2011 Film of the Year Countdown: #23

Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz) [49 points/4 votes]

"Raúl Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon, unequivocally the most important film of 2011, begins with a public rumor and ends with a personal memory. The four glorious hours in between, comprising what I can only describe as a simmering stew of intrigue, revenge and romance, intricately maps the serpentine narrative canals connecting these two reference points. Told in a fluid, almost elastic style, Mysteries of Lisbon effortlessly overlaps seemingly diverging stories and experiences to create a majestic timeline of tragedy, lust, and comeuppance, where each piece is integral to the overall puzzle.

Characters share long, subtext-heavy interludes, verbal standoffs of epic proportions that jettison them into the expanding cinematic world beyond the frame. Fittingly, Ruiz’s nimble camera glides through hallways, rooms, and corridors like a boomerang slowed to an inquisitive crawl, twirling forward then backtracking to find new information, new emotions. Each wonderfully textured image is a still photograph spun into motion by fate.

Set in 19th century Portugal among the upper echelons of the social elite, Mysteries of Lisbon opens with the story of Joao (Joao Baptista), a young orphan yearning to understand his true identity and past history. From here, the film gracefully and deceptively expands to include multiple characters, flashbacks, and tangents where every human emotion under the sun becomes a cinematic centerpiece.

Time is both a weapon and a shield in Mysteries of Lisbon, sometimes a purveyor of doom and sometimes a surveyor of hope. This natural pragmatism toward the ways contrasting ideologies, social conventions and hierarchies feed off each other is Ruiz’s main concern. The final moments of the film find a beggar telling the now grown Joao an especially pertinent bit of wisdom: “What to us are the things of life are the enormous tragedies to the nobility.” But Mysteries of Lisbon doesn’t just skewer the arrogance and entitlement of the privileged; it connects wealth and poverty as complex human experiences separated by the smallest twist of fate, the most minute detail. Both are subject to tragedy and redemption in equal measure.

Ruiz’s greatest character, an assassin named Knife Eater (Ricardo Pereira) who later evolves into a much more complicated beast, best personifies this transcendent and flexible view of human nature. In the end, Mysteries of Lisbon is not a film of finite memories, scars or relationships but remembered (and misremembered) shifts in consciousness, defining moments crystallized through the hazy lens of memory. Raul Ruiz passed away in August of 2011 with supposedly four more films in the can. Like many of his characters, Ruiz's influence transcends the grave." - Glenn Heath Jr.