The hallucinatory, poetic visuals of Raoul Ruiz's Three Crowns of the Sailor slowly unfurl the contours of the chilling story that a sailor (Jean-Bernard Guillard) tells to a fellow nighttime wanderer (Philippe Deplanche) over the course of an evening of drunken conversation. As befits this boozy storytelling, the film is continually adrift, its narrative as hazy as Ruiz's sun-drenched visuals, which bathe the film in bright, brilliant sun glare that obscures more than it illuminates. The fractured narrative conspires with this gauzy aesthetic, and with Ruiz's self-consciously quirky sense of camera placement, in order to thoroughly destabilize the viewer. There is no steady mooring, and the viewer quickly becomes as lost as the man who is hearing this story. Over the course of the film, as the sailor describes his adventures aboard a mysterious vessel, the story's outline and purpose become clearer, evoking various seafaring legends while leading towards a final moment of recognition that's narratively satisfying but somewhat beside the point. This fractured story is, at most, a foundation for Ruiz, who uses the sailor's tale of woe primarily as an excuse for his dazzling flights of visual imagination. 
Monday, December 8, 2008
Films I Love #10: Three Crowns of the Sailor (Raoul Ruiz, 1983)
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5 comments:
Whoa...I've never even heard of this...a rare occurrence! Great pics though. I'll have to check this out.
Ruiz is amazing, you should definitely give it a look. It's available on DVD here in region 1 (at the link above), and there's also a fine region 2 box set that also includes Ruiz's Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, another remarkable film, which takes a faux-documentary approach where an art historian weaves an insanely complicated story around a series of paintings. Ruiz is one of the overlooked greats, though he's better represented on DVD now than he was even a few years ago.
I pretty much came to post exactly what James already did above, so now what do I do?
Hell, I'll just reiterate it...Beautiful screencaps. I've never heard of the film (though I've heard of Ruiz), but I absolutely want to see this now. I particularly like that tilted view of the horizon from the ship. Kinda got a bit seasick just looking at that frame...
Just browsing through IMDB and I noticed Ruiz did "Klimt" (2006). I keep picking that up in my rental store and then putting it back down.
Any opinions?
Nice, I hope lots more people check out this film. Bob, there's a real woozy, hallucinatory vibe to this film in general, and the rocking of the boat (and sea shanty music) is a big part of that.
I have not seen Klimt, though I've heard that it's very strange and sort of an atypical Ruiz -- though considering the breadth of his work and how little is available on DVD, it's not altogether clear what a "typical" Ruiz film might be. I'd highly recommend that anyone who has not seen any Ruiz before start with this film, Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, and the macabre, charming Ce jour-la (AKA That Day), all of which are readily available on R1 DVD.
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