7.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Mysteries of Lisbon plunges us into a veritable whirlwind of adventures and escapades, coincidences and revelations, sentiments and violent passions, vengeance, love affairs, all wrapped in a rhapsodic voyage that takes us from Portugal to France, Italy, and as far as Brazil. In this Lisbon of intrigue and hidden identities, we encounter a series of characters all somewhat linked to the destiny of Pedro da Silva, orphan in a boarding school. Father Dinis, a descendent of the aristocratic libertines, later becomes a hero who defends justice, a countess maddened by her jealousy and set on her vengeance, a prosperous businessman who had mysteriously made his fortune as a bloodthirsty pirate; these and many more all cross in a story set in the 19th century and all searching for the true identity of our main character.
Starring: Adriano Luz, Maria João Bastos, Ricardo Pereira, Clotilde Hesme, Afonso PimentelForeign | 100% |
Drama | 82% |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.95:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Portuguese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48 kHz, 16-bit)
Portuguese: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Info taken from audio track found on disc, equipment/software shows 48kHz 16-bit when playing the DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio track
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
If Charles Dickens were alive today, there’s little doubt he’d be churning out television miniseries with a novelistic flair
rather than “wasting” his time on the passé idiom of the actual novel. In fact, a cursory look at but a couple vestiges of
the
miniseries genre, PBS’ Great Performances and Masterpiece Theater, finds a slew of Dickens adaptations
stretching back decades. It
seems we can’t go more than year or two without a new Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Bleak House or any
number of other iconic Dickens masterpieces. What makes Dickens’ oeuvre so seemingly perfectly adaptable for
screens, both large and small? Well, first of all, Dickens had the extraordinary ability to introduce a veritable gaggle of
idiosyncratic characters, develop a spider’s web of interconnectedness between them, and then let various plots play
out which might highlight any given character for an individual story arc. Dickens almost always had the gimmick of
having a relatively minor character introduced on, say, Page 47, return in the novel’s final moments to play a central
role, something that actually might be easier to immediately grasp when portrayed rather than when read, especially if
the casting is exceptional and that “bit role” has an actor who is memorable. There was also a certain none too subtle
subtext in several of Dickens’ works which posited a hopeful future for those born into (or at least raised in) the lower
classes, as Dickens loved to create denouements where underlings discovered they were actually better off than they
had ever imagined as a novel drew to its close. That was a populist approach that no doubt played to the erstwhile
dreams of Dickens’ large, probably mostly proletariat, audience back in his era, but which still retains a certain luster for
even middle class audiences today. And of course probably no other author of his time captured London in all its gritty,
class conscious “glamour” than Dickens.
Remove that “ond” from the middle of London and replace it with “isb” and
think about someone like Dickens locating a story in Portugal’s capital city rather than England’s, and you have at least
a fair idea of what awaits you in the labyrinthine Mysteries of Lisbon, a production which—you guessed it—
began life as a six hour miniseries but has here been whittled down to a relatively more manageable four or so hours
for theatrical exhibition. The film version has had a fairly widely varied critical response, from outright raves to sort of
middling appreciation to “what were they thinking?” incredulity, but there’s still a good chance it will be receiving at
least a couple of technical Oscar nominations in a couple of weeks, as it's being widely touted for its production design,
costumes, score and cinematography. Mysteries of Lisbon is a deliberately
slow, even languid, film that takes its time introducing a Dickensian gaggle of characters, including an Oliver Twist-
esque foundling who’s at the center of at least the first part of the story, and the film undeniably takes a certain
requisite amount of patience on the part of audiences to repay their required investment of time.
Mysteries of Lisbon is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.95:1. This feature was shot digitally and obviously has undergone some fairly radical color timing, in fact desaturization, in post. As such, a lot of the time, the palette is intentionally subdued, creating a beautiful chiaroscuro look which verges on the monochromatic at times. The image here is sharp, although Ruiz loves to shoot in mist and fog or through veils, giving the film an ethereal, gauzy quality that may be mistaken for softness. There are a couple of artifacting issues present in this transfer, probably the most noticeable of which is persistent crush. So much of this film plays out in shadows, as if Ruiz were giving us a visual analog of a dream state, that shadow detail is more important than usual, and it suffers somewhat here, no doubt due to the post color timing, which has drained some of the gray scale out of the image. There is also transitory banding in some of the misty shots. Otherwise, though, this is a spectacular looking transfer within the intentional confines of what Ruiz and his DP André Szankowski were attempting to achieve.
Mysteries of Lisbon's original Portuguese language track is offered here in both lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 formats. Truth be told, there isn't a whale of a lot of difference between these tracks, for the bulk of this film is really spent in quiet— some would almost argue hushed—dialogue scenes with little chance for boisterous immersion. The 5.1 track does occasionally provide the discrete ambient environmental effect, but this is a resolutely front and center anchored soundtrack. The one exception is Jorge Arriagada's haunting score, which is in fact significantly opened up in the 5.1 track. All of this said, both tracks feature sterling fidelity, with dialogue well and cleanly presented, and dialogue, effects and music extremely well prioritized. There are some very minor, yet quite effective, bursts of LFE on the soundtrack courtesy of such effects as gunshots.
If you're a regular Art House denizen, you'll no doubt have an easier time relaxing into Mysteries of Lisbon's slow, steady pace than if you only frequent cinemas to see the latest summer blockbuster. This is an extremely introspective, meditative film that is akin to staring into a languid pool. At first it seems like nothing is happening, but the more you gaze, the more you start to see the submerged activity bustling just beneath the surface. This release might have been a bit better had the original miniseries version been included for comparison's sake, but this cut is extremely evocative and haunting. With overall superior video and audio quality, and some good supplements, Mysteries of Lisbon comes Highly recommended.
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