Review of Trilogia: To livadi pou dakryzei

This film is good, and very moving, but extremely tedious. Almost every single shot in the film is set up exactly the same; master shot, maybe some movement, maybe not, and then the camera stops for a few seconds and begins to slowly zoom in turning a long shot into a medium long/medium shot, that's basically every single shot, no variety, no change. It's such a beautiful film it's a shame that the director and cinematographer chose to shoot every scene the same because this just heaps on tedium, why would I want to see the same set-up over, and over. When shooting a film like this, a minimalist tragedy, you have to have a perfect eye for composition (like Tarr's Satantango, or Hou's The Puppetmaster) because it's very easy for your film to become boring just from the way you shoot it. You can set-up shots in a similar manner (Hou very often shoots through doors, and across balconies, etc...), but not every shot should have the same formula.

The other problem with this film is Alexandra Aidini. Her performance is awful. She always seems over-emotional, and none of her reactions seem realistic. She always seems overly morose, and has not the range for the role she was cast in.

I was really ready to love this film, and did for the first 1 1/2 (approx.), but I just became bored after a while. It's not that I'm not use to films like this, I love the minimalist films of (the aforementioned) Tarr, Hou, and Tsai Ming-liang, Jia Zhang-ke, Bresson, etc... but their films (sans one, or two) never seem repetitive, unfortunately this film does. Still a good film, though.