A Song of Growing up Delivered from Fear

On behalf of Yvette Biró I post her review of Claudia Llosa's film : La Teta Asustada / The milk of sorrow (2009/Peru)

A Song of Growing up Delivered from Fear

Winner of the Golden Bear, the Best Actress and the International Critics Prize in Berlin 2009

There is a prologue to this beautiful film. A saddened young woman accompanies her mother to death. Before saying farewell, the mother sings a terrible, ageless song of horror and sufferings she underwent while bearing this child in her womb: violent rapes, experiences of cruelties she transmitted to the girl with the milk from her breath. Therefore the malady she is afflicted with: “La teta asustada” [the milk of sorrow] - as the folkway name it.

Fausta, the heroine is marked by fear, unable to speak, to be touched by anybody. “She is the metaphor of a torn country…which has known repression and can’t express itself only through which is hidden in the unconscious: the myths, terror, and its traumatisms.” – says the author. While the past events have been real, the myths that encompass them are floating between superstitions, deep anxieties and memories of brutal facts. It is the body which bleeds, which is sick in the literal sense bringing to life an existence between muteness and rare poetic manifestation: chanting, humming in their indigenous language: Quechua. Moreover: there is a potato hidden in Fausta’s vagina, in order to protect her from any violence. And this potato “grows roots and sends germs into the body”, it is a deadly dangerous harm.

This is the unusual, bold setup of this captivating, unclassifiable movie. Is its world real or a metaphor, half physical fact, half symbolic allusion? The decision to place a potato in her sex has been a mere nightmare, the imaginary continuation of a hereditary tradition, learned from her humiliated, raped mother? Or is it an absurd reality? The genre of the film doesn’t intend to clarify it; it is part of the movie’s almost unfathomable poetic aura.

We are in an eerie sandy desert in Peru, not far from the city of Lima, but the life in the emptiness and favellas are poor, miserable. Only exuberant wedding parties, full of music and food stir up the bleak routine. Heavy set young ladies and puny bridegrooms enjoy the extraordinary feasts, in which the whole small community participates with the many children in a boisterous festivity. The scenes are grotesque, funny and repetitive. Taking pictures before the huge “Niagara Falls” photo, dressed in the most beautiful white garbs, - these overly cheerful events are always identical, followed always by the same silly rituals… as they were parts of their everyday life and/or pleasure.

Fausta remains in the silent background, preoccupied with her obligation to bury her mother. There is no money to take her back to the native village, they have to embalm and hide her under the bed before an occasion comes about to arrange it. In this way again: imaginary dreams and physical deeds, life and death border on and her liberation will occur when she arrives with the mummified mom to the open sea…

All these actions take place in the deliberately indefinable border of allegoric and earthy moves. Since the real truth belongs to the painful memories, never fully taken into accepted and elaborate history of the country. Only songs, the traditional, forgotten language keep alive the traces, but once they have to be spoken out, freely in order to liberate the people from their long lasting, ill-fated past history.

Fausta’s story is the story of unresolved memory, savage, concealed, and very particular keys are needed to partially open it. When she is forced to come in touch with people, she is employed by a wealthy pianist woman who herself is in crisis of inspiration. Then, she is the one who will, surprisingly, offer new impulse, energy, for the artist, precisely with the genuine power of her authentic, poetic songs.

Fausta’s slow and dolorous development is at once symbolic, representing the wading out of a divided country from its dark history ravaged by wars, which has left terrible wounds. But it is personal, as well. She has to discover herself, her power and “beauty” (in all senses of the word) daring to have confidence in her.

Since Fausta, performed by the wonderful actress, Magaly Solier, is stunningly beautiful. Her eyes, pervasive gaze under the dark crown or tail of hair, the particular colour of her Aztec Indian skin, radiating from her so perfectly shaped face…her look is bewildering and awe-inspiring at once. She seems genuinely extraordinary, more than a simple individual. There is such an unusual intensity in her presence that one has to watch each moment, small gesture or just the lack of movements. She is truly mesmerizing, having the power to carry on the fascinating, though very simple story. She can sit immovably in an empty room, going through silently from the kitchen to the landlady’s place. And waiting, waiting motionless, yet full of sensible emotions. In her close ups only her eyes speak, in her very slow gestures in order to open timidly the door for the gardener she accumulates so much tension that we really identify with her unnamed anxiety. No wonder that when she faints, it seems to be inevitable, it could be expected, so much tenseness can be felt in her discipline.

She is strong, still frail, always subordinating herself to the exterior demands. Only the instinctive, scarcely audible chants show some more vivid expressions on her face, which usually maintains its steady countenance. Two occasions show important changes: one, when the landlady betrays her in a humiliating way, when she orders her to step out from the car, after she dared, for the first time! to comment – although in an appreciative way –the lady’s success; and by the very ending, which is the final liberation. Arriving at the sea, with the body of the mother she loudly cries out: “See, here is the sea!” and this sudden, happy encounter with the openness is her own deliverance, her discovery of the beauty, beyond offering it to her defunct mother.

This is a courageously uneventful, plain drama. The spectacle, beyond the central character’s interior torments is in total harmony with the exceptional marvel of the landscape. Large, open vistas of the greyish region, with the surprisingly fluctuating “mountains and valleys” of the sand. Huge, almost immeasurable space and the infinite steps leading to the top in order to rise above everything, - the images appear as visually summing up the whole tale.

Thinking of the power and fullness of minimalism, Claudia Llosa’s film joins the rich examples of many oriental films. Full of withheld emotions, finely chiselled small actions, rarely seen or discovered beauty offered for the eyes – the saturated experience and vision enchant the spectator. Fantastic and precise realism assure the particular flavour of its modest magic.

With this Peruvian film, Fausta, Latin America has deservedly entered the domain of the memorable, fortunate successes of our not so long discovered and appreciated films, coming from Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong. Moving bravely against the mainstream it strengthens the values of emotional identification, achieved without pathos, avoiding to describe sheer misery or solitude. Intensity and masterful composition complement each other. …. Sensibility, refined attention, slow and silent treatment of deep human and historical dramas have found their appropriate form and style in this orientation.

YVETTE BIRO

The Films of Artavazd Peleshian

Watching Atravazd Peleshian’s movies, I had this constant feeling of having seen such films elsewhere. A little deliberation reveals that the extraordinary Jean-Luc Godard compilation History of Cinema (1988-98) is, in fact, closer to the works of this Armenian auteur than anyone else’s. Furthermore, it becomes clear that almost all of Godard’s films made in the past couple of decades, especially the many short films, have a notable influence of Peleshian’s style, although they evidently bear Godard’s signature. With a total runtime of hardly three hours, Peleshian’s filmography may not be as prolific as the French director's, but it shows such degree of consistency of style and unity of content that it almost feels as if Peleshian had decided beforehand what his résumé would read. I guess Peleshian’s films are what could be truly called film poetry. This is because they completely wallow in ambiguity that is so essential to poetry. By ambiguity, I do not mean that they elude meaning or try to deliberately confuse the viewer, but that their meanings are with the audience. That is to say that each viewer would draw out a different meaning or exhibit varied emotional responses that would solely depend on his/her accumulated experiences and thought processes. One might say that this is true of any film. But with Peleshian’s films, all of these responses hold good to some degree. As Peleshian himself says in his interview with Scott MacDonald (found in the book A Critical Cinema: Part 3): “It’s everything”.

I would probably go on talking about Godard’s later works when talking about Peleshian because the similarity here is remarkable. Much like what Godard does with the images from Ivan the Terrible: Part 2 (1958), Angels of Sin (1943) and many of his own films, Peleshian reuses and recycles a number of familiar images and sounds throughout his filmography. And likewise, each of these instances elicits a different meaning every time they occur. Peleshian seems to believe that photography is indeed truth, but alters its frame rate to underscore, enhance and provide meaning. It is as if the director is holding a photograph of stellar importance in his hand, commenting on it, animating and then stopping it whenever required, to emphasize what he has said, going back to tell us more using the same photograph and, in essence, writing an essay using prefabricated sentences. Only that there is no text or speech as in Godard’s films. In fact, there is not a single word spoken in any of Peleshian’s films, highlighting the deliberately universal nature of his cinema. That is because people, beings to be precise, have always been at the center of Peleshian’s films. Peleshian seems to see humans as a monolithic entity whose ambitions, idiosyncrasies, struggles and emotions, although particularized by history, (to kill a cliché) transcend geographical and ethnological barriers.

But then, this history which Peleshian takes as reference for his examination always seems to be something that is close to Peleshian’s heart, which could perhaps be called truly “Armenian”. A mere look at the country’s history reveals large scale tragedies that have mercilessly plagued it throughout its life. A constant target of imperialism, oppression and, later, nature’s wrath, Armenia has certainly put up with some nasty things. With this knowledge, it is but natural for one to view Peleshian’s films as being also about the resilience of the nation’s residents. This reading seems quite valid at first since Peleshian’s films always seem to be about “movement“ – movement of time, movement of people and movement of life. In almost all of his films, we see various images that denote movement, change and constant transmutation – man made modes of transport, exodus of humans and animals, cycling of seasons, revolutions and of course, birth and death. And Armenia itself has been characterized by such movements and instability as its history tells us – the country’s constant transfer from the hands of one ruler to the other, people made refugees in their own country, forced evacuations and exiles and deformation by natural calamities. It is just too tempting to place these facts alongside and tie Peleshian’s films to a specific nation before generalizing them. But the director seems hesitant to attach any geographical importance to his films:

“The Armenians are simply an opportunity that allows me to talk about the whole world, about human characteristics, human nature. One may with also to see Armenia and the Armenian in that film. But I have never allowed myself to do it then, and would not now.”

