Non-narrative film criticism

Obscure Objects of Desire: A Jam Session on Non-Narrative
By Raymond Durgnat, David Ehrenstein and Jonathan Rosenbaum
(Film Comment, July-August 1978) available online at Light Sleeper.

Adrian Martin recommended me this roundtable organised by Jonathan Rosenbaum, 30 years ago, precisely on one of the theme I wanted to expand upon on this upcoming blogathon. So it will be a very valuable preparatory reading for further discussions.

Although the premise of their discussion is about writing non-narrative reviews without making sense of an eventual plot, in films either non-linear (mainstream) or nonsensical (Avant Garde), most of what they bring forth could as well apply to C.C.C. (where narrative is rather minimalistic than actually non-linear or nonsensical). The point being to approach cinema from a visual sensibility, opposed to the literary framework of a plot-driven synopsis.

Note : A survey of the various typologies of plot structures in CCC would be another interesting study to note the commonality and peculiarities. I don't think plots in CCC are necessarily complicated or poetical. They are often very basic, and don't play much role in the overall atmosphere of the film.

JONATHAN ROSENBAUM (roundtable introduction) : To broach a subject and isolate a problem that most film criticism represses, stumbles over, or refuses to acknowledge, preferring to stick to the authoritarian guidelines of the synopsis and the plot summary. "Telling a story" (...) becomes a singular grid through which all the diverse structures and operations of movies can theoretically be apprehended, codified, and converted into meanings. (...) Peter Gidal addresses a related question when he complains about several critics interpreting even Michael Snow films in relation to narrative models. The problem is, Gidal’s definitions and descriptions of non-narrative structures are nearly all negative indications. What we need are some positive ones.

That's one of the key concerns about CCC, they are called "boring art films", "festival films", slow. They emphasize on what CCC doesn't do, in comparison to the usual expectations from mainstream cinema, instead of judging them for what they do ambition to achieve. So CCC films are systematically portrayed in "negative" terms (not necessarily pejorative but contrasted to a positive norm), and defended in terms moderating the weight of non-mainstream traits :
"It's not as boring as we'd expect", "it's long but I didn't see time pass by", "We have no problem to follow the story even without much dialogue"...
Adrian Martin mentioned the same problem for Avant Garde cinema, which is compared to the Mainstream norm by critics, who fail to understand that this norm doesn't apply.

RAYMOND DURGNAT: No, it’s a question of defining relations. Semiologists often assume that you start from units and then define the relationships between them by certain syntactical procedures. But the alternative approach, taken from structuralism in the life sciences, or Gestalt psychology, or many different positions in philosophy, is that units are only phases in structures. You don’t start from the unit, you start from the structure ... You have to distinguish among movement, action, event, and narrative. They’re four completely different things, or rather the last three shade into each other. But time and time again people imply that movement entails narrative, making film a mainly narrative act. Yet movement often isn’t even action. All the leaves moving around on a tree don’t constitute as many narratives as there are leaves. (...)
Or let’s consider Vigo, times three. I don’t think one could describe A Propos de Nice as narrative. In Zero de Conduite, there is a narrative, and it does make sense, but nonetheless it’s just a broad structure, or rather just a drift, and the meat is the heavy atmospherics wound around and around the plot, at right angles to it.

Here is an interesting angle to explore for us. What are the functions and nature of "movement", "action", "event" and "narrative" in CCC?
I especially like the tree-leaves analogy. It's a matter of perspective scale. The unit is either the leaf or the tree, depending on what scale is considered. All the shots don't necessarily constitute a narrative point, we should be able to consider the film as a whole, and the blank spaces (slow long-takes, empty frames) as one of many leaves that build the overall shape of the tree we are looking at. We shouldn't expect a meaningful message or an action in every shot. The film is a flow and we experience the length of a film in its entirety, with its time dedicated to "movements without action" and its time dedicated to "events with narrative progression". And these movements are as important as the action in cinema. Especially in CCC.

