LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST Movie Review

Topio Stin Omichli

As parents have been known to do when there's a family secret they want to hide from the children, the mother of young Voula and Alexander concocts an elaborate myth to explain an unpleasant truth.The 14-year-old girl and her younger brother have never met their father, and when the kids continue to press for answers to his whereabouts, their mother tries to protect them from learning that they were born out-of-wedlock by telling them that dad is “in Germany.” Believing their mother and desperate to find their father, the children take to the road and embark on what will become an epic, life-changing journey. This extraordinary film by Greece's Theo Angelopoulos has the episodic structure and grand design of Greek mythology. Long, wordless passages accompanied by only natural sounds (sequences stunningly photographed by Giorgos Arvanitis) evoke visions of a strange landscape as seen though the eyes of hopeful children: visions that are soon dramatically challenged by a universe teeming with chance and danger. Be aware that Landscape in the Mist will prove insufferable to those whose attention-span-o-meters are set to “get to the point already,” or “just tell me what happens to the kids.” For everyone else (count me among them), Angelopoulos's intoxicating, masterful, magnificent real-life fairy-tale possesses the rare, precious power to transport attentive and willing viewers to a new and unforgettable world.

NEXT STOP … Ulysses' Gaze, The Stolen Children, Forbidden Games

1988 126m/C GR FR IT Tania Palaiologou, Michalis Zeke, Stratos Tzortzoglou, Eva Kotamanidou, Alika Georgouli; D: Theo Angelopoulos; W: Thanassis Valtinos, Tonino Guerra, Theo Angelopoulos; C: Yorgos Arvanitis; M: Eleni Karaindrou. VHS NYF, FCT, BTV