Peleshian calls his technique “Distance Montage”, of which, I must admit, I could not make head or tail of, despite the director’s numerous attempts to clarify himself in the interview. But one thing that is clear from his films about his style is that it provides totality to them. That is, what the viewer takes away from the film is the whole and not any fragment or any individual aspect of it. Although certain images and sounds repeat themselves throughout the film, their order and composition are designed to evoke different responses depending on the context. As a matter of fact, without any impact on the individual films, all of Peleshian’s movies could be combined seamlessly into an indexed anthology that produces the same effect as its constituents, for the director’s style is too consistent to make any film seem out of place. Peleshian places the audience always at a distance, giving them an omniscient eye that concerns itself the whole of humanity instead of making them care about individual subjects, and their petty objectives and aspirations. Perhaps this is why there are no “characters” in any of Peleshian’s films. It is quite impossible to distinguish between the archival footage and fabricated shots that Peleshian uses since none of these images show any trace of a motive to create a fictional world. The characters, for Peleshian, are already written and exist all around us, merely waiting to be read.

Earth of People (Mardkants Yerkire, 1966) is the second student film that Peleshian made while studying at the prestigious VGIK institute and already, it shows the author’s stamp. Early on we are shown images of massive man made structures - bridges, railroads and skyscrapers. As the twisted title starts to make meaning, Peleshian starts showing us human hands, humans at work and the world being constructed by humans. We see people from every profession – doctors, engineers, workers and scientists – carrying on with their routine robotically as the soundtrack suddenly stops giving us conventional score and starts gathering the most bizarre of mechanical sounds. But soon, the optimistic tone of the film gives way to distrust and we realize that we aren’t exactly masters of this world. We see these people are, in fact, trapped within their own creations (which strangely reminds us of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)), which gradually takes us back to the title: Whose world is this? No wonder the film opens and closes with the image of a thinker’s statue. Peleshian’s film is symmetrical, as would be his later works, with both the soundtrack and imagery getting reflected along the centre of the film.

Although Peleshian’s style already shows maturity in Earth of People, his official filmography begins with, well, Beginning (Skizbe, 1967). Chronicling the historical events that changed the course of the century following the monumental October Revolution of 1917, Beginning is a powerhouse trip that would definitely rank among the best political films ever made. Running for a mere 10 minute span, Beginning exemplifies Peleshian’s preoccupation with mass movement like no other film. Employing an eclectic mixture of photographs, studio shots and documentary footage, manipulating their speed, repeating them regularly and eventually attaining a musical rhythm like the Soviet pioneers’, Peleshian emphatically registers our recent history that has been marked by an extraordinary number of uprisings and bloodsheds. Peleshian’s soundtrack is remarkable here. Using a combination of highway chase music, gunshots, screams and silence, Beginning shifts gears from a documentary, to an agitprop, to an essay and to an epic in no time. But the true revelation is the ending of Beginning where, after a brief visual and aural pause, Peleshian delivers a moment of epiphany, once again reminiscent of 2001 – an extended close up of a young child staring determinedly into the camera as the soundtrack plays a majestic, Thus Spake Zarathustra like score. Forget the Star Child, what is the human child going to see in the future?

Sheep and mountains have almost become Armenian identities of sorts, thanks to the films of Sergei Paradjanov. We (Menq, 1969), which begins and ends with the image of a gargantuan mountain, is perhaps the most “Armenian” of all Peleshian movies. We are shown images of mountains falling apart before being cut to a large funeral procession. This is followed by visuals of common people carrying on with their everyday work, – some utterly mundane, some shockingly risky - as if proving the adage “Life must go on”. For the first time, religion, which was a major reason for the Armenian Genocide, makes its presence felt in a Peleshian film. It isn’t just personal disappointments that these people seem to putting behind them, but shattering national tragedies, despite (and perhaps because of) which their faith stands affirmed – in religion, in life. The last third of the film acts as a meeting point and the resolution for these two types of calamities as we are presented visuals of reunions of families (and of people who seem to be returning from an exile). More than anything We feels like an ode to the resilience of, in particular, the Armenian people (although Peleshian himself denies this!), who have had to put up with a lot through the centuries and, in general, the spirit of everyday heroes. If at all anything can be made of Peleshian’s attitude here, it must be his unassailable faith on the ability of humanity to survive no matter how difficult it makes it for itself.

In contrast to the unusually large number of people in the Beginning and We, Inhabitants (Obitateli, 1970) is almost completely devoid of humans. Peleshian attributes this peculiar absence, quite strangely, to his audience being critical of him for We. Filled with shots of large-scale migrations and stampedes (with, surprisingly, even helicopter shots being present in the film), Inhabitants merely alludes to the presence of the human beings, in the form of a few silhouettes, who seem to be the central cause of panic. Shot in widescreen, Inhabitants, for most part, depicts wildlife, in panic. At first glance, with the anti-mankind tone of the movie, Inhabitants seems to take Peleshian back to the arguably cynical mode of Beginning. But once you begin to see that the humans in the film aren’t exactly humans but far from it, Peleshian’s faith in humanity comes to surface. Surely, the animals are just a normalized form of the people of We, of Beginning and of Earth of People. But the relevant question is whether Inhabitants is connected to the Armenian history directly or not. With the visuals showing us exoduses and captive animals and the soundtrack including gunshots and screams, it is not unfair for one to be reminded once more of the nation’s plight. Whatever the case, the film resonates with quintessentially Peleshian themes - of change, of resilience and of survival.

Seasons (Vremana Goda, 1975) is perhaps the most famous of all Peleshian films and just its opening shot would show why - A man, clutching a sheep in his hand, trapped raging stream, trying to get to the shore along with the animal. Setting the tone of film and, to an extent, to the director’s whole filmography, Seasons’ first shot effectively underlines the irony that forms the basis of the relationship between humans and nature. Seasons, as the title suggests, deals with the change of seasons. In the first section Peleshian presents us images from sunny day in an idyllic pastoral life, where a family of herdsmen lead their sheep through a dark tunnel and then to light. We then see a group of young men dragging huge stacks of hay down a hill slope and then trying to stop it. This scene, once more, illustrates our can’t-live-with-can’t-without relationship with nature, but never once becoming a contrived symbol or a metaphor. It is merely a glimpse of life which reveals a fact rather than expressing it. The same would be true of the sequence that is to follow, where the herdsmen risk their own lives in order to salvage their herd that is caught in the rapids. The film then shifts to an ethno-documentary mode as we witness a marriage ceremony in which a cow forms as much an integral part as the bride and the groom. In a rather prolonged scene that follows, in what looks like an amusing sport, we are shown a few men, each holding a sheep in his hand, sliding down a snowy hill, refusing to let go of the animal – A practice that is as strange as man’s kinship with nature – living with it, living against it, living despite it, living for it and living because of it.

What followed remains Peleshian’s longest film to date, the 50-minute feature Our Century (Mer Dare, 1983). Our Century concerns itself with some cosmonauts (and astronauts) preparing themselves for a space flight. Peleshian constructs the film around this event, quite predictably, exploring his themes through a complex editing system coupled with an equally complex soundtrack. Initially, Peleshian crosscuts between the footage of the activities at a space station, minutes before the launch of a shuttle, and a celebratory procession where the space-heroes are cheered and applauded by the mass. Peleshian frequently presents clips that show the immense stress that the cosmonauts are put under, during the test phase and in space, It is a period of sheer loneliness, physical and mental fatigue and, yet, of excitement and ambitiousness. He then goes on to depict man’s obsession with flight and, in general, his desire to conquer the various elements of nature, where he shows a number of bizarre experiments in aviation, most of which end unsuccessfully. As ever, individual turmoil gives way to and unifies with national tragedies to the point beyond which there is no difference between a nuclear explosion, a rocket launch and the human heartbeat. Our Century arguably presents Peleshian at the top of his game, converting both the form and content of the film into a highly personal mode of expression. In no other Peleshian film has the ecstasy over human achievement mingled with the agony of existence in such an intricate fashion. The point is not the establishment of a simple irony, but of an exploration of what makes humanity go on, against all odds.

There is some confusion regarding the order of release of the last two Peleshian films. The official Paradjanov site, however, suggests that it is, in fact, Life (Verj, 1993) that is the director’s penultimate film thus far. Peleshian uses colour film for the first time, perhaps to enhance the already optimistic tone of the film, and makes his shortest film till date. Running for a mere seven minute time span, Peleshian, for most part of the film, presents us extreme close-ups of a woman delivering a baby. Probably the most moving Peleshian film, Life is also the most overt manifestation of the ever-present Peleshian-ian conversation between human pain and ecstasy. The soundtrack is comparatively simpler here, with only two audible layers – an evocative opera piece and an amplified track of the human heartbeat. Naturally reminiscent of that staggering Stan Brakhage work, Window Water Baby Moving (1962), Life is an equally personal (although far easier to watch), emotionally exhausting and visually stunning piece of film that has the power to dispel any trace of pessimism that anyone may have about humanity. The film ends on a freeze frame showing a mother and her young child looking towards the camera and, possibly, a bright future.

