Ara­bi­an Nights – first look review

We’ve held off writ­ing about Miguel Gomes sprawl­ing, year-in-the-mak­ing tri-part doohicky, Ara­bi­an Nights, in order to see it in its entire­ty. ​“Like Star Wars, this is three films,” said the direc­tor at a Q&A ses­sion fol­low­ing a screen­ing of the first vol­ume. As such, the pro­gramers at the Direc­tors’ Fort­night strand of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val decid­ed to play it in three sep­a­rate slots over six days.

Each vis­it, we would receive our fill of tall tales and then be giv­en time to pon­der their mean­ing, Gomes clear­ly hop­ing to divert us from our sub-con­scious incli­na­tions towards metaphor­i­cal­ly behead­ing our vir­gin brides. The direc­tor takes one of lit­er­ary history’s most spell­bind­ing racon­teurs as his muse and spir­it guide – Scheherazade – and goes on to form a poet­ic diag­no­sis on the floun­der­ing, albeit nat­u­ral­ly cap­ti­vat­ing cadav­er of aus­ter­i­ty-scarred Portugal.

This is not a lit­er­al adap­ta­tion of ​‘The Ara­bi­an Nights’, it mere­ly adopts its struc­ture, its dis­po­si­tion, and – even­tu­al­ly – its sub­lime per­spi­cac­i­ty. It comes across as a cross-pro­cess­ing of Buñuel’s Phan­tom of Par­adise, Pasolini’s The Gospel Accord­ing to St Matthew and the films of inspi­ra­tional Por­tuguese film­mak­ers, Anto­nio Reis and Mar­garet Cordeiro. But even that doesn’t quite cov­er it.

As with his pre­vi­ous fea­tures, Our Beloved Month of August, Tabu and the short work, Restora­tion, Ara­bi­an Nights takes no heed of the sup­posed par­ti­tion wall which divides the worlds of doc­u­men­tary and fic­tion, and through­out its three free­wheel­ing chap­ters (The Rest­less One, The Des­o­late One and The Enchant­ed One), Gomes is clear­ly look­ing to coag­u­late these forms in excit­ing and uncon­ven­tion­al ways.

Some­times we have straight doc­u­men­tary, then a stripped-back Brecht­ian satire, then an ambling pas­tiche, then a straight his­tor­i­cal dra­ma strewn with eccen­tric anachro­nisms, then a spo­ken digres­sion, and final­ly – in a sto­ry about the lit­tle-known domain of com­pet­i­tive rur­al chaffinch song show­downs, a pas­time appar­ent­ly cul­ti­vat­ed through the rise of sub­ur­ban social hous­ing blocks – a breath­tak­ing mix­ture of all of the above.

It takes a long time to get a prop­er han­dle on Gomes’ tonal remit as well as his polit­i­cal moti­va­tions. Though the vignettes pre­sent­ed here are exclu­sive­ly focused on the lives of impov­er­ished Por­tuguese (an eco­nom­ic band which is said to have expand­ed mas­sive­ly under the spite­ful, social­ly unjust machi­na­tions of the gov­ern­ment), there’s a glib­ness and spry sense of self-sat­is­fac­tion which per­co­lates through the open­ing stretch. It feels like the direc­tor is light­ly mock­ing his subjects.

So mer­cu­r­ial a tal­ent is he, that the form con­stant­ly threat­ens to stran­gle the con­tent, and what­ev­er mean­ing is sup­posed to be drawn from the sto­ries is some­times obscured by the aggres­sive­ly applied (but always wel­come) tech­ni­cal capri­cious­ness. Empa­thy is occa­sion­al­ly drained from the imagery, and we’re left with a guy who’s just play­ing his country’s deep-set col­lec­tive woes like a cig­ar-box banjo.

And yet, these ini­tial appre­hen­sions are all but neu­tralised when con­sid­er­ing the work as one giant whole – which it real­ly should be. Gomes appears only vague­ly inter­est­ed in artic­u­lat­ing blunt polit­i­cal state­ments about how an entire coun­try can descend into the fis­cal dol­drums. And he does this by telling inti­mate, whim­si­cal sto­ries which speak of more broad­ly abstract con­cepts, pri­mar­i­ly the ever-evolv­ing inter­play between pover­ty and culture.

The film sets out its stall as a prick­ly wal­low in wide­spread trau­ma and oppres­sion, only to lat­er reveal itself as an exul­tant poem to the Por­tuguese pop­u­lous and their dai­ly strate­gies for mud­dling on though the omnipresent dark­ness. The exis­tence of the film itself is an affir­ma­tion of that expres­sion, that peo­ple look to the nat­ur­al boun­ty of the land­scape to pro­cure their own forms of pleasure.

The adven­ture of find­ing out the sub­jects of each of these exot­i­cal­ly sub-titled tales should not be spoiled here, as there’s always an intrigu­ing ques­tion mark hang­ing over where Gomes will go next, and how he’ll go there. The nar­ra­tion is writ­ten in con­spic­u­ous­ly ornate verse which secures a tight con­nec­tion between the ​“age of antiq­ui­ty” and mod­ern times. It’s hard, too, to talk about aes­thet­ics as Gomes adopts dif­fer­ent styles (and film stocks) to suit the dif­fer­ent sub­jects. The actors in the film re-appear in sep­a­rate chap­ters, and in one case as a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter, again empha­sis­ing Gomes’ per­pet­u­al reminder that cin­e­mat­ic rule-break­ing need not be an overt­ly osten­ta­tious sport.

Tak­ing stock of every­thing – this expan­sive, infu­ri­at­ing, lurid, shape­less, tran­scen­dent, resplen­dent quag­mire of cin­e­mat­ic inven­tion – one can’t help but be awed by how its spi­ralling, mad-eyed ambi­tion is matched (and then some) by the sounds and images which have been cap­tured for the screen. It builds and builds to an aston­ish­ing and heart­break­ing crescen­do, tak­ing many secret back­roads and byways in the process, and only by its final fames, which arrive to the heady strains of a child voice choir cov­er­ing The Car­pen­ters’ Call­ing Occu­pants, does Gomes’ colos­sal stores of human sen­si­tiv­i­ty tru­ly shine through.

Ara­bi­an Nights is not a film which aims to make a dif­fer­ence, it’s a film which com­pas­sion­ate­ly shares a cheeky cig­a­rette with the peo­ple (and ani­mals) who have already ded­i­cat­ed their lives to doing just that. A film about protest rather than a protest film. It’s an impro­vised, on-the-lam mas­ter­piece, a lop-sided folk-art shrine, which finds gen­uine hope (rather than erro­neous cin­e­mat­ic hope) with­in a con­text incom­pa­ra­ble despair. Vive le Gomes…