Recognized by most critics as a masterpiece, Angelopoulos’s film leaves mixed impressions after the second viewing: on the one hand, it is impossible not to recognize the mythopoetic power of his images, in a new way perceived after their copying in “Melodies for the Sharman”. Muratova - the tape, though close to "Landscape in the fog" plot, but conceptually very different from it. Caraindrou's music, if it had sounded the whole tape, would have ennobled and added additional touches to it, smoothing out the slurredness of some scenes. On the other hand, the conscious attitude of Angelopoulos and Guerra to symbolism, poorly related to specifics, turns “Landscape in the Fog” into a dry abstraction, a parable, poorly connected with reality.
“Landscape in the Fog” is mythological, it is an odyssey in search of a father, ultimately God, that value vertical to which the characters fall in the finale – the tree of life. Their path, despite all the difficulties, tragedies and deceptions, still ends positively: chaos is curbed, light is separated from darkness. The main characters are their helpers or enemies on the way to God. The children do not know their father by name, have never seen him, they dream of him in their dreams, they write letters to him in their imagination, clearly that he is not a physical father, but something more (while Muratova has a specific father). Guerra’s experience with Tarkovsky left a serious imprint on this film – it is, first of all, the religious component of the odyssey of children. According to Angelopoulos and Guerra, people are children who blindly seek God, moose, suffer, but still seek. Not for the most part, of course.
The search for the children of their father to most heroes seems absurd, many children do not tell why and where they go, keeping the purpose of their journey in secret. The finale of “Landscape in the Fog” deliberately rhymes with the finale of “Ivan’s Childhood”, where the hero also falls to the life-giving juices of the world tree. Understanding all this, it is worth noting that for all the symbolic and conceptual richness, for all the poetic power of the episodes, where the amazing music of Caraindrou sounds, this film, like the others in Angelopoulos, is very difficult to see to the end: once again longing, sadness, despondency, world sorrow. True, here it is justified by forgetting God and spontaneous search for his pure soul children. The famous episode with the fragment of a sculpture in the sea is a clear allusion to the finger of God, the extinction of the intuition of the Divine in the world with His constant indication that the last times are near.
Children are thrown off trains repeatedly, they travel on foot, by car, on a motorcycle (their friend is an amateur actor with the symbolic name Orest). Sometimes it seems that the director simply has nothing to do with the many mythological connotations that occur in the fabric of the film, he loads the viewer with symbol after symbol, so that he can no longer bear the weight of the meanings of visual images. An odyssey is always about finding a father through finding yourself. An odyssey of young children with incredible perseverance and courage seeking their Father, the very meaning of their being cannot but touch the viewer. “Landscape in the Fog” certainly does not deserve the praises that are sung to it, because it is a very imperfect film, poorly structured and not monolithic, like, for example, the same “Ulysses’ View”.
However, watching it for the second time, it is difficult not to note the clarity of the author’s concept – the search for the basis of existence in the rapidly degrading world of the end of history: dirty and broken roads, grayness, fog, homelessness and deprivation – all these screaming dissonances of Angelopoulos’ style here cry out for meaning. Children, the characters of the film do not want to live in a meaningless world, they, their journey needs a goal, and they go to it and win. “Landscape in the Fog,” despite its melancholy atmosphere, cries out about the search for meaning, and thus shows how important it is for understanding the worldview of the late Angelopoulos. Among his other paintings, most of which are dull and monotonous, Landscape in the Mist shines with its ontological optimism and humanism: God can be found even in a collapsing world, one has only to persevere in seeking Him.
I cannot close my eyes to the strangeness and roughness, unnecessary details (the cult of snow and its magical evaporation, the kids do not try to encrypt the train, despite the fact that they can easily be detected at any time, the first meal after at least a day of travel, well, they need liquid only once every few days, and it is not clear how they planned to eat, going on the road or it was secondary, etc.). And, of course, stretched meaningful pauses timing, it was possible to fit a maximum of an hour in 1.5.
Theo Angelopoulos came to me relatively late. I discovered it ten years ago, in the midst of depression.
For a long time I had no one to put next to Tarkovsky, Bergman, Fellini and Wenders. Even Antonioni, in my opinion, is somewhere near, but not there. Well, maybe Keslevsky. And then suddenly, Angelopoulos. . .
To my shame, I lived in some parallel space without intersecting with its universe. However, one connecting thread was the music of Elena Karaindrou. I once discovered the release of Music For Films on an MP3 disc by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek. Music tore the soul with its sadness and beauty. He listened rarely, in a special state, as a backdrop for sadness, a soundtrack for loss. And I was puzzled by the thought, 'What kind of movie is this, if that's music?' Did some research. It turned out that the disc collected selected compositions for the early films of Angelopoulos. The music is truly magical. Co-creation of Eleni Karaindrou with Angelopoulos from the same series as the fairy tale that Keslevsky and Preisner created together.
