“I would prefer that before understanding a film, it should be felt, that the senses should intervene before the intelligence”. Robert Bresson said in an interview in 1960 and I completely agree with him, mainly because it is an experience I have recently felt with the film Les trois couronnes du matelot by the Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz.
Les trois couronnes du matelot is an experimental film that mixes several film elements and genres (Noir being the most notable one).
At first we are shown an event that would seem to be the main narrative of the work, the murder of an antique dealer. But this is not the case, the story changes completely in the following scene in which the murderer meets a drunken sailor who is only after money — three Danish kroner to be exact — the murderer refuses at first, but after a brief conversation with the sailor agrees to go drinking with him, on the condition that he turns him into a crewman.
It is from this point onwards that we get to know what would be a philosophical adventure about the life of this sailor, who is part of a ghost crew, a Nietzsche’s Eternal Return or a Klossowski’s simulacral Vicious Circle. Aspects that I will explain with the following dialogue:
“It seemed to me, at times, to live in another body. One day I woke up in someone else’s body. I wanted to look at myself in the mirror, my body was pushing me onto the deck. I hit a door and felt no pain. Other sensations came over me.” […] “My body was taking orders from another. I was trying to guide my body — his body stolen by me — as my body was pulling me towards the stern. I understood that I was in two places at the same time. And that it would lose me. I thought I saw myself in two or three different places. Finally, in the void, with someone else’s eyes, I saw myself”.
What does the director want to project with these meaningful sentences?, the answer is not revealed with the sailor’s motto, we are all the same, the polypsychism of this scene is achieved to perfection, as well as showing us several hidden messages in the film such as cults, or criminal rituals to join a cult, but before addressing these issues, another notable aspect within the film is money.
From the beginning we are shown a drunken sailor in search of money, and this is the case throughout the film, as he is always on the hook with his friends, or colleagues, however, money despite being at the centre of the sailor’s adventures, money has no value, what do I mean by this? Well; On every trip he makes, he borrows money, but this is not worth the same, because it is always old money, money that is no longer valid today, here the director plans us once again, this contradiction that makes us think about the idea of being in debt, even if the money is not worth anything. As he expresses it with this dialogue:
“Before I left, I wanted to leave you money. I was poor”: “It’s for you,” said the sailor.
“It’s a lot of money,” said the poor man, “and at the same time, not too much. If you want to help me, bring me, without asking why, three Danish crowns.
It is at this moment that we know why the sailor, from the beginning of the film, is in search of three Danish crowns.
There are other aspects to highlight in this film, such as surrealism and sexuality, as I mentioned earlier in the section on polypsychism.
So far we know that the sailor is part of a crew of ghosts, in which they are all one and the same, and there is a rule (until then unknown) to belong to this cult, which is to kill a member of the crew to take his place. From this moment on the crime to be committed gives us a guideline to continue this Vicious Circle that will repeat itself constantly for eternity. The poem below is part of the film:
“Man puts out the torch, but this knife, which is torch, puts out man, who cannot put out this torch.”
“This knife is the sun and your fear, its seed. Your pockets are the trees, and the fruits are the money.”
“You are the house that will house beauty. Your mouth is the door of the castle through which my dove escaped, never to return.”
“The other women are drops of water. You are the sea. The drops slip through my fingers, wet my hair, but I sail in you…”.
At the end of the film, as expected, the sailor is killed by the character at the beginning, remembering that he wanted to join the crew and to do so, he had to sacrifice this sailor. The film ends in a violent way, being just another sailor’s story.
