Why so much hype?

To me, this movie is perfection.

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Chilean-born screenwriter, producer, teacher and director Raúl Ruiz' 66th feature film which was written by Portuguese screenwriter Carlos Saboga, is an adaptation of a novel from 1854 by 19th century Portuguese writer Camilo Castello Branco (1825-1890). It premiered at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival in 2010 and is a France-Portugal co-production which was shot on various locations in Portugal and produced by Portuguese producer Paulo Branco. It tells the story about Pedro da Silva, a fourteen-year-old orphan who lives at a boarding school in Lisbon, Portugal which is run by Father Dinis during the Liberal Wars in the early 19th century. Pedro is searching for his origins and Father Dinis has managed to take his mind of his natural curiosity by having him focus on his studies, but one day after having received a visit by a countess named Angela de Lima who claims to be his mother, Father Dinis decides to help Pedro in his search for his identity.Distinctly and subtly directed by Latin-American filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, this intricate and exquisite story which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws a stately and memorable portrayal of an adolescent boy's conflicting road towards discovering his true identity during the 19th century and the destinies of all the people who in one way or another were connected to his birth. While notable for its brilliant milieu depictions, production design and costume design by Portuguese production designer, art director and costume designer Isabel Branco, cinematography by Brazilian-born cinematographer André Szankowski and the cogent editing by Chilean screenwriter, film editor and director Valéria Sarmiento and film editor Carlos Madaleno, this somewhat surreal and romantic period drama which is driven by it's voice-over narration, dialog, variegated characters and interrelated stories, depicts multiple intriguing studies of character and contains a remarkable score by Chilean-born composer Jorge Arrigada and Portuguese composer and professor of music Luís Freitas Branco (1890-1955).This rhythmic, multifaceted, at times humorous and invariably moving epic about human suffering, human relations, identity, love and faith, presents scenes where it is as if protagonists and antagonists were communicating within frames of art works and is a poetically atmospheric and melodramatic fictional tale which is impelled and reinforced by its fragmented narrative structure and the compelling acting performances by Portuguese actor Adriano Luz, French actress Clotilde Hesme, Portuguese actress Maria Joáo Bastos, Portuguese actor and director José Afonso Pimentel and Portuguese actor Ricardo Pereira. An accomplished cinematic achievement and a masterful mystery which gained, among other awards, the Silver Seashell Award for Best Director Raúl Ruiz at the 58th San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2010 and the TFCA Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 15th Toronto Film Critics Association Awards in 2011.

Mistérios de Lisboa is shown in the United States with the title Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). The film is directed by the extraordinary Chilean director, Raoul Ruiz. Ruiz, who died in 2011, had directed 115 films. (Not a typo--one hundred and fifteen.)The film is based on a novel by the Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco. (Unfortunately, the novel isn't available in English translation.) It's also frustrating that the DVD available in the U.S. is a shortened version of the original miniseries. (266 minutes vs. 360 minutes. What was left out of the shorter version?)The film is hard to describe because there are stories within stories within stories. The basic plot--more or less--revolves around a boy attending a Catholic school in early 19th Century Portugal. The boy doesn't know the identity of his mother and father. He doesn't even know his last name. We eventually meet his mother, her husband, and--in flashback--his father. We also meet elegant women in sumptuous gowns, men for whom dueling is a way of life, and endless numbers of servants who are always watching and listening.Some mysteries are never resolved. For example, there's a young woman who is the mistress of one of the nobles. When he dies, she refuses to accept any of his inheritance. She turns up again as the wife of an extremely wealthy, cruel man. Then she disappears from the plot. (Was her story edited out, or did she just disappear?)Ultimately, I think the key to the plot is the priest Padre Dinis, played extremely well by Adriano Luz. He--like almost all of the the characters--turns out to have a surprising past.Other IMDb reviewers have commented on the costumes, which are incredibly attractive. Two main characters who appear in those costumes are Maria João Bastos as a Portuguese noblewoman and Clotilde Hesme as a French noblewoman. Both of them are extremely beautiful in a European, non-Hollywood way. They appear to have been born to wear those costumes.At the very end of the movie the young man, now grown, encounters some beggars. One of them tells him, "With the nobility, it's all about their honor. We poor people know these things happen, and we take them as part of life." When I thought about it, those sentences encompasses Mysteries of Lisbon. Nobles fight duels and spend endless effort and resources to protect the honor of their family. One man goes so far as to order the killing of his grandchild, because the child is born out of wedlock. Huge events are taking place around them--the Napoleonic wars, the Portuguese civil war--but what really matters is their rigid code of honor.We saw this movie on DVD, and it worked well enough. However, almost every frame of the film would be a beautiful still. Many scenes look like lush paintings--Baroque, rather than 19th Century. That's why I believe the film would work better on the large screen. However, if no screening is available, buy the DVD. It's not a movie you want to miss!

