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Weighs in with a slew of international awards and critical raves, including a
1988 Venice Film Festival Silver Lion and the 1989 European Felix for
Best Picture. The film's director, Theo
Angelopoulos, was also honored with a retrospective showing of his
work at the Museum of Modern Art. This film tells the simple story of
two children, Voula (Tania Palaiologou) and Alexander (Michalis Zeke),
who are on the run in northern Greece, trying to make it to Germany to
find their father (who may or may not be there). This odyssey is by turns
heartwarming and harrowing.
En route, the children encounter an indifferent
uncle, a traveling troupe of actors, a truck driver who rapes Voula, and,
most important, the kindly Orestes (Stratos Tzortzoglou, handsome and
natural in his role), a young man on a motorcycle who is about to go into
military service, and who takes a generous interest in the pair. By the
skin of their teeth and a few minor miracles, the kids finally make it
to Germany, their "landscape in the mist." Though visually stunning, the
film somehow manages never to rely on the travel-poster images of Greece
or the famed Grecian light that featured so prominently in the recent
HIGH SEASON and SHIRLEY VALENTINE. Instead, LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST's action
occurs on a succession of uniformly overcast days and in drab locales--bleak
roadside cafes and truck stops, desolate villages, uninviting beaches.
Greece has surely never more resembled New Jersey than in this film by
one of its foremost directors. Yet, Giorgos Arvanitis' cinematography imbues these unprepossessing setups with a somber beauty that is the film's
most compelling aspect.
Angelopoulos likes to keep things in longshot,
evoking a sense of alienation and emphasizing the obliqueness of the story.
He is also fond of overhead angles suggestive of a godlike point of view.
These stylistic decisions work most powerfully in the rape scene, which
is handled with an almost unbearable Brechtian objectivity. Unfortunately,
Angelopoulos' other set pieces are less successful, including a sub-Fellini
tableaux of people on a street, frozen like statues in wonder at a sudden
snowfall; the agonizing death of a horse; yellow-clad railroad workers
pumping a handcar in and out of scenes like some mute Greek chorus; and
a violinist's abrupt, melancholy entrance into a restaurant. (The film
is at its most absurd when an immense, sculpted hand bobs up from the
sea and is hoisted aloft by a helicopter right out of LA DOLCE VITA.)
Angelopoulos hangs onto his scenes for what seems like forever, as if
the extra beats alone are sufficient to make the images indelible. The effect is at first provocative, then affected and annoying (to suggest
ennui in a disco, Angelopoulos employs a funereally tracking camera that
is so relentlessly subjective it's punishing.) In keeping with this style,
the film's characters are impressively taciturn, but when they do speak,
their words can be disconcertingly high-flown, as when one speaks the
first line of Rilke's Duino Elegies (translated by the subtitles as "If
I were to shout, who would hear me out of the armies of angels"). Ponderous
and self-conscious, LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST would have benefitted from having
an indulgent half-hour or so of footage excised. Although they are mere
pawns in Angelopoulos' directorial game, the actors serve the filmmaker
well. Palaiologou, with her preternaturally adult face, conveys a steely
survivor's determination that almost convinces you of the improbable attainment
of her quest. Tiny Zeke has an amusing, naturally grave demeanor; his
actions could be those of a courtly, elderly statesman. Unfortunately,
Angelopoulos' conceptual grip is so vise-like that these two never seem
to break out into anything resembling the spontaneous behavior of kids.
(When the eerie violinist makes his entrance, for example, Alexander immediately
takes a seat to listen respectfully.) Instead, they are used to convey
the director's banal notion of children as beings of mysterious, unfathomable
beauty.
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