A widower has never recovered from the premature death of his kind and beautiful wife. Inconsolable, he has turned his house into a shrine and a museum. He is also firmly determined never to leave Bruges, since the greyness and quiet of that city constitute the perfect backdrop to his own melancholia. One day, however, he notices a woman who looks just like his late wife. The woman is a dancer, part of a travelling company...
To begin with the basics, in 1892 Belgian author Georges Rodenbach wrote "Bruges the Dead". The novel had an immediate international impact. It is still very readable today. Just what it represents is a more difficult question : it has been called a thriller, a psychological horror novel, a realistic character study, an unusually black satire about the more joyless type of Christianity, an allegory about fin de siècle lassitude or even an initiation voyage into occult and/or Masonic themes. Presumably it's best to call it a Symbolist novel and leave it at that.
It is important, here, to remember that the Bruges of 1892 was a great deal quieter, poorer and more parochial than it is anno 2019. In the novel many a reference is made to the greyness, repose and immobility of the city ; as someone who was once awakened by the howling of a dozen Scottish bagpipes I can testify that nowadays it is pretty lively. Has also disappeared from Bruges : the kind of narrow, invasive, judgmental Catholicism which clutches its pearls at the thought that someone might actually enjoy chasing giggling blondes in frilly corsets.
On to "Bruges-La-Morte" the movie, which, I gather, was filmed on a shoestring budget and within a short timeframe, almost as a backdrop or interlude to other assignments. If true, this proves that a genuine artist's eye is more important than money, technical gadgets and leisure. For "Bruges-La-Morte" is quite a watchable movie, with a very individual look and feel.
Dialogue and narration are kept to a minimum. Here it's the visual ideas and compositions that speak, in combination with the strongly expressive gestures and faces of the actors. At times it all feels like a dark vision or a fever dream, although "fever stream" might be more appropriate, since the "water" theme of the novel has been respected and since the whole has a remarkably supple, fluid look. Memories, hopes, illusions, desires merge and mingle, until the dead woman and her living counterpart become as one...
It's a pity that the crashing, crushing resolution of the book has been discarded ; but still, this is a very creditable adaptation of Rodenbach's work. I recommend it, mainly to the more patient and open-minded kind of viewer...
Fun note : the movie contains what must be the most obnoxious mime ever. In real life, bystanders would be fully entitled to throw the jerk into a canal.
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