RAUL RUIZ: IMAGINATIVE SURREALIST

Some time ago, the imaginative and magical realist Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011) passed away. Four quotes that are typical of Ruiz:

'Film is what you make of it; every viewer makes their own hidden, subconscious film, which lies over the original and eventually displaces it.' (Volkskrant)

'My films are ruins in which you can wander like a true romantic and cherish the feeling that you could also get lost in them.' (Cinema.nl)

'My films are about sublime things that inevitably become commonplace and ordinary things that suddenly become sublime in a strange way.' (Filmkrant) .

And: 'I believe in the diversity of cultural identities; you need many of them if you want to become yourself.' (IFFR 2004 catalogue)

Raúl Ruiz was born in Chile, but he lived in Paris as an exile since 1973, following General Pinochet's coup. Among his best-known films are *Three Lives and Only One Death*, *Klimt*, *Le Temps Retrouvé* (after Proust), and his costume epic *Misterios de Lisboa*, which was recently released in cinemas. *La Noche d'Enfrente* has already been screened but has not yet been released. He was an extraordinarily prolific artist with over a hundred films to his name and numerous plays; he was also a gifted film teacher. He wrote the widely cited book *Poetique du Cinéma*.

Raúl Ruiz also made a film in the Netherlands in 1981: *The Whale’s Roof*, starring Willeke van Ammelrooy and featuring a funny role by actor/director Herbert Curiël as a Native American. The film is about an anthropologist who tries to learn the language of an obscure Native American tribe from Patagonia. It was not his only visit to the Netherlands; he was a welcome guest at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam from the very beginning, and many of his films were screened there. In 2004, he was Filmmaker in Focus there.

Ruiz's films are always set in the realm of fantasy, full of parallel lives, dreams, and memories. He counts Bunûl, Max Ophüls, and Godard among his mentors. Rarely, if ever, are they formulaic films with a consistent story. In his films, Raúl Ruiz flirted with the surreal and the absurd, and all his work is steeped in magic. This is also evident in one of his best films, *Three Lives and Only One Death*. The protagonist, portrayed by the magnificent actor Marcello Mastroianni, dreams of multiple parallel lives. The film is an artful variation on 'multipersonality disorder'.

One of the most beautiful films by Ruiz that I saw was *Time Regained*, starring the charismatic actor John Malkovich. Loosely based on the classic *Research for Lost Time* by Marcel Proust. A cinematically fluid interplay of memories, dreams, and reality. Nothing is quite what it seems. An English critic wrote of *Time Regained*: 'Time Regained succeeds in turning Proust's madeleine into a kind of fatal epidemic.'

Raúl Ruiz was an extremely passionate, idiosyncratic (film) artist who did not allow himself to be influenced by trends or conventional views, but went his own way. He was a unique filmmaker, 'larger than life', and very colorful. Hats off to Maestro Raúl Ruiz!

-Jaap Mees-



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