Raúl Ruiz "Mysteries of Lisbon" Virtual Theatrical Exhibition at Lincoln Center: May 22

Ranking highly on numerous films of the decade lists, Film Comment, The Playlist and my own included, in 2010 Chilean director Raúl Ruiz assembled a epic duration human comedy to surpass that of Honoré de Balzac. Spanning three generations, dozens of characters, seven narrative voices, a whole century of intrigue, mountains of scandal, war, loss, misery, revelation, piracy, mystery, romantic conquest, the high seas, early colonialism, the coming of the age of science, 19th century decadence, and the subverting of class hierarchies, "Mysteries of Lisbon" is what many considered the masterpiece of a filmography playfully brimming with abundance, ideas, and form. Set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, which circuitously navigating across the territory of all of the above, the film like much of Ruiz, is in a sense instead about the mechanics of storytelling and the unbound nature of imagination. Taking in Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville and the aristocratic eccentricity of characters that populate the novels of Thomas De Quincey, with generous dashes of tonal references to Marcel Proust’s “unfilmable” novel “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu”, (which incidentally, Ruiz adapted to film in 1999), this cinematic subverting of the period costume drama shifts in a continual spiral that is less a matter of digressions, than the irresistible lure of storytelling. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Camilo Castelo Branco, who's work is often compared to a hybrid of Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Leo Tolstoy, Ruiz weaves a set of characters from diverse class origins in 18th to mid-19th century Portugal and France into the tapestry of a social and political farce of delirious design. Showing in a limited screening as part of the exclusive virtual cinema programming offered by Lincoln Center, this will be the domestic debut of this work in the totality of it's 333 minute run time. Now released ten years after the Ruiz' theatrical cut, for the first time in an English subtitled edition supplied by Music Box Films.

Further stylistic and thematic points of reference specifically can be found in past and contemporary works as disparate as Stanley Kubrick's cynical 18th century socio-political comedy, “Barry Lyndon”, Whit Stillman's postmodern 19th century play of manners, "Love & Friendship", Federico Fellini's delirious descent into "The City of Women", and both the classic Roger Vadim "Dangerous Liaisons", as well as Stephen Frears adaptation from the 1980s. Most significantly, it is literature and the more adventurous representations of 19th century's novel's extended storytelling form, that can be seen to express themselves vividly through Ruiz' tapestry. One can clearly find representations of Joseph Conrad's "Nostromo", the novels and short stories of Jorge Borges, the previously referenced central pivots of Proust's "Time Regained" and the human comedy novels of Balzac. But let it not be said that Ruiz is a product of his inspirations and influences, but instead it is his own elegant intellectual gamesmanship and weaving of a elaborate historical fantasy which matches even these great works, and can be seen in Richard Brody's New Yorker review of "Raúl Ruiz Adaptation of Marcel Proust’s Masterwork". It can also be witnessed in J.Hoberman's "Revived and Still Luxurious: Raúl Ruiz’ Search for Proust", overview of Lincoln Center's 2018 Ruiz Retrospective, and in the larger body of writing on the life and work of this "Mild-Mannered Maniac" as he was called by the New York Times. Following his death in 2011, there have been a number of such assessments of his filmic oeuvre and the life of this rather singular artist and individual, but it is the entrancingly strange, beautifully eccentric fable of Ruiz' (possibly) final film in "The One Thousand and One Nights of Raúl Ruiz", by which he should be considered. That is, until there's opportunity to see the long-developed 1990 project "The Wandering Soap Opera", reveal what will possibly be his last, and among the greatest, of the "Excursions into Raúl Ruiz’s Fertile Mind", through it's restoration, and the "Art and Craft: Recovering a Film (and a Nation)".

Jacques Rivette's "OUT 1: Noli Me Tangere" at SIFF Cinema: Jan 8 - 13

Next month SIFF Cinema will feature one of the rarest screenings of the past 40 years, including a marathon presentation on January 13th! Those who live in New York were privileged to the premier of this new restoration of "Jacques Rivette’s 1971 Film, ‘Out 1: Noli Me Tangere’" as part of BAMcinématek's two-week engagement this past November. The Guardian's review, "Out 1: Noli Me Tangere: 13-Hour Art Film is a 'Buff's Ultimate Challenge" not only noting the film's scarcity, but the challenges of it's duration and narrative experimentation. This nearly 13-hour work has stood for decades as a kind of filmic holy grail. A cinematic soak both sprawling and intimate, which has been almost impossible to view in the more than 40 years since its ill-fated release in 1971. In testing the porousness of the border between narrative and experimental film, and sporadically injecting the work with galvanic shocks along the way, Rivette’s monstrous cinema experiment delivers an experience that is satisfying in-part for precisely the reason it is thoroughly exhausting. This duration-oriented film experiment by an artist without whom there'd likely be no David Lynch or Charlie Kaufman, the operator in the shadows of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette. Best known in English speaking cultural spheres for his dreamy, non-sequitur, political, feminist, "Celine and Julie Go Boating" along with "Le Pont du Nord" of a decade later, which has seen a lot of press in the subsequent year since the rerelease of a new restored print in theaters, like that of Max Nelson's "Rep Diary: Le Pont du Nord" for Film Comment. The parallels between Rivette and Lynch's work made explicit in Dennis Lim's "A Winding Trip Reverberates in Cinema" and the rediscovery off his film seen as a path forward for all of contemporary cinema in David Thomson's "Come and See" in the pages of Sight & Sound.