MYSTERIES OF LISBON is a staggeringly immense epic, weaving together multiple narratives of operatic passion and desire into a broader memory-narrative patchwork. The late Raul Ruiz draws upon great predecessors to set the visual tone (there's plenty of Visconti's THE LEOPARD and Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON here), but then toys with the aesthetic by adding playfully surreal touches, so that the events seem perched on the edge of a dream. By design, it's all a bit messy, one narrative tumbling into the other, but Ruiz displays such complete mastery of the medium that MYSTERIES OF LISBON remains gripping, even over the course of its four-hour running time.The word "masterpiece" is fairly overused, and as a result, devalued, but MYSTERIES OF LISBON is the real thing.

When Raoul Ruiz adapts existing material, he tends to reconfigure the narrative in a playful way, often obliterating all coherence in the process. In his writings on film, specifically Poetics of Cinema, he is quite critical of what he calls central conflict theory. The idea behind this theory is that narrative, especially film narrative, must be built around a single conflict and that every aspect of the plot must build on this conflict one way or another. Ruiz noticed this phenomenon and gave it a name, but it was so common that popular screen writing guides used it as an incontrovertible rule. Poetics of Cinema is devoted almost entirely to explaining and criticizing central conflict theory. Ruiz was never content merely to criticize this simplistic yet ubiquitous narrative structure in writing, however; commentary on it is often embedded in the films he makes. Unsurprisingly, his films intentionally eschew anything resembling this structure but they tend to go even further and offer playful deconstructions of the concept. Although I can't claim much familiarity with the novel Ruiz is adapting in Mysteries of Lisbon (it apparently hasn't been translated to English yet) it undoubtedly lends itself especially well to his ludic, subversive style. Rather than follow the conflict of a single continuous narrative, Mysteries of Lisbon explores several interrelated narrative strands that complement one another unusually well as they're full of cases of important coincidental relationships and frustrated love affairs. Thus, Ruiz has less to subvert and more to emphasize. Ruiz's visual style has always been highly unusual. He favors the frequent use of Dutch angles and he often creates startling juxtapositions with his unusual framing techniques and occasional superimpositions. While these unusual techniques are always welcome, they can become somewhat exhausting when they occur frequently. Since Mysteries of Lisbon is unusually long (the version I watched was around 260 minutes) it's perhaps unsurprising that Ruiz manages to space these out carefully enough to draw attention to all the right places and break up the monotony of the more conventional period piece style he favors in this film. Even at its least inspired, however, Mysteries of Lisbon offers far more visual stimulation than the stuffy fidelity of a film by Merchant and Ivory or Oscar fodder such as The King's Speech. Unlike most directors working with similar material, Ruiz captures vast landscapes and baroque interiors with the same effortless mastery. Even the frequent long takes are made more interesting by carefully employed tracking shots. Mysteries of Lisbon represents the rare combination of a director at the top of his game working with material perfectly suited for his unique sensibilities. Cinema doesn't get much better than this.