Although Life would have made an astounding end to a solid filmography, it is End (Kyanq, 1994) that provides a more rounded closure to it. End is a series of shots inside a speeding train, the passengers of which are of diverse age groups, ethnicities and emotional statuses. The train itself feels like a microcosm of the whole world, each of whose inhabitants is moving towards an individual destination but the totality of them going in the same direction. End is perhaps the kind of vision that Damiel (Bruno Ganz) saw in the train in Berlin in Wings of Desire (1987), considering the voyeuristic nature of the camerawork in this film. There are also a few outdoor shots, of mountains (again) and of the sun, that punctuate End. If Life’s ending shot seemed to seal Peleshian’s faith in humanity, the closing shot of End brings back the lifelong dialectic between cynicism and optimism that has so consistently characterized Peleshian’s work. We see the train, after a very long passage through the darkness of the tunnels, suddenly plunging into blinding light. Before it is revealed to us what lies beyond, the end credits roll. Is it a man-made apocalypse foreseen by Earth of People? Is it the Great Armenian Earthquake? Or is it the ultimate redemption for humanity that Life suggests? Looking back at Peleshian’s body of work, it is probably the latter.

3 Convergences

3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948)

Freedom (Sharunas Bartas, 2000)

Birdsong (Albert Serra, 2008)

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Inspired by this.

(Hat tip to Vinyl is Heavy for the concept.)

Tarr's universe

"Out of Tarr's universe"
A poetic look at the work of Hungarian film director Béla Tarr.
By Nadine Poulain (in filmwaves #34, Autumn 2007)

excerpts (my emphasis) :

[foreword]

"Instead of deconstructing Bela Tarr's films the following essay aims to capture the uniqueness and intensity of his work. Meaning and interpretation is left to the individual. Film as experience.

Endless rain
Mud's soft embrace
Gravity, weight, physical being
Black and white
or rather an infinite graduation of greys"

(...)

"Tarr's universe, where the story is bare, a secondary thing. It provides the structure for the subtle to unfold. Locations are equal to characters. We contemplate them, have time to become familiar with their peculiarities. Often we arrive at a location before the characters enter the frame, stay there after they have left. Temps mort, our breeding ground, has never been more alive. Scenery and natural elements tell their own stories, in their own time. Breathing still lives that sometimes get invaded by the characters. We do not have to follow, as they walk in and out. Off-screen noise, off-screen action, reminds us of the world beyond the frame. A camera that reveals, while at the same time denying. Attention is drawn to what escapes our gaze. It is self-conscious directing. The frame always also refers to what lies outside of it, to the subjective nature of cinematic reality."

(...) [describing the scene in Damnation with the couple in the room at the break of dawn] :

"Content with one frame, we rest. We become familiar with this side of the room, while we wonder how the rest looks, who the woman is. A reversed opening shot, leaving us in a state, where we cannot locate ourselves. We experience a slight tension from being denied, rather than exposed. The singularity of the shot refers to all there could be. It speaks of literature's great potential: to evoke.

The absence of the cut. Raw and unfiltered time. Our eyes travel over space that constantly opens up. We gain what editing takes away: the chance to find relevance and emphasis ourselves. Meditative, contemplative, demanding: the long take, cinema of continuity. Information, cut replaced by confidence in transcending the passive viewer position. We enter into a partnership, re-seeing and re-exploring. We feel the presence of the characters. Real life. People who are never more or less than a part of their environment. We get to know and understand them, through spending time with them and the world they are living in. In respectful distance, we observe. Slowly they reveal their personage."

(...) [describing Estike's journey in Satantango, the girl who tortures the cat] :

"To share silence, to become comfortable with the absence of words, it is intimacy that unfolds. Inner states are accessed through a detour. Her opaqueness does not burden us with outer manifestations. Immediate exhaustibility is denied, emotional involvement counterbalanced. This distance in reverse brings us closer to her, for it is from our own depth that we have to draw.

Tarr's universe, an intense and honest engagement. Sensibilities and interest for the banal, the every day, meditated through style. Visual pleasure. Immaculately composed, brilliantly photographed. A graceful camera. We come closer to life, while at the same time maintain a reflective distance.
Tarr's universe, where dark images alternate with light ones, become all the darker after the pale and misty. Where words are rare, not to be wasted. At times they follow one another, form a denseness that plays off the silence preceding and following. We glide through space, endlessly stalking, then motionless we rest. The dance of opposites. Impact in relation to the other. Each long shot establishes a sense of materiality, a temporal denseness. It emphasises the moment, concentrates on the singular. Action, sound and camera work in their repetition form rhythmical patterns. Caught in the drama of the moment, perception for change is heightened. The cut, a major event."

(...) [describing the music speech scene in Werkmeister Harmonies] :

"Then we travel back and embark on another journey around the head of the speaker. One circle after the other. Camera movement and speech take on a sense of materiality. What will happen next? when? We are caught in the drama of the moment, its monotonous denseness.
Restless we drift through space, soak up each syllable, just to rest motionless again, enjoy the silence after anew.

We are in Bela Tarr's universe, a convincing parallel world with its own laws, its own logic. A universe out of joint. (...) The creature of self-pity mankind. When it reflects upon its disgraceful nature, it cannot but burst into laughter. It is the one, which after all can retreat into detachment, can distance itself from itself. The mocking one, annoying and entertaining itself with its continuous mourning.
When one goes all the way into one direction, one comes out at the opposite end. Maybe? Is where bleakness becomes funny, misery turns into hope, self-neglect becomes a passionate embrace?

Tarr's universe, always detached, always respectful. One vision one idea, uncompromised. A bleakly comic reflection on the human condition. Polemic in its pessimisms, it is nevertheless democratic, for it invites us, engages with us on many levels. It is a somehow wholesome experience. A journey, rather than a moral lesson. Facing the worst of what we can be, we may be able to regain pride and grace, and if it is just for the fact, that we diagnose."

(...)

DVD Review Of Ulysses’ Gaze

Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos’s 1995 film Ulysses’ Gaze (To Vlemma Tou Odyssea) is the first of that director’s four films that I have seen that is not unequivocally a great work of art. Yes, there are arguments that can be made in favor of that claim, but at 173 minutes in length, especially, it takes the most out of a viewer, especially considering that it’s the least poetic of his films I’ve seen (which include Landscape In The Mist, Eternity And A Day, and Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow). This does not mean it is a bad film, nor that it lacks Angelopoulos’s trademark visual poesy; it has that. But, there are some missing narrative elements, some poorly scripted moments, and a too slow dramatic movement, especially in the latter third of the film, which takes place in the city of Sarajevo.

The basic tale is that a nameless exiled Greek-American filmmaker, played by Harvey Keitel (and referred to as ‘A’ in the DVD credits, and in many reviews, although nowhere in the film is the character’s name mentioned), returns to the Balkans after thirty-five years, and is seeking to find three lost reels of footage from the earliest known extant Greek film, made by the Manakis Brothers (Yannakis and Miltos) in 1905. They seem to be near-mythic figures, who represent something akin to what D.W. Griffith was to American cinema, although they were documentarians, logging for decades the travails of the Balkans, and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

Keitel’s character seems to have more personal reasons for making this sojourn, and several possibilities are hinted at in flashback scenes, wherein Keitel simply wanders into his past, or a dream sequence involving the claimed death of one of the brothers. Keitel speaks mostly in English, while most of the other characters speak in Greek or the other native languages. The film does not rely on typical narrative to reveal Keitel’s quest, rather on a barrage of slowly developing images that subsumes the story into an emotional upwelling. Often, the camera of cinematographers Yorgos Arvanitis and Andreas Sinanos slowly pans ahead of Keitel, then back toward him, or pulls away from a scene, turns 90 or 180 degrees, then swivels back and peers even more deeply at whatever scene it just left, as if to signal that what seems the same is different, which pulls a viewer into a closer reckoning of stasis vs. change,

The best such scene takes place when Keitel visits, in flashback, with his mother, his old family home, in 1945. There he encounters long dead relatives, and banters as Auld Lang Syne is played on a piano. Soon, his father returns from the Second World War, and someone mentions it’s 1948. At first, it seems as if there was a typo in the English subtitles of the film. But, then someone mentions it’s 1950, and Communists come and clear out the room of furniture, even the piano. Song stops, and the extended family gathers for a photo, as time moves on. Keitel, who has wandered out of frame, is called back by his young and beautiful mother, and although Keitel’s voice answers her (in English, although he is called in Greek) a little Keitel look-alike boy enters frame, and the camera slowly focuses in on him till the scene ends silently.

That scene also probes one of the unspoken mysteries of the Keitel character- his relationship with assorted women, which seems to emanate from a rupture with his mother. Early on in the film, Keitel encounters a Greek film historian, with whom he seemingly has an affair. Then, he encounters a war widow (recall, this is the Balkans, mid-1990s), who conflates him with her dead husband, and they become lovers. Finally, he seems to connect with the daughter of Sarajevo’s local film archivist, Ivo Levy (Erland Josephson), who got possession of the three lost reels some years earlier, but could not get the right chemicals to develop them. Yet, like with all the other females, it is not certain how much takes place in the film’s inner reality, or within Keitel’s fantasies, for all of Keitel’s female protagonists are played by one actress, Maia Morgenstern, in different guises- even his mother.

His character’s sexuality is not the only place, however, where such an intermingling takes place. In the first scene of the film (another of those great scenes where the camera goes back and forth along a pier), an old man, who was Yannakis Manakis’s assistant, tells Keitel that, one afternoon in Salonika, Manakis had wanted to photograph a blue ship about to sail. We then see the two men, Manakis and the assistant, in front of the sea, on the pier. Yet, the assistant is not a young man, but who he is when the film changes from the past’s sepia to the modern color film, and tells Keitel the tale, merely by walking a few yards toward Keitel, as the ship sails off, as the camera follows. With a few simple, slow, horizontal movements of the camera, Angelopoulos shows how simple technique can weave a complex tale, with minimal voiceover dialogue from the assistant. This is also an example of great cinematography wherein the actual scenery is rather pedestrian. How many times have you read a critic praise a film’s cinematography, when all that is done is to let the camera shoot something that is, of itself, beautiful?

