LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST (1988) Directed by Theo Angelopoulos
Today (January 2017) I watched this 1988 masterpiece from the late Theo Angelopoulos. It won the Silver Lion at Venice Film Festival, and many other awards too. It’s an exquisite allegorical tale and perhaps knowledge or lack of it, about modern Greek history could determine what you think it might be about. I have my own ideas as do reviewers before me, here on IMDb. I love the way this maestro director has used a sort of Odyssey (what could be more appropriate?) by two young siblings, (Voula, aged 14 and her brother Alexander, aged 5) travelling Greece in search of someone (or something) they want to believe exists, just to “understand and know but not to stay,” the older girl says. This is a film that is not about what it appears to be about, but is an allegory and a poem, a work of visual art, and profound emotional truth. The visual power and beauty, the gorgeous music (by Eleni Karaindrou), every frame on screen, are all spell-binding. To me, each scene and episode in their young lives on this journey through Greece to find the landscape in the mist, can be linked to the story of the Greek nation and its people. The landscape in the mist is tellingly, first seen on a few frames of 35mm movie film found in the muddy street by their young motor-cyclist mentor… a kind of guiding angel travelling with them for a time. Perhaps he can only see it on the celluloid because he is searching for this mythic landscape (or condition) too. This piece of “found film” serves to link the director himself into the collective experience of all the Greeks. Perhaps it’s the modern day “Golden Fleece”? What a gorgeous and poetic film. Almost as beautiful as the director’s “The Weeping Meadow” – one of my all time most admired works of art in cinema. (so long after the film was made, I (who live in Australia) had to order the DVD via Amazon, and it came to me from Greece, in a beautiful transfer supervised by the director himself, and with good English subtitles.)
Copyright Cynthia Webb, January 2017
photo: courtesy of the Producers and IMDb