Trilogie: Die Erde weint

I think anyone familiar with Angelopoulos knows what to expect with his films: long, drawn out, meticulously planned shots that slowly scan environments, with the image composed of not only the foreground but hundreds of yards into the background. I guess some are not impressed with the director's style, but that really astounds me. I definitely see the man as a master of his medium, and The Weeping Meadow is as good as any of his other films – every one I've seen so far is a masterpiece or close to it. This film has a lot in common with the director's first big success, The Traveling Players. It follows a little girl, Eleni, from 1919 to the time of the Greek Civil War, at the end of WWII. And, as the title implies, it's a great tragedy. There is a lot of weeping. It may be long and slow, but it's always gripping. Angelopoulos' imagery is second to none in modern cinema. There are just so many jaw-dropping sequences. My favorite was the one where the camera explored its way through a maze of bed sheets drying on clotheslines, discovering various musicians hidden within. It's not a complaint, per se, but if you're going to watch the film beware of its chronological ellipses. The film can skip ahead years in just a second, when the pace usually makes each second feel like years (in a good way!). I hope New Yorker video, or some other company, digs up the Angelopoulos films that have been unavailable so far, and puts The Traveling Players on DVD, as well.

I viewed this movie at the TIFF in 2004. It was the first film I ever seen their and I have been going back every year since, hoping to see something that was as moving. By far one of the greatest films I have ever viewed. The cinematography, the acting, the script all worked hand in hand. At times when the dialogue was silent you were still captivated by what was being shown on the screen.

The movie is long, but I did not lose interest once. I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Angelopoulos at the premier of his film and believe me for a movie buff like me it was a great honor even thought I did not realize it at the time. I believe that this film should be on every bodies must watch list if you are looking for a movie that is deep.

I have since viewed a lot of movies and have yet to fond anything that I believe is as important.

Theo Angelopoulos is one of the greatest directors working in films today. His last film, Eternity and a day proved that. This film is,likewise, a masterpiece. It begins in 1919 as a band of refugees returns to Greece from exile in Odessa. There are sepia colored photographs , and in this section of the film, the interiors are also sepia colored. The film then proceeds very elegantly for about the first third of its running time. He uses mostly long pans and tracking shots, and then may stop to focus on a scene as he gradually pulls the camera in closer, but almost never to a close up. His sense of mise en scene is superb, but even more he evokes a very specific time and place. His cinematography is superb, and often highly gorgeous. There is a superb scene at jusr about the end of the first third, where Eleni,the film's principal character, wants to leave and walks down to the water. She is suddenly surrounded by a group of men who begin to dance with her. That scene and the music in it are quite intoxicating. it reminds me a little of Fellini. The film then darkens drastically, becomes more political, and also somewhat fantastical, non linear, and rather mythic in tone. There are some beautiful, truly remarkable images here--the streets, the slaughtered sheep hanging from the trees, and a funeral procession in the water with the funeral party on a raft, surrounded by fishing boats all lite by lanterns. Then there is the final third of the film which takes us to WW2, but the style is quite abstract and elliptical, and where it is very difficult to pinpoint time. By the end her family is destroyed, and she becomes a figure of true Euripidean tragedy. It's devastating, and suddenly not only mythic but timeless.

Most of the story's most significant events are entirely unseen; Angelopoulos seems to be less interested in events than in their aftermath. What we see is not conflict, not love, and not loss, but rather the effects of these things on the people in the story. It's almost like watching only the scenes that would be cut out of a Hollywood epic; all the "fat" that would normally be trimmed to create a lean story is on display here without any of what would be considered the "meat." The result is something less thrilling but altogether more resonant. Things take a long time to occur not just within scenes but within the viewer's mind as well. I didn't start to really feel for any of these people until about an hour into the film, but at that point I suddenly found myself completely hooked.

I was particularly amazed by my reaction to Eleni, played by Alexandra Aidini. For much of the movie she is given little to do but cry and her performance is seemingly rather weak. But by the end of the film I felt deeply connected with her plight and I felt tied to every emotional upheaval she encountered. Her performance likewise became extremely powerful, and unless Angelopoulos shot this film in sequence I have to assume it was engineered that way somehow. Perhaps it's simply that Angelopoulos spends so much time distancing the audience from the drama that when he finally goes in for a close-up (figuratively -- in literal terms there's nothing tighter than a medium shot here) the emotion just smacks you in the face.

Beyond the characters, the film is amazing simply for its visual audacity, the way every long shot is planned to the minutest detail a la Bela Tarr, and they only become more staggering as time wears on. The story also feels ancient; despite taking place (mostly) in the 1940's, you sense a profound connection to the heritage of its characters and their history, such that moments which in other cases might seem like melodramatic clichés (the unraveling of Eleni's scarf, for instance) instead feel like deeply rooted folk symbolism.

Angelopoulos again makes the most of an intellectual way of cinema, which is though full of poetry and with the stain of compassion. History and human relationships are emphasized through the symbolic order of ancient Greek tragedy and that is what makes the film have a more "heavy" character, which makes it a little harder to follow than a usual Hollywood production- do not misjudge me, I love it too. As long as it concerns the scenario the modern history of Greece becomes only the environment in which the man wrecks along with his fate. Angelopoulos recons the mechanizations of History upon man and tries to make a clear statement upon it. The film itself is the most mature of the Greek director and has all his personal characteristics bound together in an excellent work!