Christopher Columbus, The Enigma

From the December 19, 2008 Chicago Reader:

One of the more puzzling features by the puzzling Manoel de Oliveira, this placid travelogue (2007) was adapted by him from an autobiographical book by Manuel and Silvia da Silva. A Portuguese man (Ricardo Trepa, the director’s grandson) emigrates to the U.S. in 1946, becomes a doctor, and returns home in 1960 to marry. In 2007, he and his wife (Oliveira and his own wife) tour various American and Caribbean historical sites to confirm his curious theory that Christopher Columbus was a Portuguese Jew; turning up at all these sites, and visible only to the viewer, is a mute, female angel carrying a sword and a Portuguese flag. Like some of Oliveira’s other minor works (The Letter, Belle Toujours), this intermittently suggests a poker-faced joke without a punch line. In English and subtitled Portuguese. 70 min. (JR)

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