Life is a Manuscript - Let Others Add to It

I believe anyone can write a movie review, and I do not say it in any condescending way. I myself am "anyone", since I was never trained in that field. Training, however, isn't always a must, at least not just from some official authority; but that's a different story. Yet it takes me to my next idea, which is that I've seen (read) professional film critics totally disregarding an uncommon, peculiar film simply because they were too bored with their jobs. And as much as that is a cliche, it is also a truth. It happens to the best of us. 

That is why sometimes the opinion of a friend, the recommendation of a viewer, or even your own intuition can be a much better guide to finding good movies. Anyone can learn how to spot a great movie, and you can do it as well. I wouldn't say this only to justify my own decision to write movie reviews, but the film I want to talk about today falls into the category of pieces of art that have been met with contempt, too; what's more, I'd like to think that what you are about to read is not a simple classic movie review, but an insight and analysis of one of the most intriguing - to say the least - creations you will meet in this life.

Some Background

The Saragossa Manuscript is a 1965 film by Polish director Wojciech Has, whose career is as tantalizing as are the movie and the novel upon which it is based. What I find immensely interesting about this film is that the story surrounding it, is much like an onion, and thus analogous to the narratives presented in the book and film, with all their layering stories and intertwining connections, elusive yet recurring characters, and surrounded by an aura of mystery that only real life can beget - not beliefs in the supernatural, though they may be involved here. Sadly, I haven't read the novel (it's on the bucket list!), titled The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and written by the picturesque and Polish Renaissance man Count Jan Potocki, some time at the end of the 18th century. Although you can find this information on the Web, I have to mention the novel was originally written in French (these noblemen, eh!?), and the story of the actual manuscript of the text and its road to print, with its translation into Polish and other languages, with the incredible efforts that some interested fellows undertook to recompose it decades later, is as compelling as the story of the film, which suffered a similar route. For those interested in more about the book's journey to the surface, you can give a quick read about The Manuscript Found in Saragossa on Wikipedia, but I'm sure you can find better sources as well, or do one even better and get your hands on a copy of the book itself.

As for The Saragossa Manuscript, it became visible to the European and American public over a decade late. Part of Communist-ruled Eastern Europe got to see a censored version of it, shortened from the original 180 minutes, but it was still well received both by critics and the public. Poland, where it was filmed and first released, saw the uncut version and from then on, the film managed to stay in the memory of some, then became available in the U.S. in the 1970s, and gained its fame as one of the cult classic movies (to do!), when Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead), Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola expressed a joint interest in it and actually invested in its recovery and reconstruction to an original, better quality piece. This was happening in the 1990s, but nowadays you can find it in a DVD format that is quite satisfying visually. In my opinion however, if you watch a film for the graphics and high definition effects, then you might not enjoy a movie like The Saragossa Manuscript, because this is the kind of thing that bombards you in other senses.

How to Approach a Classic Film

Indeed, because it is a movie, it's nothing if not visual, but here one must appreciate the originality and shocking composition (I use the term “shocking” in a more clinical sense, in that it arouses the senses and, for those who pay attention, gets the wheels in motion). Wojciech Has is as much a painter and composer as he is a director. I have read other reviews of his movie commenting on the fact that directors like Has (and Jodorovski, whom we will explore some other time), don’t know when to censor themselves and cut back on the “inspiration”. That is of course a relatively valid point of view, but I also argue for the one which says artistic expression should be limitless. Did someone ever complain that artists like Picasso painted obsessively over the same theme, the same image, the same idea and composition? If so, they must have been met with a lot of negativity – not in the least because Picasso’s repetitiveness only meant more originals for each individual art collector. The same applies to film, I think.

Speaking of repetitiveness, if you enjoy stories within stories, then you should give this film a try. I will say from the start that you must be the kind of person who is sadistically attracted to unnerving and mind-numbing works, be they written, painted, composed, or shot. You should also be the kind of person who enjoys old classic movies and offers them the patience they would a book It is not an exaggeration to say the film requires (and deserves) several viewings; take your time, you can see it now, and a second time months, or a year later. In my case, the first viewing left me exhausted and rather confused, so I didn’t go back to it for quite a while. Yet somehow it stuck with me, always nagging at the back of my head, tugging to ask for an explanation. We had to get reconciled.