And I dived into that water, and immediately found myself at such a depth that at first I almost drowned out of habit. Such a movie requires preparation. Here you need to gain more air, so as not to surface prematurely. For there will be temptation. After all, Angelopoulos shot long and boring. Without reckoning to hold our attention. But he did it deeply and honestly. Sometimes, ruthlessly honest. Without happy endings and false hopes. Movies are usually not full of events. At the center is a person in the context of historical circumstances. The place of action is Europe, moving towards its decline through political collisions and wars.
With a certain effort, you enter the cinema of Angelopoulos as a meditation. This is a rare art that can be called a spiritual act. And the viewing itself becomes more work than rest. In the era when the cinema turned into an attraction, the viewer himself is in deficit, who agrees and is able to make a little serious effort over himself. No distractions to the phone and chips.
“Landscape in the Fog” is an ideal option for immersing yourself in the world of Theo Angelopoulos.
I really enjoy watching Angelopoulos. I love his long-planned style and ‘Landscape in the Fog’ was supposed to be something new for me. ..
After all, on many resources, if they write about Theo Angelopoulos, they most often mention “Comedians” and “Landscape in the Fog”. The second is often called the best film of the master, for which he received a bunch of different prizes. I put off watching other works for a long time, and the result is not quite what I expected.
Advantages:
This is a strong and true European Movie Road. If Disney had everything fabulous and good, then the Greek Angelopoulos sees a darker world in which children are crushed by the rink of adult life.
Disadvantages:
Since the tape is presented everywhere as the “strongest” first acquaintance you will go well, if this is your format. I expected a lot more. I didn't like it.
Much less the style of long plans to Angelopoulos, which is in “Comedians”
Themes of scale (scene with a crane or hand), here added simply and do not make sense. In Odyssey’s View, pomposity took on a different meaning.
Angelopoulos is lost, does not believe in goodness or love, the film is too dark, this will change in part in Eternity and a Day.
The "Comedians" insert looks funny, but despite the original it will be difficult to understand the history of the troupe and the history of one play, and this is more a minus than a plus.
The role of a young non-father looks pathetic and undisclosed. Even the aged hero Marcello Mastroianni in “Beekeeper” did not cause pitiful bile like this young guy with “java” escorting children into the void.
As a result, if you haven’t watched Angelopoulos yet, if you want a love story, start with “Eternity and a Day”, if the Greek myth is in a new way with Hollywood “Odyssey’s View”, the real Angelopoulos is “Comedians” and 4 hours of pleasure.
My 7/10, it's close to John Hillcoat's "The Road," but Angelopoulos wasn't cataclysmic. He was always with us.
I didn’t understand anything, but it was very interesting.
First, camera work, entourage and art! It goes from start to finish! Then there's some surrealism and symbolism. The scenes are matchless, viscous, immersive, something from which it is impossible to break away.
I know, I know, usually in such a movie, it is customary to boast about your true understanding of all these things and argue about whether cinema is reduced to the futility of being or to suffering (don’t try to invent something else – they won’t understand). But I won't, I'll be honest - I didn't understand shit. What a discovery GG made when she went to cry for nothing - an example. So is the hand at the end. I guess it's because it's kind of poetic, and I'm the kind of person who understands anything, any complexity in sound and visual and prose, but not this. Therefore, poetry without music can not be digested.
And there are a lot of moments where I personally didn't have a single lead to interpret it. Plus, I didn't understand the meaning of this story at all, and the finale - much less. Usually, if I have a complete misunderstanding, it is a clear sign that the author shot with references to the Bible and religion. I'm not saying it is, it's just a pattern, and I'm just starting from it. I don’t understand God and the Bible. I don't know why. Let me know in the comment if this is not the case.
But it doesn't matter at all! The atmosphere, the cinematography, the acting, that's all — outrageously chic.
Two lost children, literally and figuratively, wander around Greece in search of a father they have never seen. The ever-absent mother, instead of honestly admitting that the scout father died while on a dangerous mission, somehow made up the idea that he lives in Germany, so Alexander and Vula need to get there at all costs. The fact that the earthly paradise in the film of the Greek director was localized in Germany, from the point of view of the latest European history looks at least amusing, but Theo Angelopoulos was more important to choose the image of the most contrasting country - and actually non-existent at that time, still divided by a wall Germany turned into a promised land for brother and sister.
However, geographical movements are absolutely insignificant, because any journey is first of all a path to oneself, and through their ordeals Alexander and Vula learn the ruthless laws of being and outlive naive childhood illusions. Unanswered unaddressed letters, composed in endless wagon vestibules, clearly resemble prayers and are full of unchildish longing. And the elusive father (namely “father” and never “dad”!) is very eager to write with a capital letter and try to understand why He left his children and whether there is in principle. Angelopoulos leaves the second question unanswered, or rather, invites everyone to answer it on their own, but on the first one he speaks sharply and unequivocally, despite the symbolic multilayering.