Another example of stellar cinematography comes when a disassembled statue of Vladimir Lenin is placed on a barge and floated down a river. Keitel ends up on board, but the homage to Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, where a statue of Christ, suspended by a helicopter, opens that film (as well as Angelopoulos’s earlier Landscape In The Mist, in which a sculpted hand rises out of a harbor) is manifest. However, unlike those films, the symbolism here is even more powerful, since most of the Balkans were just coming out from under the Iron Curtain’s pall, and Lenin represents a modern Ozymandias, especially, when lying on its back, on the barge, with its outstretched pointer finger aimed toward the heavens, with a muted irony that is delicious.

Eventually, after many dreamy sequences, the shooting in Sarajevo ends, when mist descends. After Levy discovers the right chemical formula to develop the reels, he and Keitel celebrate with a walk in the mist, and all but Keitel are gunned down. The violence takes place offscreen, and since Keitel does not react, we do not know if this is real, or if the Levy character, and the others, were simply inventions of his mind, to supply a narrative he feels is heroic enough for his quest for the film reels. Earlier in the film, a cab driver, who takes him from Greece to Albania, laments the three thousand year fall from grace of Greek culture, and a viewer is left with the impression that not only is Keitel in search of the reels and personal redemption, of some sort, but also- as the film’s title implies, his own place as a hagiographer of the Greek people, post-Classical times. Thus his recurring females all looking alike, as if plagued by a goddess of old, out to seduce and deceive him from his goals. Nonetheless, when he finally does react, and comes upon the dead bodies, Keitel wails, and the film ends with his soliloquy of grief. Yet, he now is in sole possession of the reels, and knows the formula, which suggests that his real interest was never the reels of film. How they tie in to his own quest for past memories is uncertain, and there is an air of self-delusion and disingenuity in his grief.

Keitel seems to be dreamily floating throughout much of the film, and this mostly works, save for a few too florid speeches. Josephson seems a bit hyperactive as the historian, Levy, but is passable, while Morgenstern gives perhaps the best performance, in multiple roles, even if some of the roles seem a bit too far out; likely due to Keitel’s character’s inner turmoils and desires. The DVD, put out in a Region 4 (Australian, not North American, format- unless you have a region free DVD player) DVD package by the Australian Madman Films, The Director’s Suite line, is stellar, and the equal of the best put out by Region 1 distributors like The Criterion Collection, Kino, or Anchor Bay. The imagery is crisp, clear, and in a 16:9 aspect ratio. And while it lacks an audio commentary, it does have the original theatrical trailer, as well as trailers for other classic films the company distributes. It also has a film gallery, and a very good essay in the film insert by film critic and historian Anne Rutherford. There is no English dubbed soundtrack, unfortunately, but the subtitles are in a highly readable gold, which should be standard for all subtitles.

Overall, this is a very good film. It also has a magnificently effective score by Eleni Karaindrou, especially with great viola passages by Kim Kashkashian, which seem almost organically part of Angelopoulos’s visuals. Angelopoulos’s film scores are perhaps the only ones which are the equal of the great Werner Herzog’s films. This film’s main flaws, however, lie in its screenplay. The film was penned by Angelopoulos, longtime Fellini and Angelopoulos collaborator Tonini Guerra, Giorgio Silvani, and Petros Markaris, but goes on a good 40 or so minutes too long. Some trimming of more pedestrian scenes by editor Yannis Tsitsopoulos, some neat Ozu-like elisions (which Angelopoulos makes expert use of in other films), and this film would have been a great film, if just shy of a masterpiece, due to several small forced moments of overacting, and soliloquies tinged lavender in their prose: ‘If I should but stretch out my hand I will touch you and time will be whole again,’ uttered by Keitel. The film came in second at the Cannes Film Festival that year, winning the Grand Prix, not the Palm D’Or, but it has taken a beating from some critics. In this country, the most virulent review came from none other than that noted lover of Spielbergian tripe, Roger Ebert, who among other things, wrote:

What’s left after Ulysses’ Gaze is the impression of a film made by a director so impressed with the gravity and importance of his theme that he wants to weed out any moviegoers seeking interest, grace, humor, or involvement….It is an old fact about the cinema- known perhaps even to those pioneers who made the ancient footage A is seeking- that a film does not exist unless there is an audience between the projector and the screen. A director, having chosen to work in a mass medium, has a certain duty to that audience. I do not ask that he make it laugh or cry, or even that he entertain it, but he must at least not insult its good will by giving it so little to repay its patience. What arrogance and self-importance this film reveals.

Would that Ebert was so assertive about the vomit that the many Hollywood schlockmeisters he praises put out. Yes, this film is not a laugh riot, but there are some humorous moments, such as Keitel’s interactions with an old Albanian woman he lets share a Greek cab with him. As for grace, interest, and involvement? Well, it’s there, even if it requires a bit of intellectual cogitation on the part of a viewer, something that most Americans (and American critics) are unwilling to give. This is best illustrated by an anecdote Keitel’s character tells, of taking a Polaroid photo of an olive tree that, when he watches develop, shows that the tree was not really there. Yet, we never see this anecdote’s stunning imagery play out; it’s only related via words, or the imagination, therefore all the more effective, in the way a great film like My Dinner With Andre is. Would that more people had that quality which Angelopoulos so manifestly owns, in the best moments of this work, and his other masterpieces; for then even flawed but excellent films like this would get their proper due.

[Originally posted at Alternative Film Guide]

--
Dan Schneider
www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension

Romney on the Contemplative trend

(This is a great article recommended by Celinejulie)

Are You Sitting Comfortably?
by Jonathan Romney, The Guardian (October 7, 2000).

Here are some highlights regarding CCC :

"The film in question was Satantango, made in 1994 by the Hungarian director Bela Tarr, and something of a legend among aficionados of painstakingly slow European art cinema. A film that long and that sombre is not likely to become an international art-house hit along the lines of Jean de Florette, or even to find a comfortable slot on the festival circuit. But Tarr's film has a reputation as something more than a lugubrious oddity of monstrous proportions - it is a powerful, visionary piece of cinema that creates its own stark world and keeps the viewer compellingly locked in for its duration.
(...) his most recent film Werckmeister Harmonies recently caused a stir at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where viewers received it as a genuine cinematic UFO. Filmed in Tarr's characteristic slow, analytically prowling shots, Werckmeister Harmonies is set in a desolate rural settlement where a violent communal madness is sparked by the arrival of a bizarre fairground attraction - the preserved body of a huge whale."

I've posted this snippet in the roundtable on CCC synopsis, as an exemple of a review that feels obliged to apologize to the reader/audience for the potential negative aspects of a contemplative film.

"Tarr is one of the film-makers named by Susan Sontag - in an article published in the Guardian in 1996 - as offering some hope for the continuation of cinema. Sontag was lamenting the death of cinephilia, the attitude that treats cinema as an exceptional art form, "quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral - all at the same time." In the 90s, Sontag argued, cinema had gone into "ignominious, irreversible decline", and great films would no longer be merely exceptions, but "heroic violations" of the norm."

Anybody has a version of the full Sontag article?
The "death of cinephilia" is another can of worms, but she mentions the problematic reference to the "mainstream norm", just like Rosenbaum and Durgnat argued in the roundtable mentionned last month on this blog (Non-narrative film criticism).

"This may not hold true in all parts of the world - film language seems constantly to reinvent itself in Iran, and in the work of Asian directors such as Taiwan's Tsai Ming-Liang and Korea's Hong Sang-Soo. But Tarr is one of a very few European directors determined to work outside mainstream forms, and who still believe in cinema's potential to transform the viewer. These film-makers are not out to convey obvious messages, and in these pragmatic days, they risk coming across like mystics. But the keynote of their work is not woolly transcendentalism, but intrepid and rigorous formal invention."

I'm happy to see he cites the same auteurs we are grouping here at Unspoken Cinema, under the banner of CCC. :)

The antecedents of such cinema are the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky, the almost forgotten Hungarian master Miklos Jansco, the German Expressionist cinema of the 20s, or the work of 70s German directors, especially Werner Herzog. This school of cinema refuses to spoon-feed us with ready-made experiences or easily recognisable beauty: the beauty in these films is easily mistaken for the ugly or drab. That would certainly account for the impatient, almost offended drubbing that British critics last week gave to Abendland, by the young German director Fred Kelemen - another of Sontag's favoured few, and a former student of Tarr's. "Bela and I share the same vision of cinema," Kelemen says. "We believe in time and not in speed - atmospheres and situations rather than stories."

... and the same precursors (see tentative genealogy here). So we're getting somewhere maybe. He emphasises like we do the opposition of this trend with "spoon-fed narrativity"!
"We believe in time and not in speed - atmospheres and situations rather than stories." This is exactly what we are talking about.
I've never heard of Fred Kelemen before though. Anyone here has seen his films?

Fred Kelemen (Frost, 1997) : "We are on a journey, very simply. We're born, we die and in between we have to make our way, and there's no way to stop. Even if you sit in your room and do nothing, time is passing and something is happening - which is a very big adventure."

Celinejulie cited this excerpt, and it echoes perfectly what Adrian Martin develops in his celebration of walking.

"Kelemen and Tarr may inhabit the absolute margins of European cinema but they are by no means alone. The science of long takes and landscape tableaux - as if the screen were a huge map to be unfolded - still flourishes in the work of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, who has been refining his art of geographically spectacular slowness since the 70s. In Russia, Aleksandr Sokurov's pictorial finesse unequivocally follows Tarkovsky's mystical tradition: his muted, enigmatic miniature Mother and Son was a cult art-house success (although for my money, his follow-up Moloch, a chilly, anaesthetised political cartoon about Hitler's home life, is far more interesting).

