when you love & admire a very unique way of intellectual storytelling combined with an inimitable visionary style plus transmitting metaphorically encoded historical &/or political messages or agendas, that will crucially influence the persons involved, then you have to be in great anticipation as soon as a new film by angelopoulos is announced. he certainly is in a league of his own when it comes to auteurist masterworks: the travelling players, Alexander the great, the hunters, voyage to kythera, landscape in the mist, are undoubtedly movies of unparalleled beauty & expressiveness. of course, you may criticize the one-sidedness of his recurring theme (greek history in the 20th century intervening & intertwining with the individual fates of angelopoulos' protagonists) or the lack of depth or even shallowness of his characters (they seem hollow because they usually represent archetypes & not persons per se), and an irritating tendency to allow his actors bursts into melodramatic gestures & exclamations: minor flaws you quickly forget, because you are drawn into a cinematic maelstrom you don't want to miss. angelopoulos' last achievement though, the dust of time, second film of the so called "trilogia" following the weeping meadow, is a major disappointment i am still recovering from (if you don't mind the hypochondriac touch of my saying so). i saw the movie at the film museum munich, shortly after it premiered in Germany at the berlinale 2009. since angelopoulos obviously denied permission for screening (the film museum hosted an angelopoulos-retrospective, having the dust of time making the final contribution) a projection of the DVD-version was shown instead, with the expected harrowing results. a double-no-go, the organizers at film museum are to blame for: you just don't show an angelopoulos-movie made in 35mm as a DVD beamed on the screen, it's like a diluted premier cru from château Margaux. but the lousy quality of the screening was matched by two hours of what I would mildly call a failed attempt by angelopoulos to make an angelopoulos-movie: it is pretentious & cliché-ridden, it tries to operate on multiple levels none of which has enough substance to either carry the storyline or to make us sympathize with its protagonists. while watching the movie one is constantly reminded that it just wants too much & achieves almost nothing. at least, you may admire the tremendous effort involved in orchestrating the mass-scenes, but you can't get rid of the feeling that this & some remarkably symbolic shots are not enough to rank this higher than average. besides, i haven't seen a movie in a long time that throws its actors' massive talents that easily overboard. of course, you may give it a try, it's an angelopoulos' film, but i do bid you welcome to the club of "the disappointed cineast".
Review of Trilogia II: I skoni tou hronou
