Alexander the Great [1980]

 Alexander the Great, with its sprawling tapestry and intricate thematic examinations – beautiful but fragile dream of utopia, transition of a mythic and heroic revolutionary into an authoritarian corrupted by personality cult, contemporary Greek history rife with repressive regimes and foreign interventions – made it, alongwith The Travelling Players and The Hunters, among the most complex, searingly leftist, provocative and densely structured films in Angelopoulos’ storied career. And yet, interestingly, its historical evocations and allusions were relatively more obtuse, elusive and metaphorical. These facets, therefore, made this an interesting point of intersection between his extraordinary ‘Trilogy of History’ (which also comprised of Days of ’36) and equally sublime ‘Trilogy of Silence’ (Voyage to Cythera, The Beekeeper, Landscape in the Mist). It opens with the kidnap of pompous English nobility in Athens by a group of rebel freedom fighters spearheaded by an enigmatic, charismatic, staunchly dissident leader who calls himself Alexander the Great. The ransom demand to the puppet Greek government is simple – amnesty for his gang and write-off of debts of small peasants at the mercy of feudal landlords. They take refuge at a small village where he was revered and which has radically transitioned into socialist governance – using the short-lived Paris Commune as model, under the aegis of an idealist Communist teacher and Italian anarchists – where no one owns any property and everyone is responsible for everyone else. Things, though, take a troublesome turn when Alexander turn into an oppressor, while in turn being increasingly cornered by ruthless government forces bullied by the English. The exquisitely atmospheric narrative was filled with audaciously conceived and choreographed long takes, an infectious theme score, lively folk songs and a profound sense of fatalism.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Theo Angelopoulos

Genre: Drama/Historical Drama/Political Drama/Epic

Language: Greek/English

Country: Greece

Pity [2018]

While modernist films may sometimes appear weird, few have unabashedly worn that as a badge on their sleeves like the 'Greek Weird Wave', the arguably most well-known use case for which is Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth. Pity, the 2^nd feature by former TV commercial-maker and Lanthimos-collaborator Babis Makridis, possesses all the archetypes that makes it an exquisite member of the afore-mentioned movement; and interrestingly, despite its tar black humour, deliriously oddball premise, undeniably formalist approach and an eccentricity-quotient that brilliantly exploded as the narrative progressed, it still had a strong emotive appeal beneath its frosty, deceptively perverse and brutal visage. Its central tenet is the universality of pity as an expression and the absurd lengths one man is willing to go to elicit and preserve that. The film’s unnamed protagonist (fabulously enacted by Yannis Drakopoulos) is a taciturn, middle-aged, well-to-do lawyer, whose luscious wife (Evi Saoulidou) is in coma due to an accident. He, as a result, basks at the oodles of pity and sympathy that he gets from all – his neighbor, dry cleaner, secretary, dad, friends, a client whose father has been murdered and even a stranger he encounters in the hospital where his wife is admitted. Things, however, take a darkly funny downturn when his wife suddenly gets cured and returns home; while everyone is happy, he goes into a deep existential crisis and begins lying and prevaricating as well as coaxing and cajoling to keep eliciting pity. But, when his efforts cease engendering the desired results, he starts taking elaborate steps – from the sinister to the shocking – in this delicious, slow-burning black comedy, with its luminous photography providing excellent juxtaposition to its increasingly disconcerting proceedings.

Director: Babis Makridis
Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire
Language: Greek
Country: Greece

The Suspended Step of the Stork [1991]

Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau, two of the biggest icons of European cinema, famously played a married couple in the Antonioni masterwork La Notte. It was a delight to see them coming together again, in the first chapter in Angelopoulos’ ‘Trilogy of Borders’. In the former she was experiencing deep existential crisis and the two were drifting apart emotionally. Here, the roles are reversed with the husband, once a rising Greek statesman and a respected writer, having left everything behind while at the height of his popularity. Alexandre (Gregory Karr), a journalist, while in a military outpost in the Greek-Turkish border in order to make a documentary on illegal immigration, inadvertently stumbles upon an destitute Albanian refugee (Mastroianni) who bears a striking resemblance to the missing politician. He leaves his current project and dives headlong into making a docu on the enigmatic man in order to determine what compelled him into making this inexplicable transition. He enlists the participation of his former French wife who, despite having moved on, still experiences a profound sense of loss because of his sudden disappearance. Theo wonderfully tackled the subjects of identify and rootlessness, which he did in quite a few films of his including The Beekeeper which too had Mastroianni in it, as well as the utter meaninglessness of a world divided by man-made borders and exclusionary politics, and the consequent plight of the homeless and the displaced. The film’s contemplative, mournful tone were nicely accompanied by the arresting, washed out photography, fine score, great acting and a series of beautifully realized vignettes including the enactment of a heart-rending wedding across the Evros River.

Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Political Drama
Language: Greek
Country: Greece

Reconstruction (Anaparastasi) [1970]

Though Reconstruction might not rank amongst Angelopoulos’ greatest works, it was, nonetheless, a very good feature debut for him. Further, this, along with his next feature Days of ’36, provided for a smooth progression into the kind of aesthetics and themes his films are generally associated with, particularly on account of the increasing political commentaries. Shot in stark and high contrast black-and-whites, and coupled with sparse dialogues, minimal flourish, bleak visuals and austere tone, the film appeared, on hindsight, highly reminiscent of Bela Tarr’s works. Based on an actual event, the story concerns the murder of a Greek man, who had just returned home in his sparsely populated village from Germany where he had emigrated to seek work, by his philandering wife (Toula Stathopoulou) and her lover (Yiannis Totsikas) who works as a gamekeeper. The boldly employed fractured narrative which kept shifting back and forth temporally, show the attempts of the police to reconstruct the crime and determine the exact degree of culpability of the two, and events before and after the crime. But the exact moment of murder is never shown, thus making the film an interesting analysis on the nature of truth. Theo, however, didn’t just limit the scope to the crime; rather, he used that as the springboard for meditation on the slow disintegration of life and depopulation in the tiny and impoverished Greek village, and in turn an allegorical and telling commentary on the political turbulence and erosion suffered by the country during the course of 20^th century. In that sense, therefore, the film might even be considered as a precursor to Haneke’s desolate and allegorical masterpiece TheWhite Ribbon.

Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Genre: Drama/Crime Drama
Language: Greek
Country: Greece

The Beekeeper [1986]

The Beekeeper, the second chapter in Angelopoulos’ ‘Trilogy of Silence’, was thematically and stylistically a more apt companion piece to Eternity and A Day, along with Voyage to Cythera. Like the Bruno Ganz starrer, this was more of an intimate and personal drama than a sprawling or a political one, and had a renowned non-Greek actor as a middle-aged central protagonist who is quietly at odds with the fast-changing world around him. It began with a deeply emotional sequence – Spyros (Marcello Mastroianni), a soft-spoken teacher, internally weeping at his daughter’s marriage. Upon the completion of the event he leaves his wife and his job, and returns to his roots, so to speak – that of life on the roads keeping bees which he had learned from his father. During his journey he meets some of his old friends, and makes acquaintance with a young, carefree and promiscuous hitchhiker (Nadia Mourouzi). He initially avoids her advances because she reminds him of his daughters; yet, ironically for the same reason, he eventually embarks on a passionate tryst with her. Theo wonderfully counterbalanced the allusions of incest, self-guilt, mid-life crisis and futile attempts at personal redemption, with its broader, if subtler, sociopolitical observations on the chasm between Greece’s past and present. Mastroianni gave a masterful performance laden with restraint and near-passivity, while Mourouzi, too, was effective as the girl who briefly joins him in his physical, emotional, and ultimately, personal odyssey. As can be expected, the film comprised of exquisite washed-out photography, elegant camerawork, deeply melancholic tone, and leisurely pacing allowing for probing into the near impregnable psyche of the complex protagonist.

Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Road Movie
Language: Greek
Country: Greece