Other pensive outsiders who fit the mould are the truly marginal Portuguese. For example, there is Pedro Costa, whose Lisbon junkie drama Ossos is one of the great overlooked films of the 90s. And surely the most waywardly unpredictable European auteur, bar none, is Joao Cesar Monteiro, who appears as his own roué-philosopher anti-hero in such demented, leisurely rambles as God's Comedy and The Hips of JW (about a mission to find John Wayne at the North Pole). It goes without saying that this cinema is very much prey to the vagaries of personal taste. It is possible to believe passionately in the virtues of slowness, alienation, the creation of a dream-like, hermetic reality - and still not be able to swallow the self-importance of a film like Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité, which would seem to fulfil all those criteria.

Kelemen admits that in the kind of cinema he practices, "it's always a question of openness, of state of mind, whether one enters into it or not - it can even depend on the day you see it." That is why many of these films are like messages in bottles, thrown into the ocean in the hope that the right viewer will see them in the right frame of mind. You could call it Castaway Cinema, and one of its most heroically strange castaways is globetrotting Lithuanian director Sharunas Bartas. Bartas's films include Few of Us, about a young woman's unexplained mission to Mongolia, and the baroque The House, in which a crowd of outcasts stage enigmatic indoor tableaux.

These poetic and exceptionally mysterious pieces are closer to art video than narrative cinema. His latest film Freedom, featured in the forthcoming London Film Festival, is again a wordless affair, of figures in a North African landscape and events replaced by images - crabs falling out of a bag, sand blowing across arid plains. One of the few British screenings of Bartas' work was provided by Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen, who pro grammed it in a recent season at the ICA. "It's almost like having a conversation with someone," McQueen says. "It's in real time, it takes a long time to finish a sentence, but you go through the whole process, and there's this result, the pay-off, and you think - yes!"

The work of these rare, rejected but vital castaway directors can't easily be defined in terms of where it comes from, how it is made, or even how slow it is. That would account for the challenge, and the unusual rewards, of this very subjective cinema, a cinema that practically psychoanalyses you - and if you're lucky, cures you of your Hollywood-induced traumas."

"Landscape tableaux", "a huge map to be unfolded", "art of geographically spectacular slowness", "pictorial finesse", "muted, enigmatic miniature", "enigmatic indoor tableaux", "wordless affair", "events replaced by images"... these are inspirational phrases for a (positivist) contemplative film criticism.
He even defines this trend by "the virtues of slowness, alienation, the creation of a dream-like, hermetic reality"!

And the name he proposes is "Castaway Cinema", what do you think?

Review Of Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

Of the three Theo Angelopoulos films that I have watched, currently available on American DVDs, all have been truly great films. 1988’s Landscape In The Mist is a terrific tale of two children on an unattainable quest; 1998’s Eternity And A Day is a great film dealing with the complexities of imminent death; but, having just watched his most recently completed film, 2004’s Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (Trilogia I: To Livadi Pou Dakryzei), I can honestly say, ‘There’s great, and then there’s Great!’ As excellent as the first two films are, this film is superior in almost all ways- from the camera movements and screen compositions, to the acting and character development, to the most basic elements of the picaresque story. Fortunately, many European critics agreed, and it won the 2004 European Film Academy Critics Award.

In some ways, this film takes the best parts of the work of Federico Fellini, Terrence Malick, and Michelangelo Antonioni, and stews them until they melt into a work only Angelopoulos could make. However, what separates Angelopolous films from most other films by even some great filmmakers, is his screenplays. This film was written by him, longtime Fellini collaborator Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, and Giorgio Silvagni, and even though- like the other films of his I’ve seen, this one is spare in dialogue, the story coheres because of the way the scenes are written to allow the actors’ expressions convey what words need not. And, like Yasujiro Ozu, Angelopoulos is a master of ellipses- never fully explaining certain things in a film, nor deliberately not showing the viewer things that would be standard in a more linear film.

A good example of this is when the orphan girl, Eleni (Alexandra Aidini), that Spyros and Danae (Thalia Argyriou) take in, as a foster child, after fleeing Odessa, after the Communist Revolution, and heading back to Greece, gets pregnant, in a scene that shows her as a teen, she is sent away for months to give birth to twin boys, and then brought home. Yet, we never know who the real father is- the old man Spyros (Vassilis Kolovos), or his unnamed son (played by Nikos Poursanidis, a good looking version of Jim Carrey- who is unnamed in the film- at least the American version, although is referenced as Alexis in many reviews). Similarly, after Danae dies, we see Eleni run away with the son, and hitch a ride with the musicians hired to play at the wedding. The adventures they have with the musicians makes a good portion of this film reminiscent of Angelopoulos’s own The Traveling Players, Fellini’s Variety Lights, and Ozu’s Floating Weeds. It is not until later in the film that we learn she actually did marry the old man, when he comes to take her back and soliloquies on a theater stage. Or, at least, that's what the old man claims.

This lack of information helps the film because it places the viewer in a position to desire to learn the truth, without passive acceptance- therefore involving the audience more, but it also helps the story retain itself in the viewer’s mind long after the film is done, for one has to question what was seen. And Angelopoulos strikes the right balance. Too much questioning and a viewer is bored. Too little questioning, and the viewer is not drawn in at all.

The film is not an epic, per se, although oftentimes films with large themes and purviews are called that. In fact, it is a highly intimate film that focuses basically on the life of one character, Eleni, from 1919 to 1949. Yes, it deals with big themes- natural disasters, refugees, political unrest, wars (civil and global), and smaller ones- out of wedlock pregnancy, possible rape, adoption, loss, death, but it does so with a poesy and grace that never feels forced. Although the film clocks in at 163 minutes, the patented long takes that Angelopoulos uses actually sears the scenes into one’s memory, so that the near entirety of the film impacts. There is no Hollywood quick cut blurring, just a focus on the moment. Yet, here, too, the director subverts expectations, for the scenes are not melodramatic, and the camera- while not as static as the famed tatami mat shots of Ozu, is never frenetic. There is a calmness of vision that dominates the storytelling, even when the actual canvas of the screen is filled with horror. Three such scenes are indelible. The first opens the film, with a voiceover by an unknown narrator (Angelopoulos himself), as a band of people, refugees from Odessa, approach the camera. Spyros speaks to someone across the river, but directly into the camera, and tells of his people’s plight. He seems to be the de facto leader- a fact that will resonate later in the film. He tells of the group’s escape, and that the little girl next to his son is not his- but an orphan who was found over her mother’s body. The camera then pans down to the river, and we see the reflections of the man, his wife, and the two children. We then hear the boy whisperingly ask the girl her name. She tells him, ‘Eleni.’ Then we get the film credits. It is a powerful foreshadowing of that character’s search to assert herself throughout the rest of her life, and the film.

The second scene is when Spyros, after finally tracking his son and Eleni down, dances with her at a beer hall political rally, then wordlessly drops dead after leaving them, knowing she will never return. Upon the young couple’s return to their village, to bury his father, there is a powerful scene of his casket being rowed on a raft (a scene which is echoed later in the film, when the river floods out the town and the refugees all leave on boats). The appeal to Greek history and myth is palpable, and leads into the final, and most powerful, scene. After the raft trip and burial, Eleni and the son return to the family home, the Big House of the village, and are confronted with the ghastly sight of their father’s sheep her all killed, with throats slit, and hanging from the branches of a large tree. Manifestly, they have not been ‘forgiven’ by the town for disrespecting Spyros by running away.

Many critics claim that Angelopoulos’s films are an acquired taste, but all that is required is attention, for once that is given, his mastery of the art rivets a viewer, even many of the most speed-addicted American filmgoers cannot help but be moved by the power, the sheer visual power, of the images Angelopoulos wields. He also allows more interactiveness by the viewer. Instead of cueing the viewer, at emotional moments, with simplistic back and forth cutting between close-ups, he lets the scene play out from a distance, so that two or more characters are in the same shot. One might be in darkness, or with a back turned, but this allows the actors to act with their whole bodies, and not overact with just their faces. Yet, because Angelopoulos distances the audience from false emotion, when he finally does do a closeup, the emotion has even more power.

This also allows the filmic poesy to take hold, such as in a scene where Eleni, thinking her lover is abandoning her to travel with a musical company, run by a man named Markos, that will tour America, runs off to a dock, and then begins dancing with a series of strange men, until Spyros’s son comes to take her home, and says he has not betrayed her. He says, ‘I betrayed you? That’s impossible!’ This is a true Fellini moment, manifestly brought to the script by Guerra, and it works, as does the later scene, when the son actually does leave her, for a boat headed toward America. She has been working on a red scarf, and after a tearful goodbye to her and the boys, he grabs hold of a loose end of the scarf, and it unravels from Eleni’s hands, as he is rowed toward the steamer, until the last bit of yarn falls into the sea. It is apt and eloquent symbolism for the audience knows that they will never see each other again. There are many such other scenes, such as possible dream sequences where the two boys, now of age, serve on opposite sides of the Greek Civil War. Their reunion evokes the Christmas legend of ceased hostilities in World War One. They then return to battle. This scene plays out in Angelopoulos’s meld of time, for it starts with Eleni and an old woman she knew as a girl, climbing up a hill where one of the twins, Yannis, was killed. Then, Eleni hides behind a dune, and the sons, in the past, take over- and even speak of their mother possibly having died in a jail cell for harboring one of the old musician friends of Spyros’s son, who was on the wrong side of the Civil War. When they part, we see Eleni again- with no cuts, no flashbacks, no blurred screen, and she weeps.

