Last night, we went to see the last film of one of my favorite directors, the Chilean Raoul Ruiz. The film, "The Night Across the Street" was the last film he made before he died recently, and has just been released. It was a snowy and stormy night, this month's "Storm of the Century", and the Mayor told everyone to stay home. So we went; the subways were practically empty, but running smoothly. There were two other people in the theater. Ruiz's films have a unique quality which is almost impossible to describe; a kind of shaggy-dog, poetic surrealism which can be at times breathtakingly beautiful, inscrutable, and bizarrely funny. "The Night Across the Street" is a non-narrative cinematic poem which centers around an aging poet and his earlier childhood self. As a child, he freely converses with his heroes, Beethoven and Long John Silver. At one point, he takes Beethoven to the movies. The movie floats freely backwards and forwards in time. The music is truly wonderful; Ruiz's frequent musical collaborator, Jorge Arriada, is a master of orchestral textures and sounds. While the film has its slow points, I have a strong feeling that it is some kind of cinema/poem/musical masterpiece.
When we got out of our dream state experience, there was New York, transformed into a glorious blizzard state, with lights and blowing snow and the distinct quiet that emerges in New York during the snow.
A seance, with Long John Silver on the left, and Beethoven on the right.
