I first watched "Mysteries of Lisbon" at least 5 years ago and immediately bought it on Google Play, but I did not rewatch it until now, which is fortuitous, as I have only recently learned about Kenji Mizoguchi's mastery of mise-en-scene while watching his "47 Ronin." Raul Ruiz's camera movement feels similar but with its own contemplative rhythm. There are a few places of panning back and forth that suggest a sense of magic or, perhaps more accurately, memory and dream, such as a character appearing in a previously empty space.
I must admit to an irrational partiality for 19th century Romantic novels, a genre to which the 1854 novel of the same name belong. Even though I know nothing whatsoever about Portuguese literature and culture, it feels extremely reminiscent of all the British and French epics I read in adolescence. Just like the food one ingests in childhood will become one's permanent favorite taste, the stories one gobbles up with a side of youthful hormones stay with one forever. It's the comfort food that reminds us of home.
The plot is saturated with the kind of passion, heartbreak, scandals, and improbable entanglement typical of the Romantic melodrama. No doubt the novel by Camilo Castelo Bronco, which has not been translated to English as far as I can find, is as sensationalist and overwrought as the works of Alexandre Dumas (pere). However, the movie does something more with the material --- It both immerses us in this stiff aristocratic world and takes us out of it by several cinematic devices. For example, the foldable cardboard theater carried to the end of the world by the main character, Joao/Pedro da Silva, reminds us from time to time that we are watching a staged drama. The visual layering of characters and space in many scenes heightens the separation of the storyteller and the listener. The layering is also applied to scenes in which an audience exists inside the frame as eaves-dropping but anonymous servants or monks. Ruiz seems to be constantly reminding us about the artificiality of drama and our role as the recipient of a narrative.
During the years after having watched the 4.5-hour-long movie for the first time, I could barely remember any of the characters or subplots, but the images of lush woods and crumbling mansions, as well as the sense of longing and decay, always stayed with me. Some scenes are awash in a golden glow of nostalgia, while other scenes are soaked in chilled green and blue. Plot is no longer necessary to convey the vibration of mood.
In a duel scene near the end, which reminds me of the picturesque scenes in Barry Lyndon (but not so self-consciously screaming "look at me!"), the camera lingers after all the principal characters have left, and a bystander entirely outside of the plot sits down and, for a brief moment, becomes the center of his own drama. Like all the other mysteries of the movie, it fascinates me. We have seen this man pacing in the background throughout the duel, but our attention is captured by the fate of the characters inside the story and barely notices his existence ... until the end. It suggests that anyone's life may contain some romance like that of Joao, his mother Angela de Lima, Father Dinis, or anyone else in the story, and perhaps anyone of us can turn our life story into melodrama by enacting it on theater, cardboard or otherwise.
The soundtrack is fantastic and perfect for the dreamy and melancholy mood of the movie (unlike the Vivaldi used in the trailer). Unfortunately I have not been able to find it online anywhere --- perhaps have to search in Portuguese.
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