The houses of gloomy abandoned cities are cracked with broken windows and frightened away by tightly closed doors, desert highways seem to consist of only turns and confuse random travelers. The rain, passing into the snow and back, complements the image of a chilled, shameful world, and the lead-colored sea beats indifferently into the depopulated shore. But what can be blamed on the sea, if the rare met in fact are as indifferent as the elements: they are not capable of sympathy and unselfishness, their most terrible sin is the total atrophy of feelings, the inability to distinguish good from evil. The art that should preach ideals is in decline: the troupe of wandering comedians can not find either spectators or scenes for performances, actors habitually repeat their roles without even listening to each other, and sell costumes on the cheap, like from a dump. God left our lands because we drove Him out.
Feelings
How embarrassing to admit that highly appreciated, award-winning, finely artistic, exquisite film ... did not like. He did not touch the strings, did not blind with visual perfection, did not strike with elegance metaphors - multiple, but rather straightforward. Thus, the loss of moral landmarks symbolizes the hand of a huge statue with a broken-off pointing finger: helicopters carry it away, and only the heroes accompany its flight with sad glances. At this moment it is even thought that the classical image of the road as a way of life and self-knowledge, dating back to antiquity, gives a wonderful (and very convenient) opportunity not to suffer with the plot: new cities, meetings, events will be connected with the very fact of movement, and they can be elegantly rhymed even with the Old Testament outcome, even with the Dante circles of hell.
At times, it seems that the director not only states, but directly relishes the deliberate cruelty of the world, the soullessness and spirituality of a country lost in the snow, which expels and rapes its children, forgets history and despises art. And no emotions, except for sleepy despondency, does not cause the depressive aesthetics of a fading, quietly freezing world, in which even a restless demigod, working as a guide to the local hell, is forced to sell a faithful motorcycle horse and go to serve the Father’s abandoned homeland. And fog, as a sure sign of uncertainty and timelessness, of course, not in cities, but in heads. So no matter how much you look at the lighted film found on the street, you will see nothing but an impenetrable white veil. It is tempting to see what is not there.
-
The mind without feeling is blind and often mistaken in the choice of the path; the feeling without reason is too trusting and will disappear without a drachma. In a pair of small pilgrims, Vula, as the elder, is responsible for rationality, and tender, touching, not at all great, Alexander is responsible for emotionality. They don’t need words to communicate because they are both parts of a single soul. The path begins intelligent Vula, eager to “only look” at the mythical father, but when she loses strength and faith, the support for her becomes a brother who first takes a step into the unknown, into the impenetrable fog. It is only when reason has hope and feeling has will that the fog breaks and the promised land opens.
“Landscape in the Fog” belongs to those rare films that for the first time are perceived with unconscious admiration, leaving only a vague longing for some unsolved mystery. Beginning with a deliberately uncertain time and place, Theo Angelopoulos immediately places his story in the category of timeless existential parables. There are many eternal questions, but few unequivocally correct answers. The essence of his parable is very simple. A brother and sister, who can’t be sixteen years old for two, live only with the dream of seeing their own father living somewhere in Germany. There is no name of the city, and no clear reason why you should look for it in this place. Probably overheard someone else's conversation and interpreted everything in their own way. But there is a dream, and is there more to it? And from the very beginning, the bitter and even too harsh truthfulness of the position of the director, who does not believe in a fairy tale, where the doomed search could give us a happy ending in this other reality, is shocking. The beautiful time, to which man so often returns in his mind with reverent memories, in search of consolation or lost purity, ended here too soon. It is full of dreams, but not always of miracles. A sad but necessary recognition.
And yet in the characters of Angelopoulos, the natural childlike spontaneity is easily guessed. They are like those boys from Chekhov’s story who had no idea to cross the tundra and the northern seas separating them from the cherished America, but it was so difficult to get out of the first station. When the step was taken, it was time for terrible, completely unchildish discoveries. Vula and Alexander go to his father, think about him in their dreams and in reality, in the corridors of trains and on the station benches, mentally writing letters sent to the village to his grandfather. But the purpose of their journey is quickly lost in a series of failures and unforeseen by naivety material difficulties. Along with it, the sense of time is lost, because for children it is not obvious, and as if not necessary. The film turns into an endless and incoherent journey, from the point of departure of “darkness” to the destination of “unclear light ahead”, more like a step from nowhere to nowhere. It seems to be a classic motif of road-movie, but without the apparent romance of random encounters with wise homeless wanderers. There will be countless cafes, clubs, train stations, motorbike rides with the wind in their hair, but few words, little use, and only false movement in a circle. But the heroes of this absurd adventure are not bored intellectuals trying to find or lose themselves along the way. The unsightly horror is that these are children, wandering on rainy roads in complete uncertainty. The world of "adult" conventions, words and habits frightens them with incomprehensible complexity, against the background of huge industrial monsters they seem quite small and insignificant. The length of the path is incommensurable with the distance from the ground to the knitted cap on the head.
