The Restless Storyteller: Miguel Gomes’s Arabian Nights Begin Unfolding

Arabian Nights Volume 1: The Restless OneDirected by Miguel GomesOpens December 4 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
The most experimental film whatzit to be theatrically released in quite some time—and over three weeks, no less—the Arabian Nights trilogy by Miguel Gomes is not a perfect piece of art and, as much as anything, underlines the fallacy of that very idea. Like some formal pan across a turbulent Portugal, its episodes segue from intricately designed fictions to documen