Ara­bi­an Nights

Hands up who remem­bers Woody Guthrie? Per­haps you’ve tapped a cuban heel along to his rous­ing folk stan­dard, ​‘This Land Is Your Land’? Or maybe you caught Hal Ashby’s 1976 film adap­ta­tion of his mem­oir, ​‘Bound For Glo­ry’, in which the nomadic trou­ba­dour penned songs inspired by the hard­ships he saw in Dust­bowl Amer­i­ca? He was a man who cre­at­ed rough-hewn, but human­ist art. It tran­scend­ed mere enter­tain­ment and became folk­loric social his­to­ry, a vital chron­i­cle of a time, a place and a way of life.

There has always been an inkling that Por­tuguese film direc­tor and occa­sion­al dandy, Miguel Gomes, styles him­self as a mod­ern-day Woody Guthrie, a cine-out­law rid­ing the rails and filch­ing from real­i­ty to feed his fic­tion­al fan­tasias. He, how­ev­er, is more prone to play­ful irony than earnest­ness, even though his aim always remains true. His first great film, 2008’s Our Beloved Month of August, con­tained a moment where he offered view­ers the sen­sa­tion of pass­ing through the look­ing glass from the com­fort­ing land of real­i­ty into the fic­tion­al realm of cel­lu­loid dreams. This film – coin­ci­den­tal­ly about the tra­di­tion of folk music in rur­al Por­tu­gal – high­light­ed this notion of draw­ing ener­gy and ideas from the land and from his­to­ry. The film tries to pin­point the moment where fact becomes leg­end, where pro­sa­ic events and have-a-go heroes are pre­served in the shim­mer­ing amber of cre­ative endeavour.

At the begin­ning of his awe­some new three-part fea­ture, Ara­bi­an Nights, the direc­tor appears wear­ing a rain­coat, sit­ting on some gar­den fur­ni­ture at a hotel. His down­beat, con­fes­sion­al nar­ra­tion fore­warns that, with this film, he feels as if he’s about to embark on a fool’s errand. The sto­ry goes that he was in a shop with his daugh­ter and she asked for a toy. When Gomes said no, she respond­ed: ​“Is it because of the aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures?” The fact that even his daugh­ter knew about Portugal’s slump into pover­ty was the eure­ka moment he need­ed to build a trip­tych of films – a fol­ly of rare mag­nif­i­cence – which exist as a fleet­ing sur­vey of a coun­try in dire straits. Like the phan­tom croc­o­dile at the begin­ning of Gomes’ 2012 mas­ter­piece, Tabu, this is a sad and melan­cholic film, though it is not a maudlin one. Its con­tent oscil­lates between the absurd and the arcane, focus­ing as much on minor-scale rebel­lion as it does on the bit­ter­sweet dec­i­ma­tion of a rich cul­tur­al heritage.

The film is so-called because of its loose alle­giance to the canon­i­cal Ara­bi­an tome, ​‘The One Thou­sand and One Nights’. Yet Gomes takes pains to assure us at the begin­ning of each chap­ter that only its struc­ture inspired his film. In the book, vir­gin waif Scheherazade (Crista Alfa­iate) uses her skills as a vir­tu­oso racon­teur to keep the mur­der­ous king from rav­ish­ing her and putting her to the sword. She tells him sto­ries about his empire, about sur­vival and cus­tom, about mag­ic and adventure.

In this spir­it, Gomes casts him­self as Scheherazade, while the con­tem­po­rary politi­cians and pow­er bro­kers wreak­ing hav­oc on the land are the demon­ic king. These sto­ries are enter­tain­ment, but in such sit­u­a­tions, they are also a ton­ic for wide­spread mis­ery. As he deals so direct­ly with ​“the now”, there’s a reac­tive feel to the vignettes Gomes weaves, where form is almost a nat­ur­al byprod­uct of each new sub­ject. First it’s a doc­u­men­tary, then it’s fic­tion, then the two worlds col­lide and all bets are off.

A scene-set­ting sketch from the first film – The Rest­less One – sees a gag­gle of hard-nosed min­is­ters squab­bling over Portugal’s nation­al debt repay­ments in a rur­al tav­er­na. It is framed as grotesque satire, like a ​‘Char­lie Heb­do’ car­toon writ large. A wan­der­ing sooth­say­er casts a spell which gives the men bulging erec­tions, and with this libidi­nous charge, they sud­den­ly become more sym­pa­thet­ic towards the country’s eco­nom­ic restruc­tur­ing. The absur­dist tenor of this open­ing gam­bit is cru­cial — it places this most seri­ous of bureau­crat­ic deci­sions neat­ly along­side the more fan­ci­ful anec­dotes to come. It also express­es Gomes’ belief that sto­ries can still retain their essence and emo­tion how­ev­er much you accen­tu­ate their whim­si­cal cock-and-bull nature.

