A serious case of originality, creativity and innovation coming from someone who is often considered cinema's boring old geezer, here adapting reputed early 20th century Portuguese poet and drama author José Régio's O MEU CASO.
It's the only film I know which consists of 4 separate and different versions of the same story, as it were: 1) on stage, during a play's rehearsal; 2) as one of those films of the 1910s and 1920s, in which people moved at an accelerated pace; 3) with a chromatically-charged photography and dialogues of a sense of the absurd only equalled by the likes of Beckett or Ionesco ; 4) in a dusky setting, serving as a metaphor to our civilization's current state of affairs, the BOOK OF JOB is recited by byblical characters.
Oliveira and his cast are rehearsing a play, with a sweet girl idyllically playing the old "forget me forget me not" game when a desperate older man bursts in and, setting the astonished poor girl aside, proceeds to let the whole world know about his ordeal saying (and it's not an exact quote): "no one cares to know whether he forgets you or not because what really matters is MY CASE".
When this first part gets to its end, it starts all over again from the beginning (but shot in a different manner). And there's two more after that one. This was done in Literature by outstanding and innovative French writer Raymond Queneau's EXERCICES DE STYLE - a book in which the author rewrites numerous times the same story, each with a specific style.
The second part of the film is projected as if you played an old vynil LP at 45 rpm or as if you pressed "fast forward" on your VCR. Inserted in the middle of the film are images of real tragedies and disasters taken from documentary films and TV news archives. Is it the sort of film they produce in Mars? Or is this what world cinema will be like when, in the 25th century, a new form of life will be sprouting from the ashes of a 4th and life-exterminating world war?