A second viewing is always less impressive. But that’s what makes it a different type of distraction, because on a cold viewing, you get to observe something at its true value, and, obviously, notice details you didn't before. With The Saragossa Manuscript, there are a lot of details to take in, but I say you can still enjoy it by noticing the basic ones. Visually, I would compare it with Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, which is an enormous and overwhelming painting displayed at the Rijksmusem in Amsterdam, and which I had the frightful pleasure of admiring in person. Measuring some 4x4 meters, the painting is filled with details and clues, and for art dilettantes like me, it can become a palatable game to read the painting’s story and discover symbols the Dutch painter placed in there with his crafted poetic genius.

Three for Three

Rembrandt’s painting is known for three key elements: the use of light and shadow (see chiaroscuro), its enormous size, and its strangely lifelike and “moving” atmosphere. The Saragossa Manuscript was shot in black and white (though color film had been long invented, mind you), and you are visually forced to accept two (non)colors while the story is so confusingly ambiguous; it does have an “enormous” length, and if anything is more lifelike than a hallucination-of-a-film experience, I must have seen the wrong movie. Looks like it’s a three-for-three after all, which is a little game I just invented, where I can prove that any great work of art has three things that make it indisputably great, and which can be identical to those of another random work.

In the present comparison case, I could even go further if I wanted to ruin the fateful number, such as adding that the works rest on a common theme as well, which is the army; except the movie is rather like a series of paintings, so it incorporates other themes as well - witchcraft and the Inquisition, mind games, religion, tradition, humor and humiliation, etc. The Saragossa Manuscript is only set within a military context, as its main character, Spanish officer Alphonso van Worden, starts off as a somewhat cowardly military man retreating at a (seemingly) deserted inn during the Napoleonic Wars; but what happens after that is a carousel of stories that begin with his finding this manuscript, not surprising, though totally randomly – just like in a dream –, written by one of his ancestors, Alfonso van Worden, and which told of the latter's adventures in the land, centuries before. The land, as I’m sure you’ve realized so far, was the city of Saragossa, or Zaragoza, in Spain.

The movie is filled with humorous, though sometimes bitter chunks, but the stories you will see include a teasing encounter with two beautiful Moorish princesses claiming to be his cousins, which ends with our hero waking up next to two corpses hanging on a gallows - just like those he had seen painted in his grandfather’s manuscript; a very strange meeting with a hermit priest, a near-death encounter with the Inquisition, a chaotically brave rescue by his deceitful Islamic cousins, interaction with a Cabbalist, a band of Gypsies, the gallows again and again, until it all comes to a rather familiar end. Same, but different; however, I don’t want to spoil anything more, and recycling a summary is something any good parrot can do.

As you may have gathered, this is in all respects an adult film, which is why I think not many can digest it; as an adult, you learn to make commitments to things that are worth it. Tilting your head back for at least half an hour to admire a Rembrandt can start to ache a bit, but it never fails to satisfy. You are left with an immense reward, and even though you may not understand everything that you have seen, you are convinced that you’ve witnessed something wonderful.

Polish my Acting

Actor Zbigniew Cibulski handles the main part with ease, playing in an affected yet strangely current and relatable manner. He has a will, but is never given the chance to use it, because the rules are never explained, and just like in John Fowles' novel, The Magus (curiously enough, published the same year as The Saragossa Manuscript was launched in Poland), the character never gets to find out whether they actually played a game or it was just a dream - in all fairness, hallucinogenic substances are involved in both cases. That's two for two. To go on, both the film and the novel involve another character who is interested in the occult and loves playing mind games, so there you have it: three-for-three.

Don't worry, I can nitpick at the fateful number this time as well: both Fowles' character, Nicholas Urfe, and Potocki's officer, van Worden, are haunted by beautiful women whom they believe to be ghosts at some point; both are stricken by hallucinatory visions, and victimized by a history that was presumably lived by others (in van Worden's case, by his grandfather, and in Urfe's case, by his tormentor, Greek godgamer Maurice Conchis, with his tales of WW2). In The Saragossa Manuscript - and originally the novel -, themes like God and religion are important, whereas in The Magus, Conchis is the one who loves to obscenely toy with the idea of being God.

