I thought “Mysteries of Lisbon” was entertaining, if not derivative, for the most part, until the last 3 minutes came in and short-circuited everything that came before in the best way possible.
Let’s not kid ourselves though: “Mysteries of Lisbon” is a soap opera in the Alexander Dumas sense of the term. I would tell you this series takes place in the 19th century and is about an orphan boy named Pedro who is trying to figure out the truth about his parentage and how he ended up in a Catholic boarding school, but it’s just not that simple. One of the main characters has at least three secret identities in this movie and they all get involved in all sorts of aristocratic intrigue. Simply as a television miniseries(it was screened in six episodes on Portuguese television), “Mysteries of Lisbon” easily passes the test for how much drama-in-drapes is needed for Sunday afternoon “Masterpiece Theater” viewing.
What sets this movie apart though is the slippery way in which it suggests that aristocratic life in the 19th century is an existential hell where a man’s life can double back on itself either because a) it’s a small world and b) nobility is a damn curse and god forbid these kinds of rich people problems should ever fall upon us. One of the curious things that happens in “Mysteries of Lisbon” is the way that even what happens to tangential characters eat up what happens to the main character Pedro, to the point where it renders his life pointless. What is absolutely bewildering about the ending is that it doesn’t matter whether this whole movie is teenage Pedro’s dream or if it is just a cruel irony that Pedro’s life should end where it begins. Life is a dream, in that the more we try to find the meaning of “why” things happen, the more it begins to resemble fiction. Eventually, that fiction will turn us all into orphans.
I thought “Mysteries of Lisbon” was entertaining, if not derivative, for the most part, until the last 3 minutes came in and short-circuited everything that came before in the best way possible.
Let’s not kid ourselves though: “Mysteries of Lisbon” is a soap opera in the Alexander Dumas sense of the term. I would tell you this series takes place in the 19th century and is about an orphan boy named Pedro who is trying to figure out the truth about his parentage and how he ended up in a Catholic boarding school, but it’s just not that simple. One of the main characters has at least three secret identities in this movie and they all get involved in all sorts of aristocratic intrigue. Simply as a television miniseries(it was screened in six episodes on Portuguese television), “Mysteries of Lisbon” easily passes the test for how much drama-in-drapes is needed for Sunday afternoon “Masterpiece Theater” viewing.
What sets this movie apart though is the slippery way in which it suggests that aristocratic life in the 19th century is an existential hell where a man’s life can double back on itself either because a) it’s a small world and b) nobility is a damn curse and god forbid these kinds of rich people problems should ever fall upon us. One of the curious things that happens in “Mysteries of Lisbon” is the way that even what happens to tangential characters eat up what happens to the main character Pedro, to the point where it renders his life pointless. What is absolutely bewildering about the ending is that it doesn’t matter whether this whole movie is teenage Pedro’s dream or if it is just a cruel irony that Pedro’s life should end where it begins. Life is a dream, in that the more we try to find the meaning of “why” things happen, the more it begins to resemble fiction. Eventually, that fiction will turn us all into orphans.
