Dir. Raoul Ruiz
Nobody can say why
you go chasing a pirate down
the street but such a
state of affairs makes possible
a certain number of
anxiety dreams. Was it the pirate,
you ask yourself, or
was it the paranoia?
from 'When the
privateers returned from their pillage' by Steve Spence
There is no Johnny Depp in eyeliner complaining about why the run's gone in City of Pirates, a film by the late
Chilean director Raoul Ruiz, a film
made to be intentionally difficult to gain cohesiveness over, nor are there
galleons or people walking the plank. A pirate can denote something outside of
law and order, and honestly, it's too literal and tedious to immediately go to Depp when the idea of a place suggesting
pirates is far more mysterious and befitting this film's dreamlike structure. Many viewers will complain that there are no
actual pirates in the film, nor cities of any kind, dismissing the allegorical
versions offered. Personally I wasn't disappointed, the lights that seasonally
brighten up on a bush in a character's "Garden of Allegory"
representing the ones readied for a war between pirates and the country of
Spain, but some may be taken aback by the fact that this never becomes
important for an overall narrative, merely detail in a world to add character,
and that one should be concerned for the battle on this plant when its
discovered Spain has lost.
I admit to finding the film a
struggle to sit through in the beginning, but in dealing with the film, the
issue of what I brought to it in terms of residue biases is part of the subject
itself. Isidore (Anne Alvaro) comes
into contact with Malo (Melvil Poupaud),
a young boy who is in fact a killer, descending into a non linear trip that
includes murder and an island where a man Toby (Hugues Quester), owner of the Garden of Allegories, has an entire
family living in his head. It felt too close to the stereotype of pretentious
art cinema originally. But befitting the film, either it was intentional, or
that I fully absorbed the tone of it, and avoided forcing my own subconscious
tagging by narrative cinema onto it.That Ruiz partially improvised the film,
creating dialogue just before shooting scenes, was a dicey thing to do, in
terms of how it would affect the tone of the work, and I'm still at the stage
as a viewer, while falling in love with City
of Pirates by the end, that the opening quarter of difficult films like
this can frustrate me until I acclimatise to them. I've only seen four of
Ruiz's films and one short, from a man who made over a hundred films, shorts
and television work. As well as difficulty in actually seeing his films,
including this one, sadly you can have critical writing be very vague when it
comes to the maze-like nature of his work - like the key needed to unlock the
mystery in the centre of his The Hypothesis
of the Stolen Painting (1979), the description needed to entice you into
Ruiz's world, rather than make it sound like obtuse navel gazing that'll put
the casual viewer off being curious, is usually missing.
Yes, many viewers will find City of Pirates' completely disinterest
with linear cohesiveness frustrating and dismiss it, but the film is far from
obtuse. Again for a second review in a row I can reference Un Chien Andalou (1929),
and how it was made with every rational idea purposely excised from the
finished work. With City of Pirates,
anything that connected together the content in terms of a narrative was removed
during the editing process. Ruiz, and I dare stake this claim, in a film set by
the ocean as depicted in lush almost candy-like colours - hazy burnt pinks,
oceanic blues, blistering oranges - despite seeing little of his work, is an
individual who suits the metaphor of the Chinese boxes well. Even if the
conclusion is there by the end, the greater significance is that the route
through the films seem to be continually expanding as you go along, and
altering into more and more tangents as they go. Like the following too:
As a film, any plot for it boils
down to the protagonist tagging along with the child as his "fiancée",
after he (or likely she) has murdered her adopting father, only to be pushed
into an increasing sense that she herself is hiding a more homicidal person
within her. What the draw of the film is, the greater importance clearly, is
how this is represented. It's worth remembering too that City of Pirates is a film that's playful in tone. A lot of my
problems with the film disappear when the adoptive father leaves quite
violently, in an unintentional shift in tone, or possibly on purpose. The
beginning of the film is jarring against conventional norms of narrative cinema.