As a side note, I don't really recommend the film adaptation of The Magus, even though it features Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn - while the acting effort is there, the directing, production, and other details lack in cohesion. It has gained a small cult following in the last couple of decades however, so if you'd like to scour farther corners on the map of cinematography, it will not have been too much of a waste of time.  I will dedicate a later article to what adaptation is and the different approaches from text to film, as I've learned them from others, and there we'll see that novel-to-film adaptation can be refreshing, and just as likely to disappoint at the same time.

Drafting Conclusions

Perhaps the point I am trying to make with these comparisons is not only that great minds reach the same conclusions (or lack thereof), but that each of us have a mind that can forge these links and thus find satisfaction in tying knots in a world of randomness and stories within stories that don't always offer a reassuring conclusion or explanation; in connecting dots even if there aren't any justifiable ones, and yet precisely thus finding some meaning that makes our lives fuller. On that note, I hope I've also made it a bit clearer what I mean to say by movies versus people; the truth is, between the two, a lot more can occur than just a switch of action and reaction. And a true game, a "x versus y", is never about finding the winner, but about what was exchanged and what both parties gained in the end.

The Movie Buff's First Aid Kit

Director: Wojciech Has
Scriptwriter: Tadeusz Kwiatkowski
Writer (novel): Jan Potocki
Original music (soundtrack): Krzysztof Penderecki
Editing: Krystyna Komosinska
Cinematography: Mieczyslaw Jahoda

Alfonse van Worden - Zbigniew Cibulski

Resources:

• Imdb for Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie
• Wikipedia article for The Saragossa Manuscript
• Rotten Tomatoes, but mind that they list year of the DVD release for each film.
• Martin Scorsese Presents - this is an easy way into great Polish cinema.
• Wikipedia article for The Magus
• Wikipedia - The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn

To Boldly Go Where Others Have Been Before

Writing about your experience with the process of creating a blog would be one of the most futile endeavors by this point, were it not justified by the innate character of blogging, which encourages sharing personal thoughts, ideas and so on. As such, I too shall delve in the juicy subject of blogging, because my experience with creating a new blog was also accompanied by certain professional requirements that made me realize it's not enough to have good content in order to have a visited website.

Easy and Hard

From what I've gathered, creating a blog can be both easy and difficult; if you simply wish to have an outlet for your thoughts, a platform to share news or ideas with friends or acquaintances, then using the free blogging platforms available online should be more than satisfactory. If, however, you want the blog to be an important part of your life, and you want to write about something you are very passionate about, show your expertise on a subject, or even make a career out of it, then there are plenty options, and the task can become quite complicated. Self-hosted blogs are a much better choice for this category of people, because it allows them full control over all the aspects of the blog, from layout, to content, and even earnings.

Creating a common blog, on free platforms like Blogger, is straightforward and simple enough. Going through the setup process doesn't take long; what might get you stumbling is coming up with a title for your brand new blog; that is, if you haven't already made up your mind on the subjects you want to approach. But even so, it's important to come up with a simple, catchy, and preferably shorter title that people easily remember. Going with a pun, a play on words, or some other amusing title will make it more remarkable, thus increasing your chances of getting visitors even if they weren't initially interested in what you write about. In that respect, the title of my blog is neither amusing, nor very interesting, but it is short and catchy enough, so I think it's a good example.

A Step-Up

If it is important for you to make a career out of blogging, or increase your recognition, practice, services, or promote a product of yours, then there are several ways to take a blog seriously. These include utilizing the many tools that Google makes available (most of them free), and which help you manage your website or blog, allow you to track their evolution within the search engine, and even provide you with tips on how to avoid mistakes or improve certain aspects you may have ignored. Two of these tools are Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools; the first will help me monitor activity on the blog, allowing me to see the number of users or viewers on the website, what articles were most popular, and even what keywords were most successful in bringing traffic. As for Webmaster Tools, it is supposed to help me see how my blog is viewed by Google, and alert me if there are inconsistencies which can affect its performance in search engines.

This resumes my first serious experience with setting up a blog and creating content for it. I know that finding the right people or online communities to be interested in what you say or do is another important step for a successful blog, I'll have to focus on that as well. And who knows, perhaps my next post will actually be about movies and people, thus bringing me closer to refined, homogenous content and organic, positive rise in Google's search engine ranks.