The sec­ond film – sub­ti­tled The Des­o­late One – opens with anoth­er impor­tant tale: The Chron­i­cle of the Escape of Simão ​‘With­out Bow­els’. It stars sinewy old­ster Chico Cha­pas as on-the-lam mur­der­er Simão, his anatom­i­cal nick­name the result of his hav­ing a healthy appetite but nev­er gain­ing weight. Gomes unapolo­get­i­cal­ly sides with the day­dream­ing killer, along with the local pop­u­lous who are invig­o­rat­ed by this age­ing fugi­tive, who out­smarts the drone tech­nol­o­gy and bom­bas­tic fire­pow­er wield­ed by state oppres­sors. The film as a whole looks at how momen­tous polit­i­cal set­tle­ments have unknow­able human ram­i­fi­ca­tions, but also how they can sub­vert a basic sense of right and wrong. The dash­ing anti­hero is a sta­ple of roman­tic cin­e­ma – but here, that fic­tion­al arche­type has blazed a path into stark reality.

Gomes applies the reac­tive impuls­es of a doc­u­men­tar­i­an with the florid imag­i­na­tion of a fab­u­list. The ele­ment of his films which is at once the most impres­sive and poten­tial­ly the most alien­at­ing is the way he views time and space as muta­ble, some­times opt­ing to have var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal eras exist­ing in the same moment, in the same frame. Mix­ing time­frames is often a source of mirth — as with the rov­ing peas­ant in the begin­ning of the third film who attempts to seduce Scheherazade with his break­danc­ing prowess. But this off-hand com­ic dis­place­ment is a red her­ring. For Gomes, his­to­ry is cycli­cal and the eccen­tric tra­vails of man tell a uni­ver­sal narrative.

The film’s final chap­ter – dubbed The Enchant­ed One – is also its most beau­ti­ful and mov­ing. While the sec­ond chap­ter is the most open­ly out­raged, focus­ing on des­ti­tu­tion lead­ing to crime and death (hap­pi­ness can only be achieved if you are a cute dog, appar­ent­ly), part three at once ties up every­thing that has come before it. It offers a pure expres­sion of how humans instinc­tive­ly mud­dle through times of woe. The Ine­bri­at­ing Cho­rus of the Chaffinch­es trans­ports us deep into the cap­ti­vat­ing world of com­pet­i­tive chaffinch song tour­na­ments, where job­less men fix­ate on the repet­i­tive, three-tier war­ble of their cap­tured spec­i­mens. Chico Cha­pas returns, no longer as Simão ​‘With­out Bow­els’, but as him­self (or so we’re led to believe), an expert chaffinch trap­per whose skills help many become part of this del­i­cate sub-culture.

While Gomes is method­i­cal in pre­sent­ing the var­i­ous key char­ac­ters on the chaffinch song ​“scene”, it’s not just so he can par­lay them into some kind of real­i­ty-style com­pe­ti­tion set-up. This is about home­spun cul­ture erupt­ing through the cracks of depres­sion and the irre­press­ible nature of poet­ry. While it may out­line the extent of the suf­fer­ing caused by aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures, Ara­bi­an Nights offers an extrav­a­gant expres­sion of opti­mism in the face of civic des­o­la­tion. It shows peo­ple enrap­tured by their sur­round­ings, and some­times not even real­is­ing it. Gomes keeps his right­eous anger in check, but he also refines his sense of revelry.

The film cli­max­es on a school choir singing ​‘Call­ing Occu­pants (of Inter­plan­e­tary Craft)’, made famous by The Car­pen­ters to cel­e­brate World Con­tact Day – an occa­sion where we might one day reach out to alien life­forms. Cha­pas is filmed strid­ing down a coun­try lane hav­ing just helped a wind sprite trapped in a chaffinch net. Is it a hap­py end­ing? Is Cha­pas mov­ing for­ward, tri­umphant, con­tent­ed, at peace with the world? Or is he strid­ing head­long into an abyss of unimag­in­able sor­row? We dream of bliss­ful escape and of exot­ic lands as a way to ful­fil idle plea­sures. But movies are those dreams. They are enablers of the fan­tas­tic. Maybe this capri­cious cross-cut of a soci­ety in the process of a bit­ter­ly poet­ic tran­si­tion is the time cap­sule that Gomes wants to blast into space for the aliens to see. There can be no doubt that its humour, empa­thy and strange inge­nu­ity would make them want to pay us a visit.

Ara­bi­an Nights Vol­ume One is released 22 April, with Vols 2 & 3 out 29 April and 6 May.