A sentient white ball that bounces by itself, the mother talking to the dead,
random appearance by policemen, and the one unfortunate aspect that was either
Ruiz intentionally mocking pretence or something that flaws the film a little,
the use of actors quoting very descriptive poetry. I'm not a fan of poetry
where elaborate vocabulary for whole verses is common, rather than use of
metaphors, grounded yet imaginative verse, or completely visionary or
intentionally nonsensical wording choices. There is still the poetry in the
rest of the film, usually in duelling voiceover, debating existence and life,
but it's not as problematic. That the more irritating aspects of the dialogue
were all quoted by the father, who is continually offering his adoptive
daughter/live-in maid money as if soliciting sex behind his wife's back, it is
the possibility that its intentional.
It becomes clearer than mood and
fluxations of it drives City of Pirates,
and what appears to be slight and close to pretentious drastically changes if
one remembers what their dreams are like. Far from a cheap defence, it's a
remainder to reconsider the context for viewing a film like this then the
critical opinion. Dreams can have narratives, but they also dispense of any
'rationality' and inherently disregard notions of storytelling which required a
1-2-3 creation of characters and story. In this context, the film works
perfectly. After a beginning stumble, it works as an increasingly darkening
dream. One that is clearly humorous. One that has black humour and purely
unconventional images. The most distinct, in the beginning, is the camera from
inside the father's mouth, looking out between the teeth at his wife inspecting
them.
 |
| City of Pirates |
Instantly with this image, you
should realise this is a deliberately absurd work. Especially if you use an
example not from the film like this to emphasis the absurd camera shot -
 |
| Justin Quinnell's Smiley Cam Research Project |
Large portions of the film are
like this. The protagonist lost amongst a potential lover who offers her
everything from radios to food, to Toby himself, where the mother of the family
inside his head never heard from but only heard of from the other individuals
juggled about from his consciousness. Surrounding this Ruiz is technically
accomplished at making the shots seen have a distinction and a logical,
tangible frame to house these illogical aspects. In dreams, the depth is gained
from the resonance of the images and the events, not the background behind
them. The meaning and emotions felt are already there for you beforehand as, in
deep sleep or day dreaming, you are pulled away from the necessity of having a
rationality to all that you encounter or sense. The difficultly one may have in
trying to gauge with 'difficult' films, books and such materials could easily,
possibly, maybe, be removed if you could go through them as one would encounter
dreams in sleep. Maybe even the poetry I had a bugbear with may have made more
sense in the film's place if I could have fully embraced the film in a resting
state fully open to its content. The film's too deliberate in tone to be merely
random, even if partially improvised, and the film's technical brilliance means
that obvious motifs can exist which string together.
It's darker content reveals
itself to be a fully darkened core to the work rather than mere shades to it. I
can laugh and include the ridiculous juxtaposition of images just before, but parallel
as well in City of Pirates is an incredibly
uneasy film while still being tongue-in-cheek and playful. Nasty in its
violence, the boy floating paper boats made of money in a river of a man's
freshly split blood. Almost Italian giallo in its use of knives and blood
spillage:
 |
| City of Pirates |
 |
| Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975) |
With Toby, despite a friendship
taking place, his treatment of Isidore at first, locking her up in a prison
cell, is immensely unsettling. When its changed into a friendly relationship, it's
not a jarring and offensive shift. In dreams, opposites can sleep so much
closer together while in the everyday the idea of them moving into being
different and one-and-the-same equally is disturbing. The same applies to Malo,
the killer boy, sarcastic but with the halo of a cherub. No wonder, when actor Poupaud grew up, you'd want to hug him
in François Ozon's Time To Leave (2005). But the boy is also a serial
murderer and rapist. Later he takes on the status of a deity for murder, more
of an entity. (Alarmingly Ruiz makes
one of his names Peter Pan.) The
childish innocence of the tone - pirates, bright colours - is hiding a tragic
tale. A woman who lost romance, as she explains her backstory, and, in the
symbolism, may be a killer as well. The film is open to interpretation. You can
argue she's a mass murderer. Argue, with a shot of a man's face reflecting at
her in a mirror, that it's the guilty of a man by proxy of his anima. That
everyone's dead and this is purgatory as viewed as a coastal paradise of hazy,
post-shooting highlighted, eighties colour coding. It's a not a cheat, a con,
for Ruiz not to answer this, to be
intentionally vague. His job here clearly was to make a waking dream. Dreams
inherently have each viewer/listener of them making their own interpretations
of what they mean.
