2015 · austerity · anthology · crisis

Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One

Directed by Miguel Gomes · 2h 12m · 2015

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

Our read: Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One (2015) reads as a sombre, measured, surreal austerity · anthology · crisis entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature.