For a long time I was going to see the film Theo Angelopoulos “To vlemma tou Odyssea” / To vlemma tou Odyssea, 1995, but everything was postponed, after all, the timing of almost three hours, but now, finally, I am ready. I looked and thought. The film is not in any way a realistic story, it’s like the author’s reflections on the main,
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For a long time I was going to see the film Theo Angelopoulos “To vlemma tou Odyssea” / To vlemma tou Odyssea, 1995, but everything was postponed, after all, the timing of almost three hours, but now, finally, I am ready. I looked and thought. The film is not in any way a realistic story, it’s like the author’s reflections on the main, obviously for him, themes that he raised in the film that I recently watched, “The Interrupted Step of the Stork”, it’s about what people do, they fight all the time, they kill all the time, their existence is almost ghostly. The plot is based on Homer’s Odyssey, which the director was inspired by. The main character seems to be looking for the first three videos, once shot by the Manakis brothers, the founders of Greek cinema, who for all these years (and they began shooting in the early 20th century, the film takes place in 1994) and could not show, they disappeared and no one knows where they are. So who is our protagonist? This is the famous Greek director A. (he does not even have a name, he is played by Harvey Keitel), who has long lived abroad, comes to Greece to find these videos, finds out that they are not there, he continues his search, starting from Albania, then ending up in Skopje, Plovdiv, Bucharest, Belgrade, eventually he finds himself in war-torn Sarajevo, where he finds these videos, but at what cost he will get them? On the way, he meets with some people, even some women (the role of all these women is one actress – Maya Morgenstern), the action flows from the present to the past, or even into the imaginary. In Sarajevo, these videos were kept by the curator of the local cinematography Levi (played by Erland Josefson, who replaced Gian Maria Volonte, who died during filming, to whom this film is dedicated), who for many years worked to show them, then he abandoned this case with the outbreak of the war. A. is outraged by this, which inspires Levy to continue the work, which ends in success. It seems that A. got what he wanted, but the end is open, we do not know whether our Odysseus will return to his homeland, although he seems to hope so. I watched the film effortlessly, despite the timing, but it made less of an impression on me than the one mentioned here, The Interrupted Step of a Stork. I understand that it was obviously a very personal film for the director, in which he raised important themes for him nonetheless. Those who like his work will like this film, but I can assume that not everyone will accept his peculiar style, although what he declares is always relevant.
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