She then rows a boat out into the flooded remnants of her old town, to the gutted ruins of the Big House, and finds her other son- Yorgis, whose body is remarkably undecomposed, further suggesting that it is a dream, and weeps that he represents both of her boys. The film then ends on a shot of the water, the eternal that resonates politically and personally. Yet, there is no melodrama. There is a palpable sense of loss that the viewer feels, for Angelopoulos understates things. As example, when the aforementioned old musician, Nikos (Yorgos Armenis), is killed. In that scene, we hear him shot, then see him emerge from behind many drying white bedsheets, holding his bloody guts. Yet, as he struggles to walk, his bloodied fingers only lightly touch some of the sheets. It is subtle, and, with each step he takes, more blood is left on succeeding bedsheets. He then dies in Eleni’s and her lover’s arms.

This death is a contrast to the earlier death of Spyros, who, after spending the first half of the film stalking his wife and son- including a powerfully symbolic soliloquy onstage at a theater turned boarding house, dies in his son’s arm after confronting them at a political dance at a beer hall. He finally gets his son to play the film’s theme song, and dances with Eleni, until he wordlessly departs, then dies of a heart attack as he is leaving. In the hands of any other director, this would be melodrama- and it certainly is a contrivance, but because the rest of the film has such a sweep, this scene feels almost ‘normal’ because it is so small.

Then there is the aforementioned Angelopoulian ellipses, which weed out the events that most filmmakers would milk for melodrama. As example, most of the ‘big’ historical events, as well as the important familial events, take place offscreen, and can only be surmised. Since we know much about the historical events, and can easily fill in the blanks on the personal stuff, they are unneeded. The intimate is distanced by mid and long shots, while the large is ignored. Thus, we see the effects of such things as the escape from Odessa, Eleni’s pregnancy and childbirth, the son of Spyros in the New World, Word War II and the Civil War, nor he deaths of Eleni’ sons. Yet, the use of ellipses even extends beyond those employed in an Ozu film. As example, despite repetition of the name Alexis, for Spyros’s son, it is never uttered in the film. Also, we never know if Eleni actually ties the knot with the old man, or just jilted him. As stated, Spyros claims they were married in his onstage soliloquy, but we have no way of knowing whether this is true, and the reaction Eleni and the son get upon their return when Spyros dies could be for her jilting the old man. We also never learn whether the father of the twins is Spyros or his son. The reactions and words of Danae and her female friends suggest that it could be either the old man or the young one. If it is Spyros, was he a rapist and/or pedophile? Does he desire to marry Eleni to atone for his earlier violation? If the son, is the wonderful scene of him talking up to Eleni’s window, at night, as the camera pans up the wall for the majority of his speech, filled with clues, such as his inability to outright state he loves her? After all, he never calls the twins his sons, and they never call him father. Yet, by never settling the question, the film lets later scenes take on deeper complexions.

Then, after being sent away, to give the twins up for adoption, we never learn how Eleni and the son track them down, much less recover them from seemingly rich parents- and why would they turn over the boys, from their life of splendor, to live in squalor? Also, while the possible dream sequence between the two boys, in the Civil War, explains why Eleni is in jail, we are never sure, outside of that claim, and since the dream also hints Eleni is dead, the final scene, where Eleni finds Yorgos’s unrotted corpse at the Big House, could be a metaphor for her journey (across the risen river) to an afterlife as grievous as her lived life. But, who would be the ostensible narrator is not made clear.

Narration- whether actually voiced or just by visuals, is also a fluid thing. The opening narration by Angelopoulos has a God-like feel, but those letters from the son to Eleni, telling of his New World experiences, and those at war in the Pacific (where he dies on Okinawa), act much as the narration in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line do, as some oversoul with a deeper knowledge. Possibly, the final scenes are of what the dead son sees of his lover, but this is only a possibility. That we are never told universalizes the tale and ending.

The DVD from New Yorker Video, has a good transfer, and unlike earlier Angelopoulos DVDs, there seems to be less complaints from critics. Perhaps they simply finally have gotten used to the fact that the Greece the director displays is not the sunlit Aegean paradise, but cloudy, misty, rainy, and shadow-filled. The aspect ratio is 1.66:1, and while the film has English subtitles, it lacks a dubbed track in English. There is an excellent half hour long video interview with the director, and a minute long theatrical trailer. There is also a small insert for the DVD that includes a print interview with Angelopoulos, an essay by him, and an abridged 20^th Century Greek timeline.

The film’s cinematography, by Andreas Sinanos, is spectacular, from the long shots that follow characters from afar, to well-composed foregrounded scenes, to the uses of color throughout. The film starts with muted, almost sepia tones, and grayness, then exhibits flashes of color, here and there, while mostly staying in dark greens, blues, and browns. This heightens the grander moments, such as the bloody death of the musician in the white sheets. The use of water is also wonderful- from the film’s reflected shots at the opening, through the constant rains and floods, to the last shots overlooking the water- a far better use of imagery than a similar shot which ends Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark. In fact, the scenes of the flooded town were a set built in a high, dry portion of Lake Kerkini, which by March, would rise and submerge the set.

The musical scoring by Angelopoulos’s longtime collaborator, Eleni Karaindrou, is solid, mixing folk songs with classical compositions, all in an understated manner- excepting a great scene where the son auditions with his accordion. Yet, several times in the film, there seems to be an odd noise- like jet sounds in the aural background of some scenes. Is this symbolism or a flaw? Even if a flaw, it is a very minor one, for aside from the aforementioned scenes there are numerous other great scenes in this picaresque film that coheres in the Negatively Capable way John Keats claimed great art works; such as when Nikos dances at night as a saxophone plays, or when Eleni, in fever, babbles on and on of the same things.

Yet, at the center of this great film is not only the ellipsis of information, but the ellipsis of self- the exile from everywhere, a theme that defines much of Angelopoulos’s work, even if it does not define his art, for that is always on target, and brilliantly wrought. The Weeping Meadow is no exception to that claim.

[Originally posted at Blogcritics]

--
Dan Schneider
www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension

DVD Review Of Eternity And A Day

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

The 1998 film by Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, Eternity And A Day (Mia Aioniotita Kai Mia Mera or Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα), is not merely another film about a supposed poet wherein the art of poetry and the act of poesizing are never on display. Yes, it’s true that, technically, neither are onscreen, but it is a superior film about a supposed poet wherein the art of poetry and the act of poesizing are never on display, for the film does capture the dead cliché of ‘a soul of a poet’ as well as just about any I’ve ever seen. It does it with imagery, and Angelopoulos’s patented long takes, but it does capture it, and exceedingly well. The film was not only directed by Angelopoulos, but he wrote the screenplay. That it won that year’s Cannes Film Festival’s coveted Palm D’Or shows that, sometimes, quality still counts.

The tale subtly weaves the past, present, and future tenses of a dying man, the bearded poet Alexander (Bruno Ganz, best known for starring in Wim Wenders’ Wings Of Desire, and the later Adolf Hitler biopic Downfall, as Hitler), as he muses on life a day before he is to enter a hospital for an unspecified ‘test.’ In this manner, the film is in the fine tradition of films on dying men trying top come to grips with their lives, such as Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. Yet, where the former film achieves its aims by balancing out the life of the dying man with that of a young woman, then turns the film on its head by dealing with the legacy of the man after his death, and the latter film evokes dread by displaying the subconscious memories of its lead character, Eternity And A Day splits the difference, as Alexander, after leaving his seaside apartment in Thessaloniki, after learning he has a terminal illness and must enter a hospital the next day, muses on a neighbor across the way who mirrors his taste in music, befriends a young unnamed immigrant Albanian boy (Achilleas Skevis) who is being exploited and slips in and out of his and others’ pasts by simply walking into them. Angelopoulos does not cut to the past. His characters’ pasts are extensions of their presents.

The six or seven year old boy is a vagrant window washer, of the sort common in large American cities, and, after a trip to the past while visiting his thirtyish daughter (Iris Chatziantoniou), and musing on his likely dead wife, Anna (Isabelle Renauld)- who appears as almost the same age as their daughter, Alexander saves him from a band of policemen who are chasing down similar boys. Yet, he cannot escape his own memories. At his daughter’s apartment, he does not tell her of his diagnosis, instead hands her letters written by his wife, her mother. As she reads them, Alexander walks out into the past- there is no cut, wipe, fade, nor dissolve to memory. All is eternal and all is connected. He simply passes through a door to her balcony, the camera angle changes, and he exits the door to his former seaside home, one which he, after his revery, learns his daughter and her lover have sold for demolition without telling him. Yet, we never find out why he and his wife split up, although there are hints that the man’s art, and fame as a writer were behind it. We never learn if she is still alive or dead, although dead is likelier.

We also never learn the truth about the little boy he befriends, either. At times the boy seems genuine, and other times he’s a scoundrel straight out of a Dickens novel. As in his earlier film, Landscape In The Mist, Angelopoulos’s child is trying to leave Greece. But, as with the children in that film, the way to Albania is not exactly an easy one, for at the snowy mountain border we see a very eerie scene of a barbed wire fence with what seem to be bodies (live or dead?) stuck to it. As the pair wait for the gate to open, they have a change of mind about crossing, when the boy admits has been lying about his life in Albania. The two of them barely escape a border sentry who chases them and make it back to Alexander’s automobile.

The boy’s perilous existence beings Alexander out of his stupor and self-pity, and seemingly re-energizes him in his love for a dead 19^th Century Greek poet, Dionysios Solomos (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), whose poem he longs to finish. Yet, Alexander is still wallowing in the memories of his wife, and trying to find a new master for his dog. The old poet and the boy are connected by fear. The former over what lies ahead, and if his life has had impact, and the latter over what lies ahead in his- especially a perilous return trip to Albania where, as he explains to Alexander, the path over the mountains is lined with land mines, as well as men who kidnap street boys to sell them for black market adopters (as well as possibly the sex trade). One of the best scenes in the film occurs when the two of them take a bus trip and encounter all sorts of people- from a tired political protester to an arguing couple to a Classical music trio. They also look out the window as a trio of people on bicycles pedal by them, oddly dressed in bright yellow raincoats. The symbolism can mean any of several things, but the moment jumps out at the viewer.