JONATHAN ROSENBAUM: The guiltless pursuit of desire that they espouse is like a sensual dive into non-narrative, a constellation of wants that shine in different directions, make individual demands, create a stampede rather than get herded together on one cattle car that is headed for the slaughterhouse. That may sound like a brutal metaphor for narrative, but the functional structure of the cattle car and the story in relation to the occupant (whether it’s a character or a spectator) is quite similar. (...)
Theoretically you could say that this process [disintegration of a single continuous thread] takes place at one point or another in every film, whenever one’s attention becomes discontinuous. The synopsis is therefore not only a life preserver for the less courageous, but a Platonic model of the way we’re "supposed" to read films, of films as they’re "supposed" to be read.

I wouldn't blame traditional mainstream narration in genre cinema myself. It has its own rational and its legit purpose. There is an audience for it, who ask to be herded and cued for a submissive escapism.Though, the readership of mainstream criticism is enslaved by this plot-drive indeed. And every film, mainstream or contemplative or experimental, must fit in a predefined template, a capsule summary, an abstract giving the protagonists and the argument.
They denounced this lazy practice 30 years ago, and film reviewing has not improved since on this aspect...

RAYMOND DURGNAT: Narrative is run largely by the laws of music. When Truffaut compares a film to a circus in which there’s a sequence of contrasting moods, he’s absolutely right. In 42nd Street each of the Busby Berkeley numbers is an elongation of a static situation. They’re states lyricized rather than sequences of actions decisively changing states. Many writers, especially poets, begin with a feeling -- what they’ve got to put before you is a state of mind, which in itself is complex and simultaneous, a vertical structure but in a sequential order. Verse form often functions as a kind of binding over the sequentiality, by regular repetition and rhythm.
(...)
RAYMOND DURGNAT: The pacing of the plot is always lost amongst a swarm of conspicuous details that have to do with the kind of physical integrity of the scene, or act like digressions.
(...)
JONATHAN ROSENBAUM: It’s almost as if the physical details on the screen become a rhythmic structure, and the plot disappears into the rhythmic pacing of the details, as in a mosaic. Finally temps morts are becoming important in Hollywood, which has finally picked up on neo-realism, and picked up on this interesting nitty-gritty mosaic of detail.

The musicals may seem far away from CCC, but the example of Busby Berkeley is an interesting alternative (body language) abstraction (although highly codified and choreographed) to the traditional mainstream narrative. So in this sense, it also eshews dialogue and plot to convey an atmospherical experience of cinema, rather than rely on a word-driven walk-through. And as far as what Durgnat exposed earlier, we find the same distinction between movement and action, with a focus on rhythm and flow that could theoretically correspond to the spirit of CCC. Even some Contemplative filmmakers of the Méliès tradition (Column G : Contemplative Fantasy) resort to this kind of lyrical staging of bodies (albeit without heavy music), like Barney (Cremaster, DR9), Suleiman (Divine Intervention), Tsai Ming-Liang (The Hole, The Wayward Cloud), Sokurov (Russian Ark) or Opera Jawa...

Contemplative Blogathon 2

Sunday 6th - Sunday 13th, January 2008
second week of 2008

Nearly a year since the experiment at Unspoken Cinema, to run a blogathon over a month on a team-blog. It was a great success then. Hopefully we can repeat this enthousiastic event once again. This anniversary will be an opportunity to bring forth another series of ideas and posts to discuss this type of cinema. What are the new films since last year? What are the new developments of this trend? I hope that we haven't said everything that had to be said about "Contemporary Contemplative Cinema" (C.C.C.) yet.
This time it will take place over the course of a week only (I somehow expect fewer participations) . And we'll meet on this team-blog (which is working better than last time around). So if you're interested request to join the members to be able to cross-post your contributions here.

