Late auteur Raúl Ruiz’s swan song is a fitting magisterial and elegiac meditation on love and death
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The mastery of the grand art of storytelling featuring winding tales within tales, mischievously shifting viewpoints, inventively unforeseen digressions, melancholic remembrances and elaborate characters is — among so many other things — what makes Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) such an absorbing period piece.
But, of course, you could already guess that, if you’ve seen Time Regained (1999), an impressive adaptation of Marcel Proust’s writings, or Trois vies et une seule mort (1996), in which Marcello Mastroianni plays three leads at once. Late Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (or Raoul Ruiz), who lived in France and died in 2011, was the epitome of narrative sophistication and stylish visuals. With some 119 features under his belt (including short films and documentaries), Ruiz contributed to the art of filmmaking in a manner not many directors are even able to imagine.
Love, betrayal, pain, loss, and more than anything else, death, are over and over again articulated by utter fate in Mysteries of Lisbon, which is adapted from the three-volume novel of the same name by prolific Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco (1825-1890). “These characters are victims, perfect examples of the social mobility of the Romantic century that invented the aesthetics of suicide and the copyright, the cult to cemeteries and ruins and the revolution of free thinking. The happenings and occurrences enter and exit the narrative as they get tangled into their own labyrinth. And the storm of misfortunes is never followed by a ray of light,” said Ruiz about one of the traits of the source material he found most appealing.
Produced by Paulo Branco, partly financed with French money and set mainly in 19th century Portugal — though it eventually shifts to Spain, France, Italy, and Brazil — Mysteries of Lisbon was specifically made for European television. At the beginning of his career, Ruiz had made several TV dramas, and Castelo Branco’s novel was a very dear project to him. Originally, it was divided into six one-hour episodes, but it has been edited to 4hs 26min — which, by the way, run incredibly fast — and is now being commercially released in Buenos Aires thanks to the efforts of Argentine filmmaker Daniel Rosenfeld.
The first of many voice-over narrators of this one-of-a-kind saga is Joao (Joao Luis Arrais), who remembers the gloomy times he lived with priests in a Lisbon orphanage and boarding school when he was 14. He never knew who his parents were, but in time he slowly becomes aware of his past. His story is then intertwined with that of the kind Father Dinis (Adriano Luz), a man who’s in part responsible for the orphan boy’s upbringing and, even more importantly, who will make possible for Joao to finally meet his mother, Angela (Maria Joao Bastos), the Countess of Santa Barbara, who is controlled and mistreated by her dominant husband (Albano Jeronimo).
Joao is an illegitimate son of the countess and a poor nobleman with whom she had a heated affair which ended tragically when the man was shot by the hired gunmen of the Marquis of Montezelos (Rui Morrison), who then forced Angela into a convent. In turn, the marquis will hire a gypsy called the Knife-Eater (Ricardo Pereira) to kill Angela’s baby upon birth, but then the Knife-Eater is paid off by Father Dinis and, of course, Joao survives infancy.
And then there are the stories of the assassin’s wife, his vindictive former mistress seeking vengeance for the death of her twin brother, an altogether different mistress who murders a bishop with whom she had three daughters. And in this same vein there are many, many other major and minor episodes that surface surprisingly and take place in switching-viewpoints spirals. These and other characters fade in and out of the many interwoven stories that will only be tied together at the very end — as though you were living inside the classiest of soap operas.
In its visual design and cinematography, Mysteries of Lisbon is outlandishly gorgeous. Expect mesmerizing and refined compositions where framing as well foreground and background acquire new meanings, photographic effects that create a surreal atmosphere, smooth dolly shots and pans that encompass the heart of the drama as they immerse viewers into it, long takes that trap the flow of time in an everlasting present, and a lush palette that changes from welcoming warm tones to cold ones as the sentimental and psychological tribulations blow over a dozen characters on the verge of impending breakdowns.
Don’t expect to be able to follow the narrative and never miss a why, who, what or when. It’s not intended that way. Even if you have the sharpest of memories, you’ll still get confused from time to time. But you should welcome this confusion. As many of Ruiz’s works — even considering this one being far more accessible than many others — you are meant to experience the movie instead of clinically dissecting it.
Production notes
Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). Directed by Raúl Ruiz. Screenwriter: Carlos Saboga, based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco. With Joao Baptista, Jose Afonso Pimentel, Adriano Luz, Maria Joao Bastos, Albano Jeronimo, Filipe Vargas, Clotilde Hesme, Lea Seydoux. Produced by Paulo Branco. Photography: Andre Szankowski. Running time: 266 minutes.
