Raoul Ruiz: 'Le temps retrouvé, d'après l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust' (1999) - Take I

The 1999 Raoul Ruiz film Le temps retrouvé, d'après l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust / Marcel Proust's Time Regained is a dazzling adaptation and synthesis of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu / Remembrance of Things Past / In Search of Lost Time from the vantage point of its final volume.  

Admirers of Proust's work will want to see this if they haven't already; while those who haven't yet read Proust's novel -- the longest in history and probably the greatest novel written since the year 1900 -- might want to get cracking. Otherwise, the movie would thoroughly mystify rather than edify. 

Ruiz's movie version works hand in hand with the novel, made possible by Proust's meticulous use of visual art, architecture, music, fashion and focus on social manners as well as memory devices. 

If you can dig and grok this, you'll have reached the mountaintop, no doubt. If not, no extra lost time to remember or forget, I suppose. 

Certainly, it's a beautiful looking film, with clever and important scenes rendered with true surrealistic flair.

Today's Rune: Fertility.