In a spirit of continuity and long-term memory to fight the currency-driven format of the blogosphere, I propose to revisit the same blogathon we did last year, with a sequel, to eventually note the evolution of a trend in the collective consciousness, the dissemination of a concept from a 12 months old blog-event.

Suggested theme of the blogathon :
Narrative strategies in plotless films

To look at how C.C.C. films manage to tell a story without the traditional dramatic structure. To see if there is one alternative strategy or various types of contemplative plotlessness in these films to compensate the lack of dialogue and suspense-drive.
Contrarians could even prefer to note how we can find traces of classic narration (or an altered form) in C.C.C. films.

For example (if anyone feels inspired by it) :

• Musical approach to C.C.C. analysis : silence, repetition/variation, tone color, frequency, rhythm/tempo, order/harmony (suggested by David Bordwell)
• Are there common/recurrent themes particularly suited to be best depicted by the C.C.C. form?
• Figure of the mute protagonist. Reasons and narrative justification why some people lost speech in C.C.C. films. Is it physical, medical, moral disorder, or the result of an insular environment?
• Beyond a plot-driven description of films (synopsis) : to review films without summarizing actions and events, character acts, situations, narrative structures. (Recommended read by Adrian Martin : Obscure Objects of Desire: A Jam Session on Non-Narrative By Raymond Durgnat, David Ehrenstein and Jonathan Rosenbaum, from 1978)
• What happens during long takes that cannot be shown with a montage ellipsis?
• Evocation (by vacuum of the screen) of the unspoken, unrevealed reality taking place off-screen.
• The formal means of pragmatic existentialism. What substitutes the long-winded intellectual speeches, the verbal conceptualization of the similar alienation expressed in Modernist films?
• The end of the speaking parts. Often the hero in a C.C.C. film has less dialogue to speak than supporting characters. How lead actors counter this imbalance (body language, stillness, interiority) in opposition with traditional cinema.
• Passive, unobtrusive camerawork restricts the narrative modes of expression of a C.C.C. auteur. What are the new minimal ways for a filmmaker to mark his/her own intentions in the story?
• Identification to non-actors, opposed to the star-driven glamorous idealism to look up to.
• Discontinuous tableaux-vivants, opposed to the classic continuous storytelling.
• Reviews/analysis of recent C.C.C. films released since last blogathon in January 2007, or ones not covered in the last blogathon as well.
• etc.
  

Given the expected small turnout, it's better to leave the entries open to any topic and forms. The emphasis on "non-narration" this year is only an underlying point of conjunction. Anything goes, it's up to your imagination. As long as we continue to talk about this underanalyzed Contemplative trend.

See you all here in January! in less than a month now... Spread the word around.

Pedro Costa by Rosenbaum

A great introduction to the radical cinema of Pedro Costa by Jonathan Rosenbaum at the Chicago Reader on the occasion of a retrospective. And I highlight here the excerpts dealing with his contemplative traits, and I like a lot how Rosenbaum talks about it.

Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa
by Jonathan Rosenbaum, November 15, 2007 (read the full article at Chicago Reader)
Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa twists Hollywood inspiration in his tableaux of dispossession and poverty.

“At the same time, quietly telling whoever will listen that cinema is exactly the opposite of what 99% of the film world thinks, and he is getting more radical every day.” (Quintín on Costa cited by JR)

