A young man begins pinning a narrative while in the throes of death (which you will never fully comprehend until the end of the film), and in so doing tells the tale of his parents and all the people whose lives were affected by their swift and tragic romance. It is told in the way that such tales might be told by an old man, like a river of thought, one story leading into the next, all cohesive, yet all out of joint, puzzle pieces. Like a puzzle, it is up to you, as the viewer, to put together something of a landscape of lives. There is no deep meaning to the picture, it is beauty, people, life. Each piece is a piece of time, a moment, a lurid little story, and as you receive them all, you piece them each together according to the characters and how each one affects the other. Not every detail is accurate, because this is a story as it is told, and not as it is occurring. Some people seem much more noble, or much more insidious perhaps, than they really are. These are people through the eyes of the teller of the tale, which is than being told to you by the one who heard it. Two of the characters, Alberto and Dinnis, have multiple identities, and seem to be the angel and the devil of the story, though their first-known and most common names are ironic, as is life. In fact, the story is a searing indictment of religion, as one commits suicide by spending the rest of their lives in a convent or as a monk. The nobility is hypocritical, and to live is to cheat on each other, and honor is simply what others think of you; pure honor is naivety and the naive are viciously thrown about as pawns. As the teller of these tales begins to deteriorate, the series of stories becomes more and more disjointed. In one final scene, he is visiting his mother's grave and meets his grandfather, who has become an impoverished beggar. The two of them have a bit of conversation, but never fully realize who the other one is. They depart, and both go off to die alone, the grandfather, perversely blind to all parts of the story save his own (he's literally blind too, after actually attempting suicide the dishonorable way... you know, literally attempting suicide). This is essentially a Victorian painting come to life, and when you know all the details, you know little other than, well, life's a bitch... and only the good die young.
Review of Mysteries of Lisbon
