The Chilean director Raúl Ruiz was a very sick man with a new lease on life when he made what would be his last film, “Night Across the Street,” which I discuss in this clip. In Le Monde, Isabelle Regnier reported that, in 2010, Ruiz had had a liver transplant and soon thereafter, in early 2011, rushed this film into production, telling his producer, François Margolin, that shooting had to start in two weeks. Work began in April; in August of that year, Ruiz died. According to Margolin, “It’s a film that he wanted to be seen once he was dead. Like Bergman with ‘Saraband,’ like Huston with ‘The Dead,’ he conceived this film as the one that should complete his oeuvre.” It’s a movie about death. It doesn’t give anything away to say that the plot carries its elderly protagonist beyond the end of life, as well as back to his childhood. It makes memory both the stuff of life and a living death, as the protagonist, Don Celso, suspecting that he’s nearing the edge of the cliff, turns his back to it and looks homeward. “Night Across the Street” is, in short, one of the most poetic, serene, comical, and inventive movies about death ever made. It comes out on DVD today.
More:Movies
Goings On
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week, online, in N.Y.C., and beyond. Paid subscribers also receive book picks.
Pop Music
The Tortured Poetry of Taylor Swift’s New Album
“The Tortured Poets Department” has moments of tenderness. But it suffers from being too long and too familiar.
By Amanda Petrusich
Letter from Biden’s Washington
Did Mike Johnson Just Get Religion on Ukraine?
The Speaker’s sudden willingness to bring foreign-aid bills to the House floor risks his Speakership—and Trump’s wrath.
By Susan B. Glasser
Infinite Scroll
The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher
Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.
By Kyle Chayka
Dept. of Medicine
How to Die in Good Health
The average American celebrates just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. Peter Attia argues that it doesn’t have to be this way.
By Dhruv Khullar