With some special persistence, Angelopoulos paints the world with pale gray-green colors, catching up with the hopeless despondency of hospital corridors. And only occasionally they resemble the turquoise shades of the sea. The same color and touching scarf around Alexander's neck, and his curious, trusting eyes. In them, these tones seem soft, symbolizing innocence and openness to the world, while for other people and objects they are protective colors. It's as if they're all wearing colorful, tasteless raincoats and hiding from the truth outside, unable to stand it. The camera often waltzes smoothly in a circle, capturing panoramic views of the “new” dirty wastelands. Greece, thrown out by the metropolis on the outskirts of the industrial world. Sometimes the proximity of the sea will please, but short, fading and not at all turquoise. Angelopoulos seems to attach much importance to the rhythm of these circular passages. Together with long static plans of the characters, they hold attention for a long time, increasing the psychological intensity of the situation, then the causeless longing.
In the abundant symbolism of "Landscape in the fog" a lot of strange and inexplicable. Suddenly, the snow fell, and everyone froze in the silent contemplation of the miracle. A horse died in the snow and Alexander cried. What all this means remains a mystery. More or less obvious except that a giant human brush of stone with a severed finger, literally emerged from the abyss of time. After all, the reference to the lost culture of their ancestors is especially indicative against the background of modern Greek tragedy. To become her and the symbolic names of her heroes - Alexander and Orestes. The latter, being the wise companion and senior companion, can not really understand even the meaning of his own life. His stable appearances in the way of children and the gifts of wasteful natural goodness do not save them from new disappointments in people. They even reinforce it in another example. Other characters of the tragedy are increasingly negative, cruel, misunderstanding, indifferent, and even wandering comedians. All the lost people, whose home was that giant dirty dump.
And the longer the children travel, the deeper you plunge into uncomfortable loneliness, terrible despair, longing for the simplest happiness. The melody of the sad Adagio tears the soul apart more and more and more gives vent to gloomy thoughts. Something is seriously wrong with this world, because such horrors should not happen. Not with the kids. But the philosophical parable of the director turns into a surprisingly not hopeless finale. The journey gave the siblings a brutal lesson, premature maturation and premature disappointment. The previously foggy landscape at the end of the road suddenly dissipated, and the horizon is now clear. There is something beautiful and long-awaited ahead. Something that embodies both Germany and father, and all the good things that were dreamed of in train cars. A natural catharsis, a necessary illusion, without which it would be quite scary to live. But all reasoning still leads unconditionally to the starting point. Some secret plan of the director was never solved. Because all the most secret remained at the level of intimate communication, which does not tolerate intermediaries between a person and a work of art.
I've never written a KP review before, but I can't remember a movie that pissed me off more than Angelopoulos' Landscape in the Fog. So I decided to write my first review.
I can do Landscape 10/10, but only as an incredibly funny and subtle parody of arthus cinema as a genre. All these “finding the father as a search for himself”, long pauses in dialogues, long and drawn-out plans of roads/villages/factories/trees/characters, incomprehensible monologues of heroes “not of this world” and like apotheosis – a giant hand hovering over the city – all this looked very funny and ridiculous.
But I don’t think that the director, his fans, the European film academy that awarded the Grand Prix Landscape, considered it as a parody. Why this happened, I will try to explain below.
The film does not cause any emotions. Absolutely. The existential plot does not awaken any empathy or sympathy for the main characters. By the way, the main characters - brother and sister, look if not as mentally retarded, then quite pass for mentally ill children. Agree, two children go in search of the father, whom they have never seen (I am already silent, I do not even know his name), to 80 million Germany, which they have heard that she is “somewhere in the north”, they wander there and in the rain, and in the snow on foot / train / with the acting troupe / with a trucker-rapist, along the way sending letters to his father, that is, nowhere. And the way to nowhere.
But the main problem of the film (no, not even an impenetrable boredom) is a very inept “clutter” under the European art house. Let’s go through a few scenes:
- There's a horse dying on the road. The boy hugs her and cries. There's a wedding in the background. From this scene, it is as if I hear the didactic voice of a film critic-snob: “Here Angelopoulos shows how close happiness and sorrow exist in the world, how rotten the morals of adults, and how pure the souls of children.” I cover my face with my hand.
