ABSTRACT
Magic-realist discourse is a linguistic attempt to grasp a syncretic, uneven cultural situation that raises political and philosophical questions for the future. This chapter focuses on twenty-first century examples of cinematic magic-realism, linking a critical formality to magical affect in a range of films and texts that exemplify the mode’s avant-garde vernacular. Indian American filmmaker, Tarsem Singh Dhabdwar began his career in music videos, and his oeuvre is characterised by a crisp clarity in the materialisation of hyperreal mindscapes. Singh’s film offers a pastiche of secular and religious belief systems, where science, magic, psychology, and human suffering take on marvellous proportions at the estado limite of the mind. Andre Delvaux’s films tend towards slowness, sparsity, and deliberate avoidance of conventional cinematic verisimilitude, eschewing overt motifs in favour of understatement. In preparation for filming The Man Who, Delvaux read Johan Daisne’s essays on magic realism, which split his ideas into romantic and classical veins: ‘realisme magique romantique’ and ‘realisme magique classique’.
