The Golden Boat

A US surrealistic film that can compete with "Northfork" (2003) and it is Raoul Ruiz directing it! For Ruiz fans the film percolates philosophy, art, unusual cinematographic camera angles, use of black and white sequences that turn into color, children (one claims to a 30 year old dwarf!), life of exiles (a New Yorker, who claims to be from L. A.) and politics (the major character Austin, played by the lovable Michael Kirby, is recognized as a Marxian writer of repute in the final sequence!), It is a fable of bloody knife injuries--the police and the ambulance are called--but they never are part of the film. The closest sequence is of a plain-clothesman (maybe he was not one) who checks a driver's license and then asks the driver to move on. Most importantly, the celebrated Ruiz directs two other famous directors as actors in small roles--Jim Jarmusch and Barbet Schroeder.

Raoul Ruiz's first American movie is something of a parody of American TV with a few pinches of Mexican soap operas. Violence is treated as a normal means of interaction and it rarely has any real consequences. The film is structured as a series of episodes about Israel, a self absorbed young man who meets a Austin, a crazy old man who has just stabbed himself. Austin follows Israel before stopping to rest on a set of stairs. Israel, cool New York artist/critic/graduate student that he is, assumes Austin is dead and pockets his wallet. Throughout the rest of the film Austin periodically appears and people usually end up getting stabbed.

The film is shot with Ruiz's usual sense of experimentation but there really isn't anything new here, Ruiz seems content to tread the same old ground technically. The film is very comical at times and is always entertaining enough to be worth a watch but it's far from Ruiz's best work.