Director: Bille August
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 2.0
A schoolteacher (Jeremy Irons) in Switzerland saves a young woman from jumping off a bridge and she flees but leaves behind a book containing the writings of a long-deceased Portuguese physician/philosopher named Amadeu (Jack Huston), so the teacher abandons his classes and heads off to Portugal to investigate what happened to the author. What causes the Irons character to completely abandon his own life so quickly is hastily explored - surely, none of the writings or proclamations in Amadeu's musings are all that revelatory or couldn't be found in other books (cough, cough Pessoa) - and the way August presents Amadeu's back story is patchy: if you're looking for a lesson in Portuguese politics, this isn't the place. Irons is good at fumbling with his glasses (the hallmark of a "bookish," "repressed" character), though nothing suggests the story of a revolutionary who died quite young has much of a long-term impact on his existence: one fully expects him to return to the classroom ... eventually.
