Mahairovgaltis

I was impressed by Oikonomidis' short film "Mono Mirizontas Giasemi," and "To Spirtokouto" fascinated me. The everyday decadence of a working-class Greek family, its depiction of contemporary Greek culture, the use of language, great, really great."I Psihi sto Stoma" was overdoing it, repeating the aesthetics of "To Spirtokouto" without much innovation in the script, but still acceptable. On the other hand, "Mahairovgaltis" has nothing much to say. The script is totally missing, the acting is less than OK and has nothing to add to the aesthetics of the movie-plus, the low-life working class theme is no news for Oikonomidis. The movie is flat, no climax whatsoever,the black-and-white aesthetic does not make its point. I only enjoyed the wonderful shots and the photography, but nothing else really.

This is one of the best films from the point of direction and photography in the recent history of greek cinema. Oikonomidis best work to this day, with a shockingly realistic portrait of the urban everyday life and the well hidden secrets and passions that every house hides from the outside world. All of them are being revealed with a rare honesty. The performances are solid,not great,except the leading actor who manages with his eyes to give us all the emotions and the psychological pressure that he is feeling around him, even when he goes for a cup of coffee. Several awards for this film, which by far is the most underrated one in the past ten years in my country.

Boredom, the feeling of emptiness, lack of everyday life aesthetics, surroundedness by one-dimensional people etc are the common characteristics of the "realist" movies about lumpen working class. And they are all cursed with the same drawback: They all give the impression that someone put some cameras around and asked these working class people to live their daily lives as normal, and just because these people were aware of the cameras they were reluctant to show their very reality and in the end they performed what was expected from them. This is what makes an average realist movie even worse than a bad documentary: Realism tries to mimic the reality but reproduces the personal observations of the screenwriter and the director, while the documentaries have their own techniques to grasp what cannot be seen by a banal observation.

Good realist movies overcome these drawback in several ways: They tend to show the variation instead of the generalizable, they raise questions on behalf of the characters or the viewers, they even dare to suggest strategies to them.

And unfortunately this is not a good realist movie. It's a mere representation of reality and its final impression on the viewers is nothing but a reproduction of their prior opinions.