NYFF 53 REVIEW: ARABIAN NIGHTS VOLUME ONE, TWO, & THREE
VOLUME ONE & TWO REVIEWED BY CHRISENA RICCI
Heavily political films usually leave me sighing and a little frustrated. I often feel that they are too opinionated and lose their merit for credibility and rationality. It's good to have opinions and be deeply passionate about those opinions, but the best way to share those opinions is oftentimes not by bashing the viewer over the head with one sided propaganda. ARABIAN NIGHTS VOLUME ONE: THE RESTLESS ONE, the first film in a series of three, is a beautiful depiction of a successful political film. Miguel Gomes the director of the film begins his narrative with some backstory. He keeps it short and factual. In recent years the Portuguese people have faced many different economic and social problems. At the same time, a large shipyard is shut down on the coast, while killer wasps invade from the inland borders. The film begins with these stories in an almost bland way.
The viewer feels as if they're watching two documentaries with no connection. However, piece by piece the stories overlap. Dialogue about the shipyard's glory is overlapped by images of a wasp nest engulfed in flames. Images of waves crashing in an empty harbor are shown with the cacophony of a buzzing hive. And then, the director begins his playful tale. After announcing that he cannot adequately speak for the people of Portugal, the director gets up and runs out on his own film.
From this moment on, in a style reminiscent of One Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade tells the tales of Portugal in the same structure as the Arabian Nights, as the narrator. Each parable has some loose connection to the plagues harming Portugal, but not in a blunt overwhelming way. Each story is presented in a colorful way with some characters looking as though they stood up from the pages of their story book just long enough to be filmed. Others look more like a crowd you might see at a bodega at 2 am. All are narrated by Scheherazade's low and dulcet tones and coexist beautifully together.
Some of my favorite stories include a talking rooster and a group of sexually depressed bankers. Each tale is vibrant and while based on true events, also demands a large amount of imagination from the audience. The first installment of the film is incredible, though maybe a bit long. With an epic tale of this magnitude, I wonder if some of the exposition could have been simplified or shortened in some way. Once the audience is listening to the tales of Scheherazade, it is clear we could listen all day, with a tireless enthusiasm. Upon leaving the theater, I was looking forward to the second installment of Arabian Nights with a similar nature to that of an eager child waiting for the next part of an ongoing bedtime story. Once the lights went down, I didn’t have to wait long. This time Gomes doesn’t wait to begin the stories. He jumps right in.
VOLUME TWO: THE DESOLATE ONE, the second portion of the epic tale, has almost no exposition at all. A typed explanation scrolls through the first minute or so, and then we are in the beginning of a new story. The desolate one seems to have a sadder taste to it, with lonely characters and situations full of a heavy sort of sadness at the core of each tale. One particular parable with a princely dog left me feeling surprisingly exhausted and sad.
The thing that really hits home with this second installment is that these stories are based on true events that really happened in Portugal. Obviously, the genies and talking cows are the addition of Gomes’s imagination, but this film rings so true and earnest. For the duration of the film, in the back of my mind I found myself drawing my own conclusions about the Portuguese government. The stories hold whispers of truth that slowly and quietly inform the audience and gently ask very difficult questions.
Where the first installment felt a bit epic in scope and maybe even a bit too long, this one is exactly on point. Story after story is presented in a nice pace that likens to the speed of flipping pages through great book. The other piece of the puzzle that astounds me is how complete each story feels. The entire premise of One Thousand and One Nights, is that Scheherazade is married to an evil king who tends to grow bored with his wives quickly. To literally save her neck, she tells the king these stories and never finishes them, so that he will keep her alive for the next day. Although Scheherazade never finishes a single story from start to finish, Gomes is able to fill in the gaps leaving the audience completely satiated. Imaginative, important and entertaining, I believe these films may be some of the most interesting I have seen in a long while.
