Raul Ruiz -- Search and Destroy

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https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5380-the-daily-life-is-a-dream-the-films-of-raul-ruiz

I've seen a bunch this week, several of which were, um, difficult, but I recommend his 1977 short Dog's Dialogue. Here's J.Ro:

http://www.rouge.com.au/2/dogs.html

and the film!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYo2SHHakhM

I can't imagine a person watching Time Regained without at least an acquaintance with Proust's characters, but the aptness of Ruiz's choices -- some of the most shrewdly deployed tracking shots I've seen in the last 20 years -- consistently impresses me. This is the third time I watch it.

I like to imagine Ruiz slapping his knee thinking, "John Malkovich speaking his own French as Baron Charlus? This'll kill'em at Cannes!"

I have to admit every time I pick up a new volume of Proust I feel like I know none of the characters. There are just too much stuff happening for me to understand. I think Ruiz captures that feeling perfectly, it's quite brilliant. And to a large extent it's what the work is about, Marcel looking back on events and realizing so much more was happening than he understood at the time.

My favorite moment of the film is when Marcel walks in to a small room, and it's littered with tophats on the floor. It makes absolutely no sense in context. And then I read volume five, I think, and that's where it's from, Marcel remembers that at one point it was the style to keep all the hats of guests on the floor of a small chamber at a party, and that the room would look incredibly weird when you went to pick up your hat afterwards.

I think the film shows how weird a film can get if you really try to adapt a work of literature on it's own terms, instead of letting the adaptation process be about making it as normatively 'cinematic' as possible.