o ano da morte de ricardo reis (the year of the death of ricardo reis) (w&d joão botelho)

Botelho’s ode to Pessoa is beautifully filmed and lugubrious in its storytelling. This is a film of a book about the alibi of a poet. Saramago wrote the novel, and Ricardo Reis was a nom de plume of Fernando Pessoa. Ricardo Reis is a doctor-poet is returning to Lisbon from Brazil, where he has been fifteen years in exile. He returns to a country which is under fascist rule, with the Spanish Civil War raging across the border. For those of us who are not aficionados of either Pessoa or Saramago, much of the political context remains obscure. Reis attends a fascist rally but he is suspected of being a subversive. The police raid his home, only they are part of a movie. The film drifts through the love affairs and melancholia of Reis’s return to a wintery Lisbon. The majestic lighting and cinematography, with its perfect shadow play, means the film is constantly watchable, in spite of the longeurs.