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 When David Lynch calls a film "simultaneously horrific, erotic and funny," and master surrealist Luis Buñuel says that it is "exceptional," you know it's probably not an easy watch. Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, along with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, helped to finance a new print of the film, that's how much they love it.
First released in December 1966, The Saragossa Manuscript is a mind-bending adaptation of some of Jan Potocki's equally difficult eighteenth-century novel. The complex narrative weaves together a group of tales set in Spain, where more characters than you can keep track of stagger (or sometimes caper) through wildly clashing movie genres: the gothic, the historical, the satirical. There is very little warning when the film abruptly delivers you from one storyline to the other. Isn't it great when a film makes you think?
Polish director Wojciech Has delivers a film that was always destined to be a cult favourite, but does anyone really want to watch it? In a similar way to claiming knowledge of Tristram Shandy, or some of Dickens' longer, drier novels, the love for this film that many famous filmmakers attest to suggest that it's always going to have a small, select audience. It's a filmmaker's film. Clocking in at 180 minutes of dreamlike, circuitous storytelling as the characters become entranced by the manuscript of the title, it really was too much for this reviewer. There's a much more positive review over at Bright Lights Film Journal , though. Perhaps you should try it and prove me wrong...
The Saragossa Manuscript is released on DVD on 7th April.
To contact the author: suchandrika@netribution.co.uk
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