Much of the film is superbly choreographed- such as an earlier scene, where Alexander pawns off his pooch on his housekeeper, Urania (Helene Gerasimidou), for the last three years. She is manifestly smitten with him, but is in the middle of a wedding party and dance between her son and his bride. The scene plays on until Alexander interrupts. He convinces her, leaves the dog, and then the dance and music, which had stopped, resumes as if nothing had halted it. But, the boy also has a key scene- one which is unexplained, but deeply poetic and moving. We see him in the ruins of a hospital, mourning another young boy, Selim, via a candlelight vigil, with dozens of other youths. What makes this scene work is that we see a possibly dying boy, not long before, and he looks like one of the street children that Alexander’s boy was in cahoots with. The repetition of Selim’s name, the candlelight, and the odd arrangement of the other children in the frame of the film make for a moment that stirs, even if the reason is not apparent, for we have no reason to care for this character, know nothing of his fate, and, in fact, the whole scene may be a dream of the boy, ruminating on his cohort, and wishing that he, too, can be freed from life via death. That all of this comes from a child adds to the pathos and depth.

The cinematography of Giorgos Arvanitis and Andreas Sinanos is brilliant- even if most of the film is shot in overcast or foggy days. Only the past seems bright and sunny. The takes routinely go two or three minutes in length, and conversations are never broken up into the Hollywoodish close-ups that tell the viewer what is apparent- who is speaking. Yet, the camera is often in motion about the action, moving around the characters, changing angles, perspectives, and sometimes moving past them. Sometimes this is to connect them to the past, while other times it is to show that there is existence beyond their ultimately small problems. A good example of this comes in a night scene where Alexander is driving his car up to a stoplight that is red. There, he just stops his car, and other cars have to go around him when the light turns green. The camera slowly zooms in to the front windshield where we see the poet dealing with his angsts. Then, the camera perspective changes, and we are looking behind the car, up at the light, now red again. Only it is dawn, and Alexander has spent hours, perhaps, at this light, now on a deserted street. Then, without warning, he runs the red light. The need for reflection, at any cost, could hardly have been better limned.

Of course, the length of most of the takes, with the shortest being longer than most Hollywood shots, means most speed-addicted American viewers will be bored by the film. Yet, can there be a better recommendation for such a work? And, despite the long takes, the 126 minute long film feels far shorter, and this is because each scene leaves an immense intellectual and emotional impact. It was written by Angelopoulos, longtime Fellini screenwriter Tonino Guerra ,and Petros Markaris. The scoring by Eleni Karaindrou is pitch perfect, as it never overwhelms nor guides the viewer beyond what the scenes’ immanent power holds.

The acting by Ganz is wonderful, and a textbook display of full body acting. In the modern scenes he moves slowly and with a slump in his bearing, while when he enters the past, he has alacrity and grace. It is stated, in online descriptions of the film, that Ganz’s lines were dubbed into Greek, but this presents little problem as there is not much dialogue, Alexander’s facial hair partially covers his lips, and many of the speaking scenes are from a distance or the back. Again, the conveyance of his emotional and psychological states is predominantly by bodily acting. The same is not true for the boy, and Achilleas Skevis gives yet another terrific acting performance for a European child actor. His face has hints of the American Culkin acting clan, yet he is far more subtle and expressive, and when he jokes to Alexander that ‘buying words’ on the docks may be expensive, there is an impishness to his glinting eyes that few American brat actors could capture.

The DVD, by New Yorker Video, is in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, and despite constant complaints from some critics that the transfer is bad, I think many are simply not taking into account that the bulk of the film is meant to be hazy. Yes, even the bright beach scenes are a bit muted, but without having seen other prints, it can easily be viewed as simply an extension of the director’s vision, or the lead character’s disposition being displayed visually. There are no noticeable flaws otherwise. The film is subtitled in English, but since Ganz’s voice was dubbed from German, why couldn’t the whole of this sparsely dialogued film have been dubbed into English? Unlike New Yorker’s DVD of Landscape In The Mist, this DVD does have a few features- such as a twenty-plus minute introduction to the film by Andrew Horton, a Professor of Film Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and author of The Films Of Theo Angelopoulos. Then there’s a ten minute long featurette called The Journey Through Time Of Theo Angelopoulos, which explains how the film’s long bravura single shot ending was filmed and what it symbolizes, as claimed by Angelopoulos. Then there are poetry selections by the real Dionysios Solomos (from the unfinished poem in the film), C.P. Cavafy, and George Seferis, as well as an eight page booklet featuring an interview with Angelopulos.

Eternity And A Day is another great film by a master of the art who has been sorely neglected in the United States. It asks of its two lead characters, Why am I always a stranger in exile?, and gives no clear answer, save to estrange the two of them from each other and themselves. The boy departs Alexander in the middle of the night, stowing aboard a huge, brightly lit ship whose destination is unknown. That the man allows this to happen speaks volumes on his own state of mind and his implicit understanding that the boy needs him far less than he feels he needs the boy. He is something the child needs to outgrow. The slow dissolve of the ship’s outlines into the black lets the image’s beauty ring in the viewer’s mind, and it is this beauty that hints of a happier future for the boy, wherever he ends up.

Alexander’s final estrangement is not as cheery, and comes as he enters his old home- the one his daughter has sold for demolition. He looks about, exits out the back door, and into the sunny past where Anna and other friends are singing. They stop, ask him to join them, then they all dance, and soon, there is only the poet and his wife in motion. Then, she slowly pulls away, and he claims his hearing is gone. He also cannot see her, it seems. He calls out and asks how long tomorrow will be, after he has told her he refuses to go into the hospital, as planned. She tells him tomorrow will last eternity and a day. The film ends with Alexander, back to us, mumbling in untranslated Greek (do we really need to know what he is saying at this point, anyway?) watching the waves on the ocean do what they do, for a long time. It is in moments like this that Angelopoulos reveals that, while he is the equal of the best filmmakers in the art’s history, such as Fellini or Bergman, he has more seriousness than the former, and a more profound empathy than the latter. Where that ultimately places him on the scale of the cinematic pantheon is to be argued over, but not the fact that he belongs. He and this film are that great.

[Originally posted at Blogcritics]

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Dan Schneider
www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension

Review Of Landscape In The Mist

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

There is a superlative scene in Theo Angelopoulos’s 1988 film Landscape In The Mist (Τοπίο στην ομίχλη or Topio Stin Omichli) that is amongst the best filmic depictions of sexual abuse ever shown, and should be shown as a primer to Hollywood directors on how to be subtle and poetic, especially when dealing with such terminally PC topics. In it, the young ten or twelve year heroine of the film, Voula (Tania Palaiologou), who is on the run, in search of her nonexistent father (whom her never seen onscreen mother has told the children resides in Germany, even though she has no idea who their father/s is/are), with her five or six year old brother Alexandre (Michalis Zeke), has hitched a ride with a nameless truck driver (Vassilis Kolovos). After he tries to dump the kids off at a truck stop diner, but they follow him, he pulls over on the side of a road, as the boy sleeps. He tells her to get out of the truck, and then grabs her into the body of the truck, which is covered with a sheet, or tarp. Manifestly, he wants to sexually abuse her in some way. The camera never pans away from the back of the truck. We hear nothing, and after a minute or two, the young boy pops out of the truck cab and goes in search of his sister, calling her name. He runs out of frame, and a minute or two later the trucker gets out of the back of the truck. Now, the camera zooms in, slowly, to the truck, so that nothing but its back exists in the frame. Then, we see Voula slowly emerge from under the tarp. Her legs, then body. She looks shell-shocked, and her hands are bloodies. Whether this is from her hymen being broken, and feeling herself, or from an injury given to her by the trucker, or scratching him, we are not sure. The blood is not substantial, although likely too much for a broken hymen. Whether she was raped or merely fondled, we watch her face as she smears the blood on the side of the truck. This says far more than any graphic shot of the violence could, especially if quick cut in an MTV style. It also allows us to zoom in and feel her numbness and wonder at the blood.

Yet, this is merely one of many bravura shots in this great, great film, which opens with a shot at a train station, then hits the credits. Angelopoulos is a master of the picaresque, stringing together a brilliantly unobtrusive yet powerful narrative through a series of realistic, yet utterly poetic, moments. He also trusts his audience to watch and get the little moments of insight he slips in and never condescends to them. He leaves much in the film unexplained. But, we can fill in the blanks, and even if my answer is a bit different from yours, the overall arc coheres. This tack is brilliantly illustrated in yet another scene, where the kids encounter a twentysomething motorcyclist who drives the family bus for a troupe of entertainers, The Traveling Players (a group that is a direct nod to Fellini’s La Strada and Variety Lights, and was the titular subject of his 1975 film of that name). The way Angelopoulos films the group of old would be Vaudevilleans as they rehearse on a beach for a performance is a direct nod to Fellini in his 8½.

Yet another wonderful scene occurs when the youth, named Orestes (Stratos Tzortzoglou), finds a bit of film in a garbage can, and holds it up under a streetlamp, and against a white billboard, at night, and asks the kids if they see what is on it. The camera zooms in, but we see nothing but a gray mist. Orestes claims there is a tree in the mist, but the kids cannot see it. Then, Orestes admits he was putting them on. Not only does this scene illustrate how adult these children are, as they will not automatically say yes to an adult figure, to gain acceptance, but it also foreshadows the film’s end.