The scene with a huge sculpture in the form of a hand flying over the city is the business card of this film. But what is it for? The voice of the bearded film critic in my head died down. But I hear Angelopoulos himself, saying, “I shot a flying hand there, and you sit there and think what it means.” I didn't make it for you, I made it for festivals. And in general, I don't give a damn about the audience, as long as I don't walk empty-handed in Cannes. Let Sergio Leone, for example, think about the viewer.
But the most epic scene in its idiocy is “artists of the burned theater rehearsing on the seaside.” It is difficult, however, to call it a rehearsal - each "commodity" stands separately, reciting excerpts from the play, facts from the history of post-war Greece, or some other incomprehensible gibberish. To me, the crazies on the walk from Flight Over the Cuckoo's Nest looked far more adequate than those homegrown Melpomen servants. From this scene, I did not hear any voice, but I felt as if blood was flowing out of my eyes - so miserable and stupid it looked.
Bottom line: the whole essence of “Landscape in the Fog” can be summed up in a scene where the characters look at empty film and try to see something on it. So many viewers try to see something wise and great in this film. I didn’t see anything here, so see the title.
A dusty road going into the distance, a highway disappearing with a white stroke behind a turn, a measured knock of the wheels of a rushing train ... Various images of the path have long been inextricably linked with human destiny, habitually symbolizing the bizarre curves of its uneven lines. This is a farewell to the past, a longing for what is left behind, an involuntary expectation of change and, of course, such a reckless and sometimes inexplicable hope. Most likely, it was she who inspired the Greek director Theo Angelopoulos this strange vision of two lonely children, slowly wandering in the transparent haze of a gray cold day along the intricate and difficult path of their dreams. The main characters of his film - brother and sister, Alexander and Vula, are sure that their father lives in Germany. And so, tired of waiting in vain at the station every day, they just get on the next train and go in search. “Landscape in the fog” is either a true story, or a fairy tale, where, against the background of the already familiar road color, a leisurely, meditative story about the world, culture and destiny of a person is conducted.
The famous Greek, the heir to ancient Greece, Theo Angelopoulos in his work is not the first time he turns to the genre of road-movie. This form of storytelling is closest to his personal feeling of “losing his home” in this alien modern world. The space of present-day Greece, through which children travel, is a clot of impressions of the director himself, a kind of internal landscape of his “spiritual exile”: a mixture of fog and rain, dark sockets of deserted houses, ripples of the cold sea – the spirit of loneliness and desolation as if dissolved in the very atmosphere of the film, in the inevitable smoky mist, blindly dragging everything around. This is the world from which the seagull man tries in vain every morning, the world where a white horse dies in convulsions to the plague cries of a wedding feast. It is a universe of fading light, filled with chaos of fragmentary mythologies, allusions and absurdities - something irretrievably left it, wrapped like a shroud, white veils of snow. An indispensable motif for Angelopoulos of the Greek winter as a slow dying of a culture, unable to fertilize the minds and souls of people, is supported by the impressive view of the giant arm of an ancient statue with a broken pointing finger. The spirit of withering is felt in the restless wanderings of a troupe of wandering artists: the old weary humanity “rolled” Europe no longer needs theater, it quietly fades away from endless and all-consuming boredom, selling its old-fashioned dilapidated clothes in advance.
Such an unsightly picture of reality - this Babylonian prostitute, into which the earth turned, is directly related to the appearance of the mother of Vula and Alexander: after all, as the children later learn, they never had a real father. But they still love their exhausted homeland – their sinful mother, even though “she understands nothing” in their cherished fairy tale-dream of the birth of a new pristine world, where they aspire with all their being. The biblical motif of “exodus” and wandering in search of the promised land is closely intertwined in the film with the New Testament image of the Kingdom of Heaven, which only childlike pure souls are able to gain. And perhaps that is why Vula’s frequent behind-the-scenes monologues addressed to his father so strongly resemble a prayer to God. For children, the road to ghostly Germany is a way to find the meaning of life, the search for their real home, and therefore, according to the director's plan, and the path to themselves - from primitive chaos to the true light or that obscure silhouette of a foggy tree that appears on the illuminated film, presented by their companion and guide Orestes. In the figure of this young artist, biker and gay man with the appearance of an ancient god, the film touches upon the philosophical and mythological layer indispensable for the aesthetics of Angelopoulos. A messenger of fate, a kind of Dantian Virgil, a guide to the hell of reality, Orestes is also the teacher of Vula, the educator of her feelings. With the paternal care of the teacher, he leads her soul along the secret paths of Platonic eros, from first love and maiden shame to the awareness of her femininity. And he gives her a bitter but inevitable experience of disappointment. After all, there is nothing purely childish or sentimental in the film, the viewer looks at everything through the eyes of a thinker-director who is honest enough and even ruthless towards the world not to soften his blows and not to muffle the pain from them. Orestes, on the other hand, only fulfills its role, guiding children forward, to the call of the road, to their destination.