"The cinema of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa is populated not so much by characters in the literary sense as by raw essences—souls, if you will. This is a trait he shares with other masters of portraiture, including Robert Bresson, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Demy, Alexander Dovzhenko, Carl Dreyer, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Jacques Tourneur. It’s not a religious predilection but rather a humanist, spiritual, and aesthetic tendency. What carries these mysterious souls, and us along with them, isn’t stories—though untold or partially told stories pervade all six of Costa’s features. It’s fully realized moments, secular epiphanies. (...)
Despite his rigor and his attachment to avant-garde filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet (...) many of Costa’s cinematic reference points are Hollywood auteurs. You could even say that he’s been consciously remaking some of the movies of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Fritz Lang, and Tourneur on his own terms—in Portuguese slums, most recently in digital video, with nonprofessional actors, some of them exiles from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde or junkies. Though this makes the films sound crude, the dialogue is scripted, the scenes are rehearsed and shot several times, and visual beauty is a constant. (...)
Costa’s films have the reputation of being difficult, but I would argue that three of them are relatively accessible. (...)
But teasing out the narrative in the other three features—all shot in Lisbon slums and hovels, many being audibly and visibly razed—is no easy matter. And getting used to their idiosyncrasies is a challenge because, as Quintín suggests, you have to accept Costa’s terms, which means rethinking the way you watch movies. (...) Bones was shot on film with a conventional crew and has a conventional running time (94 minutes); the actors, though mostly nonprofessionals, play characters with different names. But Costa himself shot the latter two on DV over several years, using crews of just two or three people. They’re both about three hours long, the camera never moves, and the performers, all nonprofessionals, play themselves. The most common complaint about Costa is that he aestheticizes poverty. (...) None of Costa’s estheticizing makes abject poverty look attractive, and much of it confounds the very notion that neorealism opens a door onto the world."

“Fiction is always a door that we want to open or not—it’s not a script. We’ve got to learn that a door is for coming and going. I believe that today, in the cinema, when we open a door, it’s always quite false, because it says to the spectator: ‘Enter this film and you’re going to be fine, you’re going to have a good time,’ and finally what you see in this genre of film is nothing other than yourself, a projection of yourself.”
A closed door that leaves us guessing (Published at Rouge) Pedro Costa's Tokyo conference, cited by JR.

"Costa even discourages identification by refusing to shoot reverse angles, Hollywood’s conventional way of drawing us into the characters’ space. But it’s hard to be indifferent toward these characters and what they do (or don’t do). Costa combines Straub and Huillet’s fanatical belief in capturing material reality with a more disembodied search for spiritual essence found in some chamber works by Tourneur and Dreyer. What emerges from this apparent contradiction is a passageway designed for coming and going, not a simple portal that opens onto “the truth.” Rather than charge onto the premises, we go back and forth to get our bearings, and Costa’s beautifully constructed sounds and images are our guide and not a destination. For all their difficulty, and despite the fact they build on older work, Costa’s films are the cinema of the future, partly because of their intimate scale."

Updated genealogy chart

Here is the revisited, revamped chart of the tentative genealogy for CC that I did last year for the blogathon 2007. The old chart is there. I've changed a few things and added some names. But it's still the same schemas. The question marks are directors I'm not sure where to place. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment. Criticism of this classification is of course welcome (that's one way to look at this trend and there are probably other ways to represent this selective history that are more productive).
It's interesting to note how CC seems to mend the blurry fence between documentary and mainstream narrative fiction. The 3 yellow columns are the most common modalities of traditional cinema.
Some of the CC auteurs are listed in several column because their oeuvre covers a wide array of film types. Sokurov for example is the most versatile, as he's made films in almost every column (even where I didn't cite his name). But other CC auteurs are exploiting a personal style that belongs to only one column. The names featured mean they are representative of this sub-family, either because they are consistent or because the only film fitting the profile becomes a touchstone. Although this chart should be detailed with film names to avoid generalisations.
The CC auteurs in all CAPS are figureheads for that column. They are my personal choice, so they are arguable. I may be biased by those I'm most familiar with, or those I like best. And I might overlook others who are more representative, or more productive, or more precursors to deserve the spotlight.
Anyway the upper part (precursors from the silent era to pre-CC) is there to give a summary context, there might be errors, but the lower part (contemporean CC auteurs) is the taxonomy that matters. So that's where I'd like to look into the association between the auteurs within a sub-family.
All this can always be improved with your feedback.

I've also added a few links between individual auteurs to show a direct influence on their filmmaking. That could make another "map" just for the inter-generational connections. Anybody knows more links to be made that would make sense of a certain historical continuity?

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