***
VOLUME THREE REVIEWED BY
What's fascinating to me about seeing a film with someone is that you be hand in hand with your opinion being the same, find similar likes and small dislikes, or be at polar opposites of your love or hate for a film. I still have fever dreams of the girl I dated who would swear that PULP FICTION wasn't a good film and that CABARET just isn't a well written musical. That past relationship of mine has mostly been Eternal Sunshine erased from my memory and it's often just too painful to speak of. In fact, I must stop now. Thank you for your understanding and support. My fellow reviewer Chrisena and I have seen many movies together. We both marveled recently at the splendor of THE WALK, both screamed BOX OF ROACHES long after we saw GOODNIGHT MOMMY and laughed along with the extremely entertaining with the boys and girls of LOS HONGOS.
However, with ARABIAN NIGHTS we very much differ in opinions. Where Chrisena found the first two Volumes "Imaginative, important and entertaining," I found them tiresome and tedious. Now, to be fair, there are some very good things within each one. The most entertaining aspects of VOLUME ONE for me was the beginning half. But it felt like it was stretching into every which way it could by the end. The second film was definitely the strongest of the three, actually succeeding in telling a fluid story. And as VOLUME THREE: THE ENCHANTED ONE began, I was quite hopeful. In this volume, it's split into only two sections. The beginning section of the finale begins with Scheherazade herself as the star. We're introduced to her (played by Crista Alfaiate, who is quite charming and effervescent) and her father the Grand Vizier (Americo Silva). She may be running out of time in the telling of her stories to the Mad King, and she knows it. Her father knows it too and we see how he pictures his dearly departed wife when he lays eyes on his daughter. She wanders her land, floats in the lake, walks among her people, interacts with a man who has 200 children, and another who calls himself Elvis. There's a breakout moment in song, a joyous dance, and the simple pleasures of a woman looking out at her life, possibly for the final time. She knows that when she returns her final story could be her last. It's beautifully shot and charming in its soft spoken nature.
So why then does the majority of the film, over 80 minutes, go into a faux documentary style and follow a few groups of Lisbon bird trappers and their love of teaching birds to sing for competition? Yes, it's the final story she tells her King, but it's the most painfully boring section of all three films. The only real dialogue given is captions on the screen saying that Scheherazade begins again to tell the Mad King the story, he falls asleep, and so does she. Riveting stuff to be sure. The film does eventually (mercifully) end, but we never go back to Scheherazade to find out her fate, or to check back in. Instead, we just get a lot, and I mean A LOT, of bird singing in real time. There are moments of beauty but you'll probably miss them because the other moments will cause you to fall asleep. As a final note, if these are the tales she's telling him to stay alive, I can only think of two options: One: This King is the most boring man in history. Or Two: She actually only started to tell him one story and he killed her because she was so boring. She just hasn't realized she's dead yet. Someone should tell her though, so she stops telling stories and takes a nap.
CHRISENA'S VERDICT: MUST SEE
MATEO'S VERDICT: SKIP IT
WRITTEN BY Telmo Churro, Miguel Gomes, Mariana Ricardo DIRECTED BY Miguel Gomes STARRING Miguel Gomes, Carloto Cotta, Crista Alfaiate, Adriano Luz, Rogerio Samora, João Pedro Bénard, Isabel Muñoz Cardoso, Americo Silva
Playing as part of the 2015 53rd Annual New York Film Festival. For tickets and information: http://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2015/
CHRISENA RICCI once went to a costume party dressed in an all black dress and black wig. No one there could guess who she was. So she shouted out, "I'm Christina Ricci, without the T or I and add an E!" Everyone stood there confused, she was annoyed, so she stormed off. She never returned to that apartment ever again. Which is fine, because she later realized she was at the wrong party. She now lives in New York City.
MATEO MORENO recently won a bet on who could hold their breath the longest underwater. He won the bet, having beat local loudmouth Jimmy "Thunderbird" Thomas with a record breaking "fourteen minutes." True, part of that time was him unconscious and the other part was him being revived, but he still counts it, and is now $20 richer. Take THAT Thunderbird! He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.