175 - Arabian Nights, 1974, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
A woman is king.
She used to be a slave.
Not as we think of it, but in another culture in another time.
She chose her owner because she loved him.
And he loved her.
They made love. They told stories.
But they were separated.
Zumurrud, the woman, will spend the film getting kidnapped, escaping, wandering, dressing as a man, becoming king, exacting revenge upon her enemies, and hoping that her love will find her again.
Nur Ed Din, the man, will spend the film searching for his love. He will have adventures and do exploits along the way.
Interwoven with their story are other stories.
Zumurrud tells Nur Ed Din two of the stories before they are separated. She acts as a kind of replacement for Sheherazade.
The other stories are told while they are separated and searching for one another.
The stories depict a world that Pasolini proposes for our consideration.
A world that can be read into the literary sources that have informed his Trilogy of Life.
Italy's The Decameron, England's The Canterbury Tales, and Persia's Arabian Nights.
A world where sex is guilt-free and pleasurable, and desire is felt equally by women and men.
A world of innocence.
A pleasant and optimistic vision.
And one for which many have longed.
A return to the Garden of Eden. But in this world. And in our time.
What if people could love one another, physically as well as emotionally, without social stigma and without personal shame?
Pasolini had spent much of his life speaking politically, taking adversarial positions, engaging in controversy.
With his Trilogy of Life, he was taking a more positive and life-affirming stance.
He took his gaze away from contemporary political struggle and focused it on other cultures in other times so that he could imagine and share this ideal.
These three films demonstrate his commitment to his vision. They contain abundant and increasingly graphic situations, but it is evident that Pasolini worked hard to maintain his philosophical position and portray this world through the eyes of innocence.
In fact, he would later write a letter denouncing the trilogy in light of contemporary events, expressing his frustration that imitators exploited what he had worked so hard to achieve in favor of cheap titillation and what he called "degradation."
He had aspired to something highly artistic which was hard earned. Others had turned it into a peep show.
Pasolini was interested in the "cinema of poetry."
He uses no master shots in this film.
He does not follow the traditional rules of coverage, moving in closer as the scene progresses.
He frames individuals like portraits.
He chooses camera angles in ways that are unexpected but grow organically out of the moment.
He often never returns to the same camera angle twice.
The final moment between Zumurrud and Nur Ed Din sums up the journey of the Trilogy.
In the end we look upon the faces of joy.
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