But all this semantic and figurative subtext recedes into the background before the primary feeling of extraordinary poeticity, almost crystal transparency of the author’s style. The film is like a piece of wonderful melody, as if hovering in the air, then slowly disappear into silence. Music here is not just a background accompaniment of the visual series, but an integral element of the narrative, it literally participates in what is happening, creating a unique atmosphere of light sadness and some achingly defenseless purity. And long after, two small distant silhouettes are remembered under the crown of a huge tree at the hour of foggy dawn, as if this was the phenomenon of hope itself - defenseless, fragile, but never fading away.
11-year-old Greek girl Vula and her 5-year-old brother Alexandros escape from their mother and go in search of their father, who they believe lives in Germany. Along the way, they meet the young Oreste, who becomes their guide on this dangerous journey.
The script was written by Angelopoulos together with the famous Italian Tonino Guerra. But the plot fades into the background in this symbolic parable of a dying civilization, where longing for a better world appears as an inside out mythologem. Children are fleeing from the warm south to the north, because in their south, cluttered with squalid buildings and polluted with smoking pipes, it has now become cold and shelterless.
The senselessness and primitiveness of urban landscapes further intensify the mood of sadness in the journey for a ghostly dream. Characteristic of Angelopoulos, the absence of close-up plans contributes a lot to the fusion of heroes with the surrounding world, polluted by the wastes of technological progress.
A broken trust and betrayed love are the two main trials that fall on the lot of a girl, so early adult guardian of a little brother. This emphasizes the homosexual accent: the young man Orestes, who accompanied them for some time, enough for Vula to fall in love with him, cheats on her with a handsome man like himself in a jacket and jeans. The girl’s personal tragedy is compounded by the deception of the driver who agrees to let the children down.
Angelopoulos continues the cultural tradition of cinema as the art of great tasks. The tragic ending, characteristic of most of the works of the Greek director, equates his tapes with ancient tragedies. Mythological thinking predetermined the allegorical interpretation of his films, where you can almost always find symbolic shots.
Here, an eloquent example of the author’s style will be an episode with a giant pointing finger, thrown out by a deep sea and carried away by a helicopter (remark to Fellini’s “Sweet Life”). So the red thread through most of the works of Angelopoulos passes the idea of the degeneration of culture, and with it and humanity, which determines the epic, intellectual and religious aesthetics of his paintings.
The story of two children: a brother and sister, eleven-year-old Vula and five-year-old Alexander, who go in search of their father, in order to find him they need to make a huge journey from Greece to Germany. Their journey is not easy, running away from home and going on a journey, they will have to face the terrible cruelty of people, injustice and coldness of this world. A story about children, but not a children's movie. Knowing the truth of life, faced with it as it is, the real, cruel and sometimes indifferent to suffering and hopes have to respond with determination, perseverance, and sometimes put up with what is happening around. We almost see the forced maturation of these children as the boundary between childhood and adolescence collapses. Some episodes of this film clearly reflect the soul’s callousness and the extinction of that very soul through the director’s use of symbolism. For example, an episode when a man drives a car resembling a paver and drags a dying horse tied to it, then the rope breaks and the horse remains to die in front of the children. Isn't that a symbol of cruelty? The boy who saw death for the first time with his own eyes, of course, begins to cry loudly, in the next frame we see him already close-up, his roar, tears, which we observe for a long time, nothing changes in the frame, still a little boy is experiencing the death of an unfortunate horse. This scene is made long, it is possible that the viewer had time to feel a little deeper the pain of the child, he himself realizes that the world around is somehow cruel and unfair, and the person who committed an unreasonable act, so dealt with the unfortunate creature did not realize it. Another character personifying evil is a trucker who puts children to himself, as if they were on the way and everything is fine, but not here it was, having lunch and a little drink in a roadside cafe during a stop, he invites a girl to his van, when she, sensing something wrong, tries to escape from him he forcibly drags her into the van. After which there is a long pause, at this moment the viewer in the soul intertwines a variety of thoughts, and the pause stretches. Still nearby, a car stops, from which loud music is heard, muffling any other sounds, we can only imagine what is happening in the van, although we do not want to. The driver pops up, looking around to see if there's anyone nearby. After a while we see thin legs crawling out of a dirty gray creepy van, the girl looks at the blood-stained hand... After this scene, the girl has a change of consciousness, the formation of an opinion about values in this world, or rather about depreciation ... The episode on the platform: there is no money to buy a train ticket to Berlin at all, then the girl comes to the soldier standing on the platform and calls the price - three hundred and eighty drachmas. That's exactly what a ticket costs. It would seem that now our eyes will see another scene showing the abomination and impoverishment of the human soul, although there is hope while the guy walks on the platform and thinks. The actor masterfully played this episode, the entire internal monologue, the thoughts and experiences of the character at that moment are read by the viewer, the look, seeing which is clear what the hero thinks, it is clear that he is tormented in doubts, not just in choosing "yes" or "no", but much deeper, the sketch on organic silence allowing us to probe even the character of the character in so short a time that he is present on the screen.
