semanticon

Easily one of the worst films by a major talent in the history of Cinema. To Allens credit it must have been a difficult subject to get the cash for and how or why Orion agreed to pay for it god alone knows. Filmed in black and white without any grain at all. An expressionist movie with a realist hand-held camera. A film set in a non-existant unspecified country of which, as Orson Welles once said "a movie set nowhere must be really bad." The cliches pile up thick and thin, only made worse by the presence of Fred Gwyn and Donald Pleasence. The jokes are thin, the philosophical content is low and Malkovich does his usual anti-acting routine. Even the music by Kurt Weil fails to make the borring images come to life. This film was based on a one act play called, I think, "Death" writen around 1975. The play is a gem, very funny and far more profound than the movie, it's just a shame Allen left out all the decent jokes and made up the diffirence with trash. Perhaps this movie is best seen as the peak and merciful end of Allens late 1980's indulgent & pretensious "serious" period.

A broad social criticism on contemporary Greece of the 1980's. Some scenes more successful than others, and it does drag a bit and is, as is usual for Angelopoulos, a bit contrived. Worth making the effort for anyway. The most intense scenes are the rape scene which happens out of sight and consists of one long slow dolly shot, and the wedding scene in which the future of the bride is given metaphor by a dying horse being dragged down the road by a truck.

This movie is far from perfect, but there are a few scenes here and there that are absolutly hair-raising : Kinski in a state of total exaustion at the begining, the scene in the woods when he starts to hear voices and the unbeleivable murder scene consisting of two shots disguised as one that last about 5 minutes in slow motion (it has to be seens to be beleived). The use of music is fantastic, the photography impecable. Herzog does as usual and captures another world while Kinski is plainly living in it. There are a few off scenes and some of the dialogue gets a bit obvious in it's openly nialistic cliches, but most of the movie holds up. One of those movies that you simply have to see at least once.