incident it concerns together with the emotion experienced by the characters enacting that incident, and one incident leads to the next fluidly with the Orphulsian roving camera punctuated musically with static shots. Ruiz is a filmmaker with a naturally judicious cinematic eye, and his carefully chosen compositions never feel contrived because they are perfect correlatives to the segments of the story they embody. The film unfolds with the height of interest in the splendor of its present moment, sequence after overlapping sequence, one mystery opening to another mystery linked to it, continuously intriguing; this goes against the conventional film narrative where the interest is unambiguously directed toward its anticipated conclusion, but it is the draw of the present that makes it tirelessly fascinating -- an aesthetic close to that of the 19th century novel in general as, say, opposed to the short story. If Proust made a film, instead of writing a novel, he would have been Raoul Ruiz. In fact, he filmed Le temps retrouvé [Time Regained], 1999. Before his recent death on 19 August, he made some 150 films but only a few have been shown here. I know only L’hypothèse du tableau volé [The hypothesis of the Stolen Painting], 1979, and a short film Colloque de chiens, 1977.

Life in its richness has no closure; our own life, even if it may seem uneventful, is an elaborate network of events and associations, trivial perhaps in themselves with no notable drama but amazingly rich, too complex to be told but remarkable as an ensemble -- a jumble lacking in coherence but spectacular as an experience. For, always, telling inexorably simplifies, When an experience is reported verbally, one has to edit it, trim down the digressions, leave out culs-de-sac, eliminate details even if interesting, and make the long story short and keep the listener on the track; a narrative is never complete as a surrogate experience. Mistérios is experientially realistic; the fact that the actors are unknown to most of us, without the actor’s persona to obstruct our entry into the world of fiction, adds to this sense of realism.

Mistérios is currently on view in New York, and I spent last Friday afternoon from 1:00 to 6:00, with one break. I suggest it should be screened ideally without a break. Most films are like a routine dinner out; we place an order, the dinner is served, we eat, finish, pay, and walk out. The meal might be good, good enough, more often just passable, and I don’t expect more. Now, consider a leisurely dinner at a topnotch restaurant with your best friends -- exquisite wine, superb cuisine, fascinating conversation, elegant ambience, and perfect service -- a dinner that takes the whole evening. One would not dare interrupt it with a break. I would want such an evening to go on and on and on.