Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (M) on December 11, 2012 at 07:29:39

In Reply to: RE: You didn't respond about, "Mysteries of Lisbon:" get it, Vic. posted by tinear on December 08, 2012 at 10:02:55

It is a memorable film, but I don't think quite at the level of Barry Lyndon.

The first half goes down fairly easily, the second loses you quickly, with too many intertwined characters, names, etc, so by the time you make a partial recovery it is already over! :) At one point I gave up on trying to remember all the names, and just went with the flow. When you read a book like this, you go back and forth often, here you are denied that luxury, so you are bound to lose some. Maybe when watched by the original audience, in native language there is less of this issue.

The cinematography is outstanding, much like in BL, with many images worthy of a canvas, but the characters are mostly static, and the story telling tedious. Some sub-plots border on ridiculous, like the deadly 80,000 of something for a night... Perhaps in the TV show format it was more easily digestable, with long pauses between the segments, here it created the acute sense of overload.

So overall, as I said, it is a memorable film, and I am glad we watched it, but I would rate it on par with true masterpieces.

BTW, I was listening to the music of the Portuguese language and I am still unable to crack it. I can recognize many languages by their music, here it is still escaping me... there is something in it that at times sounds almost like Polish, with many Sh sounds, and there are definite spanish parallels, but it is hard to grasp.

Anyway, with something like that your perception often changes with time, but I am afraid a second viewing of this 4 1/2 hour monument will be hard to arrange. I think it could have been easily shrunk down to maybe 3 hours, with more dynamic flow and less tedium.