For many cineastes though, certainly fans of the New Wave, Rivette's "OUT 1: Noli Me Tangere" has always been THE holy grail. A nearly thirteen hour loose adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s "L'Histoire des Treize" from his "La Comédie Humaine", one like "Celine and Julie Go Boating" and "Le Pont du Nord", the film centers on Rivette's central obsessions; conspiracy, community, theater, games, multiple personifications, illusion and madness. The extended duration, oblique themes and non-linear dreamlike construction no doubt working against it's larger release, even in the more conducive cultural/cinema environs of the early 1970's. So much so that "OUT 1: Noli me Tangere" has been screened in it's totality on so few occasions, that they previously could be counted on two hands. When French television turned down the complete thirteen hour version, Rivette created a four hour reconstruction, "OUT 1: Spectre" which focuses more intensively on the intertwining tales of the two featured rival theater companies and central mysterious Cabal. Literally one of the only chances to see it that decade, (on home video, online, in the theater, or otherwise), this shorter reconstructed version screened at Northwest Film Forum as part of their "Lighter Than Air: The Films of Jacques Rivette" retrospective in 2007. The mythic, ultra-obscure, 'unviewable' status of this rare, significant work in the totality of the New Wave, will end for most viewers in January with Kino Lorber's deluxe box set release of "OUT 1: Noli Me Tangere".

Raúl Ruiz's new film "Mysteries of Lisbon" at IFC: Aug 5 - 11 Opening at Landmark Theatres: Aug 18 & SIFF Cinema Sept 30 - Oct 13

Highlight of the Seattle International Film Fest, to the extent that I expect it will be a serious contender for the best new film seen this year! Spanning three generations, dozens of characters, seven narrative voices, a whole century of intrigue, mountains of sacrifice, scandal, war, loss, mystery, misery, revelation, piracy, conquest, the high seas, early colonialism, the age of science, 19th century decadence, class struggle, and lasting nearly 5 Hours this is one that defiantly disproves that literature can't be translated to film... it just involves the massive undertaking of all of the above qualities, a director who's deeply immersed in the tale, has decades of directorial skills established and has assembled a almost-impossible perfect cast of actors capable of portraying an ensemble-cast of characters, many of them over the course of decades of change, metamorphosis, epiphany, revelation into the persons they become through the trials and tribulations of life... and what a almost 'mystical' life it is! Adapted from the novel of the same name by Camilo Castelo Branco, who's work is often compared to a hybrid of Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Tolstoy, and I'd say in this cinematic adaptation, expansive enough to also include such far-flung literary styles and content as Conrad, Melville and the decadent surrealism of characters like those that populate Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater". This is exactly a piece of literature that would be deemed 'unfilmable' by most. What Ruiz delivers is instead labyrinthine, complex to a you're-screwed-if-you're-not-paying-attention degree, mesmerizing in it's multifaceted structure, this is a true life-like puzzle as multiple identities are stripped away to uncover startling revelations in the best traditions of both literary and cinema melodrama and mystery.



That it's a period piece exploring the mad world of the 19th Century takes away not at all from richness of the material, and certainly the more 'stuffy' social conventions of the time(s) are explored at length to reveal their mirror-opposite and other face, usually over time in the lives of the very same character. The characters of this century in all their mysticism meets colonialism, meets revolt, meets the age of science, meets the age of high adventure, meets the end of the era of piracy - meets all-together in the mind of a young boy caught within the convolutions of the adult world. It's intrigues, it's family and class struggles, the monstrosity of the aristocratic system, the bourgeoisie, and his own life having been denied a family due to being born a 'bastard' son, as this delirious, dream-like fugue of a film/tale. Ending with, what is one of the greatest sleight of hand I've probably ever seen in cinema (and inverting what is probably the worst of narrative gimmicks that exists), which on the surface appears to be a cliche', but in exploring it's dualism/multiplicity there's a epiphany that comes as almost a revelation... especially after the 4 1/2 hours that proceed it. A Massive achievement. Almost faultlessly executed and paced, to the extent that at almost twice the duration of your average film, it's propulsive layers-upon-layers of story-within-story, elapse in what seems like half it's time. For lovers of great tales, and especially those who know their history (both established, eccentric, literary and factual) this is probably the current definition of 'Cinema Magic' right here, in that way where you come away feeling that fiction has just 're-written' history itself.

From Tony Pipolo's review in Film Comment: "To recount the plot of the film is to engage with its reflexivity, as each story stumbles into another and points of view shift in a continual spiral that is less a matter of digressions than the irresistible lure of storytelling. Were the film to continue for 50 or 100 hours, one imagines it might subsume all possible stories from the period of its setting—late 18th- to mid-19th-century Portugal and France—into a tapestry threatening to extend geographically with Borgesian design, a human comedy to surpass Balzac’s."

Link to official "Mysteries of Lisbon" site

Link to IFC distribution "Mysteries of Lisbon" site

Link to Landmark Theatres "Mysteries of Lisbon" site

Link to SIFF Cinema "Mysteries of Lisbon" site

Link to Tony Pipolo's "Mysteries of Lisbon" article in Film Comment