Thrillingly inventive, wildly ambitious, and as urgent as it is playful, Miguel Gomes’s three-part epic adopts the structure of the classic One Thousand And One Nights to explore Portugal’s plunge into austerity. One of the most important films of the year, Arabian Nights was a major hit at Cannes.
A majestic, modern-day folk tale, the tragicomic trilogy from Portugal channels Gomes’s outrage at his country’s enduring economic crisis into an exhilarating fresco of contemporary life, narrated by a winsome modern-day Scheherazade in a series of tales of woe and wonder.
Volume 3 brings Gomes’s breathtaking epic to a close, with the emergence of Scheherazade in resplendent physical form. A lush costume spectacle filled with delightful anachronisms, The Enchanted One sees Scheherazade launch into her final tale of a community of bewitched, working-class bird-trappers. The most literary and ethnographic of the three films, The Enchanted One transitions from theatrical, Pasolini-influenced stylings to studied, documentary observation, while offering a sly commentary on storytelling and its central role in our lives.
Wilfully sprawling and gently intimate, Gomes’s opus – like the classic Arabian Nights tales it evokes – is both of its time and forever enduring. An unmissable cinematic event, Arabian Nights is best viewed in succession and in its entirety.
– Andrea Picard, Toronto International Film Festival
Volume 1: The Restless One screens February 16 & 17
Volume 2: The Desolate One comes to the ByTowne February 24 & 25.
ByTowne members can buy a ticket for all three films for $18.
