Parallax Views: Cardenio's Tale in Don Quixote Informs Belvaux's Trilogy

Cervantes wrote a very famous tale within Don Quixote, known as "Cardenio’s Tale" (1st Part, Book 3, Chap 13). Shakespeare later adopted it for a play of the same name. In brief, it is a story about Cardenio falling in love with Lucinda. Yet his friend, Don Fernando, isolates Cardenio from Lucinda, and marries her through some sleight of hand. Cardenio secretly watches the ceremony from a distant vantage point. Cardenio’s narrative presents problems because it is not exclusively his. He is not the only source for the story. His story is in part that of other characters in the book. The story is also fractured by the interrupted text presentation. Later, Dorothea relates details (1st Part, Book 4, Chap 1) of the same story as she intersects with Cardenio’s tale by way of Don Fernando (she was a former lover, also shorted by the marriage to Lucinda). As different characters relate different aspects of the story, the skewed viewpoints offer a way for the reader to gather more of the facts than the individual characters have themselves. When Dorothea relates her knowledge of the wedding ceremony, Cardenio is shocked to hear that the letter that was found on Lucinda when she fainted at the wedding ceremony was a declaration in her hand that she was already Cardenio’s wife (in principle). Dorothea watched Fernando reading it. Hence, Cardenio is not fully apprised of his own tale until he hears Dorothea’s version. Finally, Don Fernando joins the others, and tells his own version of the story (1st Part, Book 4, Chap 9).

This parallax view of events, as exploited in Don Quixote, often referred to as the first modern novel (1602) is fully utilized in film. Exactly 400 years later, The Belgian director, Lucas Belvaux has used this approach brilliantly in his 2002 Trilogy (On the Run, An Amazing Couple, and After the Life) of films (thriller, comedy, and melodrama), each taking place at the same time. Different characters in the 3 films keep swapping foreground and background roles. It is not until we’ve seen the final installment that we have full vision, it is only peripheral when viewing each film individually. This is a bold experiment in film that is brilliantly executed.