There's always been a paradox in
that, structurally, cinema is of audio and visual content. Even when either is
removed, the lack of either and the sense of this takes up the gap left. However,
the paradox, is that narrative is seen as more necessary within films. Narrative
is not inherently of cinema, especially as editing, or lack thereof, is more of
the connection of images in new meanings. Dreams are of the same idea. (So,
fittingly, Sergei Eisenstein and Salvador Dali can exist in the same club
house). Even if a narrative exists, like you wakes up naked in class on the day
of an exam you haven't prepared for, my own experiences in dreaming have shown
that the sensation of progression, through events, is more dictated by the
effect of what happens than a story with a beginning, a middle and an end being
shown. How narrative got to be the main priority in cinema is probably the
result of theatre and novels influencing the material filmed, through either
can remove it from themselves as well. Unfortunately, this means City of Pirates is seen as experimental
because it negates the importance of narrative cohesion. My difficultly with
the film at first is as much a subliminal printing of all the Hollywood films
we see as children. This is important as I had difficulty writing this review -
asking why I suddenly loved the film halfway through, when my mind originally
was numb through the first quarter, and what I got from it when I loved viewing
it. Sensations. The sense of dread, curiosity, wonder. The last image has stuck
with me. Two women talking by a window. A man with a rotting face points a gun
at the side of his skull. The women become skeletons even though without
ligaments, muscle, a tongue or a vocal box they couldn't talk. Death. Unease.
A woman lost without love who'd
likely slit her adopted father's throat for a lark and deep seated revenge
against him. Her adopted mother doesn't care about the various murders, and
still loves her. Death still existing from a child, completely against the
notion of childhood innocence. Fittingly comparable to the last film I reviewed
here - The Strange Colour of Your Body's
Tears (2013). I know too Ruiz was
an exile from Chile when it became a dictatorship. When Isidore is imprisoned,
was that on his mind? Yet he's still playful. A white ball, clearly on a string
above, being spun around the mother's head as if possessed by the dead feels
too whimsical on purpose to be a fault tonally. There is no need for Ruiz to have to divide this from the
serious side of the film, as the viewer should themselves and the film is
structured so these abrupt parings make sense together. The conscious structure
of these irrational pieces was ignored by me at first, which I regret when I
finally noticed and understood them. Rather than hold one's hand, the film lets
you feel when you react to individually in seeing said images. With this film
in particular, it emphasises for me the absurdity of letting narrative being a
driving force when images and sound are the more important factors for a film.
That, and as taking its cues from dreams, it already possesses a cohesiveness,
but that cohesive structure belongs from something, dreaming, where the
rational to have something explain all of itself to you, rather than take from
it what you can, is literally asleep and not allowed to be involved in
experiencing the dreams. With City of
Pirates the point is to experience the sense of dreaming it. The try and
make a narrative out of it makes little sense to do and is patronising to it
and yourself.
========
Images, in order, from the following sources:
1. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zlc81EWkeDU/TKedkC6nJdI/AAAAAAAABFU/jyKLN328ND0/s1600/vlcsnap-2010-10-02-15h55m18s148.png
2. http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7813/ruiz5qu7.jpg
3. http://www.utopia-britannica.org.uk/Assets/maze.jpg
4. http://dcairns.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/vlcsnap-197666.png
5. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/
-bbwrZ9IoKEA/TzLR1daBeII/AAAAAAAAAC0/wm_XH2UcfZU/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-02-08+at+11.08.56+AM.png
6. http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image11/cityofpirates06.jpg
7. http://cdn.filmschoolrejects.com/images/deep-red.jpg
8. http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/post_images/6403/city%20of%20pirates.png?1314026129
9. http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/cityofpirates-window-red2.jpg
