hulljulia Review of Mysteries of Lisbon

Mysteries of Lisbon (2011–2020)

Primogeniture is a system of cruelty, prominent in another time in history.

[10/10 · 12 July 2012]

J. Leite: This film is about structure. The lengthy, laborious, "pointlessness" of this film mirrors the epic proportions of the theme of the movie: primogeniture of seniors and senores. This story is not about Kings, Queens, Princes, or Princesses. It is about Dukes, Duchesses, Counts, Countesses, Marquises, and Marquisessas. This theme becomes evident when a prince informs a count who is attracted to a princess/countess that one cannot take "from the firstborn to give to the second," and so the second must be married off or "placed," well to be sure, and relegated to obscurity. The rest of the film points us to the directions of various "seconds" and their stations in life directly related to their birth rank. The firstborns take the world stage; the seconds swirl amid the shadows of those given privilege and rank as inheritors of primogeniture. The Catholic Church is the hub around which these paths diverge and intersect, with the Church giving sanctuary to orphans, widows, and unfortunates. The long vignettes portray various subplots and the machinations which brought, mostly, either a fall from rank or a retreat from the world, or obscurity. Giving dignity to these seconds falls to the priest who, one infers, has a keen perception about the interplay of events and the machinations of sinister people in their noble lives. At the end of the tedium of this film, one feels that one has been through an ordeal commensurate to the ordeals of the seconds or "spares" in the story. This film was exquisitely produced, directed, scripted, and acted. I enjoyed this movie once I figured out what was happening, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there really was a Duke/Count de Sa.