Another giveaway that these are not your average children comes early on, as the two children sleep in bed, and one of them asks for a story to be told, and the other replies with the making of the world, from Genesis: ‘In the beginning was the darkness. And then there was light.’ No Smurfs nor Disney cartoons, but deep mythos. Then, they go to the train station every day, to see the arriving trains from Germany, in case their father is coming home. They have done so for a long time, for a local vendor recognizes them. They also compose letters in their minds to their father, whom, after they run away, and arrive at the workplace of their uncle (Dimitris Kaberidis), we find out is an invention told by their mother to hide their illegitimacy. The kids are then taken into custody, but simply walk out of the station when a snowfall hits the town, and everyone is so rapt that they gawk motionless at the white. It is a typically Fellinian moment, and this is no surprise since the film’s screenplay was written by Angelopoulos, Thanassis Valtinos, and longtime Fellini screenwriter Tonino Guerra.

In fact, the scene with the snow is merely one of several which echo Fellini, another being an homage to La Dolce Vita, where Orestes is sitting on a pier, and watches a giant statue hand rise from the water, only to be carried away by a helicopter. That the hand seems to be made of stone, yet floats up out of the water is unexplained, and we do not see the helicopter wrap its ropes around it, yet it is a mesmeric moment in the film, for we know something wonderfully magical is going on. In the Fellini film, a helicopter is carrying a statue of Jesus Christ as that film opens. Yet, in the Fellini film, there is manifest symbolism afoot, as the statue is used as a bargaining chip for the main character, played by Marcello Mastroianni, to try to score points with women, thus subverting the holy essence of the figure. In Angelopoulos’s film, the symbolism of the hand is less obvious, and several interpretations can be made, including it just being an unexplained interlude to give the audience a chance to breathe with the characters. Also, the scene goes on far longer than the cut-happy sort of editing of Hollywood schlockmeistery would allow, with Orestes, then the kids, watching the hand shrink in size as it disappears toward the horizon, in yet another long and satisfying take. Thus, the scene transcends mere homage to the Fellini film, and crystallizes as an enigmatic and powerful statement in its own right, and a great moment in this magnificent film.

But, the earlier scene with the snow, and the escape leads into another outstanding moment, where the two children see something being dragged behind a car in the snow. The rope snaps and the car goes on. What they see is not a plow nor some mechanical vehicle in tow, but a dying horse that cannot get to its feet. Alexandre starts crying as Voula explains to him what is happening. Yet, as the snow falls, and the horse dies, and Alexandre cries, in the background, we see a bunch of revelers rejoicing in a marriage party that spills out of a restaurant and into the streets, oblivious to the dying animal and pained children. Is there human contact? No. The revelers carry on, without stopping for a moment, and looking at what is so near their lives. The horse soon dies, as Alexandre keeps crying till the scene fades to black. In a dumbed down Hollywood film the wedding party would have come over to comfort the children and attend to the horse. But, not in this poetic realism, which depicts not the overdone inhumanity of humans, but the even more real and far more recurrent obliviousness and inurement to any and all suffering not related to the self, especially when preoccupied with hedonistic pleasures. Again, a perfect melding of the realistic ways people act (how many times do we step over the itinerant, or ignore a wounded animal?) with the sublimely and subliminally poetic. In fact, Angelopoulos probably combines the two more effectively in this film than any other filmmaker I can recall.

Soon after that scene is when they come upon Orestes, then split up from him, which leads into the abuse scene. But, before that, there is a great scene where Voula sleeps on Orestes’ bus, and Alexandre goes off to a local café to do some menial work, to get food for him and his sister. While there, a vagabond with a violin comes in, plays a tune, then is chased off by the owner. Alexandre claps at the impromptu recital, until the owner glares at him, and he goes back to work. It’s a terrific scene, again a Fellinian moment, yet somehow even deeper, because it is not too over the top, like some of the best Fellini Absurdism. When the pair meet up again with Orestes, in perhaps the film’s only flawed moment (too contrived) Orestes makes a deal with them, that he will help them reach the border town of Thessaloniki by train before he joins the Greek Army.

He decides to sell his motorcycle, after leaving his family troupe, and taking the kids with him. But, after he conducts business at a nightclub, Voula and Alexandre take off. Orestes follows them, with her schoolbag in tow. Voula is jealous that she is not loved by Orestes, as much as she love shim. It is dark, on a deserted highway, and the scene then climaxes as he holds the sobbing girl- who earlier refused to touch him when he wanted to teach her to dance (still affected by her sexual violation), and tells her it is always like this the first time (meaning her falling in love with him). The camera pans around them, and then the children take off, and we linger on Orestes watching them disappear from his life.

There is one final great scene before the ending of the film. The kids are looking for money to get the final train out of Greece, to cross the border to Germany (unaware that the two countries are not bordering, and that they will need passports, as well), when Voula up and asks a soldier for 385 drachmas. The man knows not what to do. He thinks she is a child prostitute, and ponders whether or not to accept his idea of her proposition. He wanders in and out of frame several times, over a few minutes, then walks toward the train tracks. Voula follows, and it seems like he is ready to accept her proposal- possibly for sex or fellatio. Then, he abruptly leaves her money and walks away. He has decency and compassion, unlike the truck driver.

The pair board a train, then decamp, when they overhear the need for passports. they try to sneak across the border to Germany (claimed to be at a river). They get into a boat, and take off. Just as they disappear out of view, shots ring out from the border guard tower. The next we see it is morning, misty, and the kids land at what seems to be the other side of the shore. There, Alexandre sees a tree in the distance, says, ‘In the beginning there was the dark, and the light was divided from the darkness,’ and the two run toward it, hug it, and from a distance seem to blend within its trunk. They have obviously transcended. Their trek to the North, in Germany, for their father, has likely led to their death. The final shot can be taken several ways, but that is what makes it so great.

Seen as the tree of life, the pair has been reborn in death. Or, if seen as the tree of knowledge, the pair has come upon a truth that yet eludes the viewer. Or, they have crossed Styx into an underworld every bit as brutal as the real world they left. Or, there are a handful of other explanations. Yet, they all have some validity, and that Angelopouos trusts the audience to take what they need, rather than ram it down our throats Hollywood style, is why this is a masterpiece of a film, just as the DVD cover blurb insists. That it won the top prize, the Silver Lion, at the 1988 Venice Film Festival, and the Best Directing nod at the Chicago Film Festival is the least of its claims to greatness. It is lyrical, realistic, poetic, brutal, and delicately tender. Just look at the scene where Alexandre, once found by Voula and Orestes, after working at the café to eat, hands his sister a sandwich, or the scene where Orestes says goodbye to them. Any Hollywood film would have had Orestes give up his dream of the Army and care for the children. But, in this world- the realistic one Angelopoulos limns, he acts in a real way, and lets them go.

The performance by Tzortzoglou is the film’s best. But the children are terrific, too. They both have a detached air that a lonely life would inflict. They are likely latchkey children, and despite their traumas, carry on as such weatherbeaten kids would. One can only guess at what sort of mother their mother is. At one point, Voula- in an internal letter to her father, claims that Alexandre has chided her for betraying him- a claim that seems remarkable for a kindergartener, when she thinks they should turn back. Yet, this does not seem forced, as the boy seems, in some ways, even more mature and capable than his sister. And, after all, we see that neither their mother nor the authorities seem too intent on finding the duo, so the boy may sense something about their situation that Voula has missed.

The musical score by Eleni Karaindrou is perfectly balanced between the wistful and pathetic, while the cinematography of Giorgos Arvanitis is stunning, even if not in the claimed original widescreen, but a 1.33:1 aspect ratio that some critics have decried. Others have stated that the 1.33:1 aspect ratio is the original ratio for the film. The DVD by New Yorker Video has absolutely no extras, and is not dubbed into English. It only has English subtitles, although the film transfer is sterling. Some DVD critics have declaimed the colors as bleached or faded, but not in my copy of the film. Yes, there are few sunlit shots, but this is in keeping with the not too high nor low gauziness of this whole personal yet mythical children’s journey. The constant overcast skies remind me of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, and also many episodes of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Decalogue, while the long and penetrating takes are influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky.

This film has long been grouped with two other of Angelopoulos’s films (Voyage To Cythera and Ulysses’ Gaze) as a voyage trilogy, but it certainly stands alone, self-contained, as a great work of art. If the other two films are as powerful, Angelopoulos will have authored a trilogy that stands with the best that Bergman, Antonioni, Ozu, or Kieslowski have offered. Of course, detractors have claimed what they usually do about great films that depend upon a penetrating beyond the ordinary- that this and other films by Angelopoulos are slow and boring. But, given the depth this film covers, it is a film that could have gone on another hour and remained fascinating. Also, the film is filled with movement- emotional, material, or narrative, even if the frame stands still. Then, there is the mixture of the personal, political, mythic and sexual, so no critic worth their salt can claim the films are boring, unless they are simply wishing for Orestes to have crashed and burnet on his motorcycle.

Landscape In The Mist is a truly great film and work of art, loaded with little moments (a cock that struts into a train station and is caught before the camera pans to the sleeping children) and those grand (as mentioned). It strives for a sort of an implicate order even as it specifies its claims to two individual children, and it is in the fluid melding of such high aims in such an easily achieved manner that Angelopoulos’s greatness in this film is achieved. It is one of those films where, even without thinking, the perfection of its image and message succeeds in moving the viewer. Sit still, be moved, and watch. Landscape In The Mist is that great.

[Originally posted at Blogcritics]

--
Dan Schneider
www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension