REVIEW - ARABIAN NIGHTS: VOLUME 3 - THE ENCHANTED ONE (MIGUEL GOMES)

If there's a single point to be made in Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights project, it's made most succinctly in Volume 3 - The Enchanted One. The series itself at its most enchanting, and at its most mundane, this simple assemblage of stories on Portuguese identity draws out from these three films the true purpose of Gomes' methods of presenting them; we've already been acquainted with Arabian Nights' overarching nature, but it's only in The Enchanted One that Gomes' means excuse his ends. The first 40 minutes are sweet and pretty, and perhaps mildly allegorical, but they serve more to illuminate the genesis of Gomes' structural scheme than to reveal anything profound about his native Portugal. Nevertheless, as a quirky reworking of an old story, this segment is in fact more closely related to the first two volumes than it is to the remainder of The Enchanted One, which turns the film from poetic fantasy to sober documentary. It's a plaintive, perceptive portion, extended to a length great enough that it attains a magnitude of its own, even within this six-hour project. On-screen text ties it to the opening story, a determined narrative drive once again jutting in, this time not to a tale that needs room to breathe, but to a tale that actually provides it, only to have it denied. Yet this text, with its overt implication on this film's identity as a piece of storytelling, combined with the truest, purest examination of Portuguese identity in all three films, finally develops Gomes' essential idea: it is through stories of the past that we come to understand our present, and shape our future, and through skillful manipulation of their telling that we abate the destruction of our own identity. A pleasant, poignant point then, but did it really have to take six hours to make it?

REVIEW - ARABIAN NIGHTS: VOLUME 2 - THE DESOLATE ONE (MIGUEL GOMES)

The savoury filling in Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights sandwich, Volume 2 - The Desolate One sifts out the satire of Volume 1, replacing it with added absurdity, and a respect for style and structure whose absence somewhat blighted its predecessor. Seemingly straightforward yet opaque, it's the least conceptually convincing of the three films, being the awkward middle part of the project. But Gomes exploits this ungainliness to fabulous artistic effect, honing his skill of invention, dedicating himself to his (albeit wayward) narratives far more so than in Volume 1, allowing the film to truly settle into itself. The political subtext adds a sense of distinction, of a purpose that's wholly real, if not wholly realised - Gomes remains too eager to digress ever further, his vaguely novelistic approach still too dense to permit his film from adequately expressing itself, even if this stylistic endeavour is entirely appropriate. The Desolate One might also be titled 'The Desperate One', as it astutely chronicles the effects of political buck-passing, subtly establishing themes of responsibility, accountability and their disregard, and the futility of taking any kind of action - whether good or bad - in the face of such a corrupt system. But the chief virtue of The Desolate One is in its artistry. Gomes is a master of manipulating sound and silence in his films, and this one's beguiling sensory tableau is beautiful to behold. A rambling final half hour makes a clear point, though not completely clearly; it's intentionally loose, but thus something of a letdown after the preceding 90 minutes of relative excellence. At any rate, The Desolate One is quite the opposite: a step up from the relative mediocrity of The Restless One.

REVIEW - ARABIAN NIGHTS: VOLUME 1 - THE RESTLESS ONE (MIGUEL GOMES)

A political portrait in all its possible guises: inquisitive documentary, cheeky satire, sombre social realism. Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights: Volume 1 - The Restless One is clear and it is abstract, truthful and absurd, politically charged, fantastical, simple and strange, direct yet endlessly diverging. It is also great, good, and bad, and some combination of each of those among each of the qualities listed above. Drifting from one story to the next, and to stories within stories, this episodic feature functions like an aimless anthology more than the artistic statement Gomes intends of it, given its fitful nature. An engrossing opening segment, of which an extended version would undoubtedly have produced a better film overall, needlessly merges documentary fact with self-reflexive fiction; self-reflection being self-obsession, and Gomes' ploy to frame the entire remainder of The Restless One (and both subsequent volumes) as a story of great magnitude sets it a bar which it never even threatens to reach. He has a touch with subtle quirks inserted here and there, jaunty little gags with ephemeral effect; The Restless One is at its most affecting, and its least aggravating, when it settles into itself, allowing reality to trump fantasy and to afford the film an intensity of feeling that Gomes barely even considers to court. He's too concerned with his stories, and with telling them in the kind of dense detail, and with the kind of reckless momentum, that his classic literary inspirations employed. Perhaps it works on the page, but on screen, Gomes' breathless narrative drive gives the viewer no time to appreciate what they're presented with, no time to try to work out Gomes' intentions, the reasoning behind the theorising. All will become simpler in Volume 2, and clearer in Volume 3, but for all its intermittent brilliance, Volume 1 remains equally baffling.

CAHIERS DU CINEMA'S TOP 10 OF 2015: MIA MADRE AT #1

Many excellent titles from this year (and last) on Cahiers du Cinema's Top 10 of 2015... and Mia Madre. In a decision that would be inexplicable for most critic polls, but which is almost predictable for the ever-independent Cahiers critics, Nanni Moretti's film beats titles from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Miguel Gomes and, of all people, Larry Clark. Get your daily wtf fill below:

Cahiers du Cinema's Top 10 of 2015

1. Mia Madre

2. Cemetery of Splendour

3. In the Shadow of Women

4. The Smell of Us

5. Mad Max: Fury Road

6. Jauja

7. Inherent Vice

8. Arabian Nights: Volume 1 - The Restless One / Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One / Arabian Nights: Volume 3 - The Enchanted One

9. The Summer of Sangaile

10. Journey to the Shore