Arabian Nights by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Category: Non-English

For today and tomorrow am going to review two films from Pier Paolo Pasolini's trilogy. Arabian Nights was pretty well received for its time (1974). While technically and structurually it's a very complex film using strong meta-narratives in his film, Pasolini can deliver a very strong impact probably only comparable to his work as a writer among other occupations.

I wasn't too happy with the amount of nude scenes present in the film, yeah random statement to make but I haven't come to applaud the aesthetic that needs to have nudity on screen for prolonged amounts of time. It's almost like getting your money's worth I guess? Whatever.

Anyway to the basic plot - Nur-e-Din falls in love with the slave girl Zumurrud whom he ends up losing and in the process spends the entire film, in search for her but also bumping into women who are only too glad to make love to him. In between all this there are stories from the lives of people who aren't even remotely linked to the main storyline. Here's where the film is absolutely brilliant, the story telling, the humour, the situations but most importantly the narrative is so compelling that you really get muddled up until you actually realize that these stories are building it up, they are the meta narrative which eventually complete an entire film.

Some of the stories include - a man dumping his wife on the marriage day for another beautiful lady to come across an acrimonious realization about the lady, there is also the man who survives a bandit run and finds his way to a beautiful lady who is protected by a Demon. It's a little long at 120 minutes, but the films pace is such that it doesn't really drop you out of it's central theme.

Recommendation level: 4/5 If it wasn't for the absurd amount of nudity which at times isn't even needed in the plot it would have been a 5/5! Still brilliant stuff, DVD courtesy an old friend/mentor.