And finally, after much thought, he just puts the money down and leaves. This is probably the best possible outcome of this scene.
The episode in the cafe with a sad musician-vagabond playing sad music is also a symbol - a symbol of human indifference. The café owner rudely banishes the violinist without giving a single coin, while the child cheerfully applauds the musician if he had at least one drachma - he would give it without thinking, without even thinking about his hunger. This is still a pure child’s soul, unstained with the dirt of true adult life and reality, despite the fact that the child has already seen even death and cruelty.
And yet, on the way to find their father, our heroes meet a positive character, bright, not thinking about anything bad, evil, pure and sincere - a guy named Orestes. It helps them to get rid of fear and emotional anxiety. In one of the episodes, the guy finds a scrap of photos or films among the garbage. Film-marriage, it shows something unclear, cloudy. He begins to fantasize: here is a river, here is a tree in the mist. The landscape in the fog is exactly the same as all the vain search for the father of these children, who does not exist as a mirage. Of course, he once was, but now his search is absolutely in vain. With the appearance of Orest comes a series of new events and discoveries - the most important of which is the discovery of the first child's love, it does not give happiness, but does not give pain, the emergence of a new unusual yet fully unconscious and so incomprehensible feeling - a new stage in the development of the girl's personality, growing up. But immediately she has to comprehend the sorrow, the feeling experienced by her - of course, unrequited. It seems to her that she has been betrayed, a misunderstanding of the injustice that is happening will make her suffer, and Oreste’s sympathy and regret give little comfort. Not everything you want can be achieved – another lesson that the main characters of the film learn.
For an even greater immersion of the viewer in the atmosphere of sadness, Angelopoulos, as well as in some of his other paintings, for example, “Eternity and a Day”, where there are also motives of wandering, loneliness, retains in the visual solution of the film a cold color, gray melancholy colors. Roads and dirt washed away by the rain, industrial zones, empty unfriendly beaches are also a symbol of sadness, emptiness, unfulfilled hopes, despair, loneliness As soon as any new moment of emotional experiences or a new round of wanderings of our heroes comes on the screen, heavy sad music by Eleni Karaindrou & is added to the cold artistic image; Jan Garbarek is an adagio that makes us even more empathetic. Every detail of the film is filled with its own mood, which thanks to the master of directing Angelopoulos is so easily conveyed to the viewer, and the depth and meaning of each scene of silence, even if it is long, are easily read by us and sometimes say more than any words.
Throughout the picture, the main characters, being on a journey, remain in search, which, alas, will not lead them to the desired, the meeting will not take place, having passed a large number of tests, learning what human cruelty, injustice, callousness, but also love and sympathy, being finally on the border of Germany, the children remain alone with their ghostly dream, which will remain just a landscape in the fog.
High art is always visible. 'Landscape in the fog' Theo Angelopoulos is art, not entertainment. You have to watch it as a work of art. To perceive aesthetically, to read philosophical sense.
The picture in the film, even the title of which contains the word fog, is really hazy. Or, we can say, this is Davinchev’s sfumato, which can be seen in Tarkovsky’s films and in the recent “Faust” & #39; Sokurova. It is a reverent attitude to the image, it is an image of reality, but of reality, processed artistically, as the nebula of the picture should remind us. This is realism in the highest degree, according to Dostoevsky. But still, comparing the picture of this film with the same pictures in Tarkovsky’s films and with Sokurov’s latest film, a lesser degree of artisticity is evident. Rough realism often prevails over ' fantastic realism'.
The film gives us a look at a person from the outside, about his path to God, when we, like children, blindly, often not realizing, not understanding exactly, vaguely wanting something better and higher, go to the Creator. Stuttering, falling, walking with difficulty ' through thorns ' but still moving towards the main goal of life. He who does not go will remain forever in darkness, in chaos. And at the end of the road, going and coming like these children, the Light will open.
9 out of 10
Among hundreds of others, this film is the closest to me stylistically. Every frame, every minute. Its atmosphere, a kind of cold beauty do not allow you to come to your senses to the very titles. What a depth. Amazing, wonderful.
The film is quite metaphorical, but relatively easy to understand. As a rule, what is not clear is immediately revealed after a few scenes. Nominally, this is a story about children who go in search of their father. Nonsense. It’s like Andrei Arsenyevich made a film about the distant planet Solaris.
