04 APRIL 02: THE SARAGOSSA
MANUSCRIPT FINDS ITS IDEAL FORMAT
From LAWeekly:
The
Saragossa Manuscript
The scene-selection menu
has never been more useful than on the DVD for The Saragossa Manuscript
(1965), an Arabian Nightsstyle tale directed by Polish filmmaker Wojciech
Has. Here, the menu doesnt simply help you navigate the three-hour film,
its 44 chapter titles help make sense of a hypnotic, convoluted plot. Based
on a 17th-century novel by Jan Potocki, Saragossa Manuscript takes the
flashback to quantum extremes with stories told within stories told, in
turn, within other stories until were lost along looping tunnels of time
through what appears to be an infinitely expanding universe and a haunted
one, at that. After a brief framing prologue, in which soldiers discover
a dusty tome, we take up the travails of Alphonse van Worden (Zbigniew
Cybulski), a Spanish army captain whose journey to Madrid ends up on permanent
hold after two spellbinding Moorish princesses put the zap on him. Suddenly
unable to travel beyond the cragged mountains where he spent the night,
van Worden wanders a countryside populated by ghosts and littered with
spiritualist imagery. Skulls, mysterious rock formations, tarot-card tableaux
and cabalist signs surround him, all within Has fun-house framing. When
he finally finds refuge in a castle, a Gypsy chief opens the rabbit hole
of stories in which magic and mysticism play a role in every tale and every
tale holds a fatalistic clue to Wordens predicament if he can only sort
them out. The Saragossa Manuscript gained an unlikely countercultural following
in the 1970s as a good film for long trips. But while you may not need
drugs to enjoy it, you should still keep the remote handy so you can find
your way back. Paul Malcolm
