The Arabian Nights

When I look back at 2020, one of the things I’ll be happiest about is mubi.com. From being a casual taste “might as well give it a try - they’re offering a three-month free trial”, it’s become a basic staple of my digital existence, quite as essential as Netflix or BT sport. I’m really lucky that I can afford all three, and if I couldn’t I’m really not sure which one I’d ditch first, but I don’t think it would be mubi.

The Arabian Nights is a good example. It’s three full-length films, all of them quite leisurely, and a bit strange. There’s an innocent little note in the credits, saying that although it’s modelled on the idea of the traditional Arabian nights (Scheherezade telling stories, to prolong her execution) , it doesn’t actually follow that model very faithfully. They can say that again. There are occasional references to the Arabian story, but there’s also very different strands, some of them pursuing some very weird stories - part three has a prolonged examination of solitary blokes who train their pet chaffinches for a singing competition. And underlying the whole thing is an oblique but passionate resentment of a period of austerity, inflicted on the Portuguese people with no clear benefit to them. Sound familiar? Not tub-thumping, but thoughtful and decent, and it chimes with the modest, polite feel I got from Portugal during a brief holiday a couple of years ago. Here was a people who used to be an imperial power, but hadn’t let it go to their heads. How did they manage that?