A dream. Dreaming of something impossible, you can find the meaning of life, dreaming of something earthly you can lose it. But what dreams can there be when the routine of worldly cares enslaves the mind? A man can only dream before the army. Then life will make you earn money, feed your family, and leave you no time to stop and enjoy the music. There will be hope somewhere deep, but soon there will be no room for it either. Life will pass, time will not stop. A week has passed and a whole life has passed. Two lives.
It's hard not to feel the director's pain for Mother Greece and the rest of the brave new world. I have a bad idea of the political situation in post-war Greece, it is better to tell the troupe of actors-marginals. The world is clearly going the wrong way. Theo, Theo. If I have seen the metaphor, then at least the FF and at least one of the best in the history of cinema.
Life breaks. Only a person who is strong in spirit is able, having gone through all the trials, to keep faith in people, in something bright. Everything we believe in is real. Reality is subjective, everyone has their own landscape in the fog. He's over there somewhere. Styx?
10 out of 10
Oh, I think that Voula and Alexander were looking for a different Father.
The prophetic gift of Theo Angelopoulos is only now being revealed, almost twenty-five years after the release of his remarkable, magnificent painting. Where he predicted not only the decline of his native Greece, the degradation of cinema, but also his own death: as if the screen Orestes came down to us, in reality, ridding a meter of emotional anxiety and fear.
In the film, the Greek director masterfully shows the crumbling world, painted in gloomy, melancholic, detached colors, making the picture similar in individual shots to animation, and occurring in a fairy tale, which, in essence, does not contradict his conceptual idea: to present the viewer, as close as possible to our reality, make him believe that our life, in essence, is indistinguishable from what is happening on the screen. This is the magical power of Theo Angelopoulos’ talent, without stressing the dramatic component in the tape, to make the viewer horrified by reality, things that seem normal.
It is significant that during the entire timekeeping of the tape, only two children appear on the screen - Vula and her brother Alexander. Another proof of the destruction of the world. Brother and sister all along their way meet many people who seemed to observe the notorious humanity, showing external participation in their fate. But it was always like a duty, not a breakthrough of the soul. Only in the image of Oreste do we find true compassion, he is like a messenger of the gods, sent not even to save from physical hardships, but rather to help save the soul and teach something new, necessary.
Despite all the warnings, dark thoughts. Cleansing after watching the tape, leaves hope in the soul, even in thoughts not allowing to think about the rightness of the two children who went in search of their beginning.
10 out of 10
Eleven-year-old Vula and five-year-old Alexander decide to escape from their mother’s home to make a journey to Germany, to the father they have never seen. The real mother does not appear in the frame, and the father existing only in dreams is invisibly present, as if protecting children who secretly write letters to him. Heroes travel by train, foot, truck, bus, motorcycle and only at the end get into the boat, which should reach the goal. Going their hard way, they grow up and learn disappointment, humiliation, love, hope, friendship, gratitude and sympathy.
Angelopoulos openly loves his heroes. As a good father, he gives no illusions about a bright world full of kind people and freed from scum. On the road, as in life, people are different. The task is only to learn to recognize some and bypass others. The director gravitates to long general plans, the number of dialogues is minimized, they are replaced by internal monologues, atmosphere and witty use of biblical and mythological symbols. The picture of the Greek has a very rare property: it can be seen with equal success as a touching story of two children looking for a father, and as a modern myth about the knowledge of oneself and the truths of the universe.
The contrast between Greece and Germany is very interesting. For the modern Greeks, Germany is a place of prosperity and tranquility, while its own country does not cease endless walks through torments and crises of various kinds. Located in the southern latitudes of Greece in the film is unusually cold, wet and very uncomfortable, while Germany, located in the north of Europe, for the heroes is no less than the promised land. In the frame often it is snow, rain or thick fog, but these substances are hardly meteorological in nature, rather reflecting the inner state of the heroes and the moral state of the country. Geography connoisseurs are well aware that there is no land or sea border between Greece and Germany, and therefore it is physically impossible to cross the line to which the heroes aspire.
It cannot be crossed for another reason, and the troupe of wandering actors, loitering all over Greece with a single play. This is not only a symbol of unnecessary art, on the example of elderly artists, the director reflects on the generation lost during the Civil War and the regime of “black colonels”, who have forgotten how to enjoy life and believe in the best. Young heroes, moving forward to the dream, are opposed to moving in a vicious circle and deadly tired servants of Melpomen. Characteristic moment when wandering into an empty zucchini violinist contemptuously exposed, because no one his music has long been not needed, and only young Alexander sincerely applauds the beautiful.
The theme of the road has always occupied a key place in the work of the Greek classic Theodoros Angelopoulos, and the only place that gave him peace in life was the passenger seat of the car, from which he could watch the changing landscapes outside the window during forced crossings. This feature of directorial style is seen as a continuation of the traditions of Greek myths, whose heroes often understood the most important things for themselves while on the road.