On a chilly September evening, the 22nd to be exact, I attended the Cinémathèque at 8:30 pm. This was the first time I had ever come to this repertory cinema. It had a contemporary feel and had a well organized staff directing all spectators to the viewing room. In contrast with Hollywood picture screening theaters, there weren’t any accompaniment stands or anything to do with entertainment for that matter. The atmosphere remained true to the environment. It was warm and welcoming. These movie goers weren’t simply “killing time”, they were there to witness an auteur’s vision, to submerge themselves into his world for a brief 127 minutes. No one spoke a word during the presentation, it was absolute silence, obviously until the movie was over and there was plenty to discuss. To my surprise the theater was fully capacitated and having a hard time finding a seat, I ended up in the second row. The room was mainly filled with middle-aged Greek folks who were anxious to see the work, the marvel of one of their own. The feature film is entitled “Landscape in the mist” or “Topio stin omihli” by Theodore Angelopoulos. The cinema reflected the film in the sense that it felt foreign, submerged into the unexpected; no bright lights, no structured plot lines.
This
motion picture is a modern epic journey of two shattered heroes. The film commences
with a brother, Alexandros and older sister Voula reciting the Christian Genesis
tale of creation. Voula explains that dark turned into light; darkness representing their
life in Greece and light
symbolizing Germany.
These siblings are stuck dwelling in the void and are subjects to the failiure of contemporary society. In the
midst of “chaos”, they are on the constant never ending search for their absent
prodigal father that, according to their mother resides in Germany. Every
night they go to a train station to watch the departure of the train that would
ultimately lead them to their father and one night they finally dare to get on.
But their voyage turns out to be a perilous, unpredictable, yet venturesome one
with the company of a twenty somewhat year old young man, Oresteas. They all
together confront suffering, physical and emotional illness, love, evil and
death. Evading the pursuit of the police
and indifferent uncaring relatives, they sneak onto trains, hitchhike, and
become subjects to poverty, rape, and exploitation. These fearless characters
plunge into a pool of liberation and danger. At the end Alexandros tells Voula
the same story from Genesis that she told him at the start. The children do
finally reach Germany’s
border, but there is no border between Germany
and Greece
and the river they cross or even their whole journey is perhaps a search for homeostasis
in a chaotic reckless world.
This film
has a linear narrative, that in sort recreates reality as time moves forward
chronologically and we as spectators forget that this film is a construction.
But, on a cinematographic note, this film cannot go unnoticed. Angelopoulos subverts
all conventions found in Hollywood feature
presentations.. As an auteur, he doesn’t believe in cutting and using the usual
shot counter shot method of filming. Instead, he trusts his viewers to
understand and follow the development through the adoption of long takes. The film has a long average shot length, which
in turn preserves the psychological unity of time and space and even builds
tension. It also consists of tracking shots to follow character by panning the
camera.
Throughout
the feature, we are made to feel like a third party, a witness that is tagging
along with these shattered heroes by the natural camera height on eye-level (with
the exception of scene where we are looking down at Orestes disempowering him
as he separated and is abandoned by the traveling siblings for the last time) and
the fact that we are not asked to identify with a specific character, hence
there not being any point of view shots. The camera distance between the viewer
and the subject is usually a full shot with deep space depicting their actual
importance in the world that encompasses them; turning them into mere minutia.
Another of
Angelopoulos’ techniques is to leave his mediator on a tripod and let it role
as if it was forgotten. This is evident in the rape scene where Voula is forcefully
taken to the back of a man’s truck who picked her up while she was hitchhiking.
We watch them enter the truck and the shot is kept immobile. There are no
sounds of pleasure or discomfort, yet we hear what we would consider at this
crucial moment ambient noise; the cars passing. The director also forces us to
see that when an event as shocking as this one occurs, life still goes on, so
he continues to hold the shot while two automobiles pull over, two men come
out, converse and then leave. This creates a feeling of insecurity in order for
the audience to react true to life and leave more affected by the experience.
Angelopoulos not only forces you to feel, puts you in an uncomfortable
position, but also inspires you to think. With natural dim lighting and short
dialogue, Angelopoulos demonstrates the human condition and inevitable
suffering. The film also calls attention to itself when Oresteas finds celluloid
in the discarded trash of a still image of a tree in the mist. He puts it up
against the light, studies it carefully as the camera zooms in, and that same
shot ends up being the final scene.
The score
of the movie ties all the images together. It is composed of diegetic and
non-diegetic music/sound. An example
would be the song coming from the jukebox on the deserted beach or the violin
being played by a random vagabond that enters a restaurant or even the accordion
played by an old theater performer. The non-diegetic sound comes forward with voice
over narration of the children reading their letters to their father out loud;
those that have no apparent final destination. Throughout the film, the same
background song plays over and over that has a nostalgic and morose quality giving
a cue of when negative emotions are at their peak.
To
conclude, Angelopoulos paints a journey of two children whose introduction to
the real world has been nothing but a misguided leap into the unknown and
people do usually fear what they do not understand. The feature is filled with
unforgettable instances that are simultaneously real and hallucinatory, seeping
into the surreal. Wrapped in this 35mm masterpiece, we are set on an odyssey, lose
ourselves and wander with Alexandros and Voula through their various
hardships. This Hellenic independent
filmmaker has successfully put us in the mindset of “were going, we know where
we want to end up, we’ll get there one day, but for now were just going”.
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