ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 is an analysis of Raúl Ruiz’s 2011 Mysteries of Lisbon, a monumental adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco’s eponymous novel, in which interconnected narrative strands multiply wide and deep across generations. Whilst questioning the medium and its hierarchical position among other media, the film also brings storytelling close to reality and history-telling by creating holes in the narrative mesh through which the spectator can catch a glimpse of the incompleteness and incoherence of real life. In this context, the film’s constant intermedial morphings become ‘passages’ to the real, through which drawings, paintings, sculptures and murals change into live action and vice versa, silently subverting the idea that the story could have one single end, or an end at all.
