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An Exercise In Nonsense

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

In 2012 the legendary Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos was shooting a film called "The Other Sea" which was supposed to complete a trilogy which he started with "The Weeping Meadow" (2004) and "The Dust of Time" (2008). Unfortunately, on 24th January he passed away due to which the film got canceled and the trilogy was never completed. Thus "The Dust of Time" remains as Angelopoulos' final film -- his cinematic legacy to us -- which we can observe as a summary of his style, and a reflection of his oeuvre.Angelopoulos was one of those few surviving masters who had the ability to form a fruitful synthesis of personal and collective experience. He was a poet of time, in an ontological sense, but also a vital interpreter of our time, giving a unique perception of reality which many of us share, but find hard to express. The milieus of his films always exhale misery, but still include breathtaking, ubiquitous beauty. The images of wind, snowfall and rainy roads do not give form to a mere landscape -- for the landscape has a soul of its own. The viewer looks at the landscape, and it gazes back to him. It is an elegiac moment of cohesion with the universe.In brief, "The Dust of Time" is a story about a film director and his life. There are two different time levels: the director is making a film, in the present, about his parents' life in Europe after Stalin's death in 1953. Knowing Angelopoulos' style, it is not surprising that these two levels are overlapping. However, understanding the details of the story line isn't important. What is essential, is to see and experience. It is as if each image was a cloth, hiding the absolute image that will never be seen. Each image works as a continuity of its own.The fact that the protagonist of "The Dust of Time" is a filmmaker associates the film with Angelopoulos' two earlier works "Voyage to Cythera" (1984) and "Ulysses' Gaze" (1995), both of which deal with the possibilities of the cinema to depict reality. However, in "The Dust of Time" Angelopoulos concentrates more on man's loneliness with his memories. Another characteristic theme for Angelopoulos is the relation between past and present. In "The Dust of Time", this theme is treated through dialog between the two time levels. In numerous scenes time and space change abruptly, without a word of explanation, as characters from different periods may come in physical contact with each other. It is never clear whether it's dream or real, but such clarity is unessential and would harm the film to a large extent.In a word, "The Dust of Time" studies the emotion of existential loss. In his poetics of space, Angelopoulos studies thematic contrasts of appearance and disappearance, absence and presence, distance and intimacy. People are constantly separated by objects that are sometimes concrete, sometimes abstract. This is veritably philosophical, but this film isn't "intellectual" by any means. To my mind, "The Dust of Time" can be easily understood on an emotional level. All it requires is an open mind and a soul capable of receiving beauty. The whole film is more like an on-going poetic impression rather than a strict story. During the film, the spectator goes through emotions of despair, remorse and yearning for touch with the characters.Although these themes are very universal, some viewers find "The Dust of Time" hard to watch. Arguably it is a film that most likely isn't for everybody, but I would still recommend it for anybody since it asks so little, and gives so much in return. All in all, it's a film, made by an aging man, studying the loneliness of being in the universe as the dust of time sweeps across space -- sometimes so quickly that we hardly pay any attention to it; sometimes so slowly that we seem to wither away with it; and sometimes the dust seems to remain stagnant as though not moving at all.

Other than the acting, the rest of the technical aspects of the film were fine: the end scene, after Jacob and Eleni die, where Spyros and his granddaughter walk out into a snowy urban scene, is beautiful, but, again, bereft of real emotion (the voice-over, from Dafoe, even rips off the ending from James Joyce's The Dead), for these two characters have barely been on screen all film, and in the few scenes they are in, barely register concern or emotion. And none of the scenes in this film, as lovely as they are, achieve the power of similar scenes in earlier Angelopoulos films, partly due to the lack in other areas, but mostly due to the anomy this film inhabits and inflicts in its viewers. Cinematographer Andreas Sinanos does his usual good work, and the film is radiant, in its 1.85:1 aspect ration, but the best part of the film is the scoring by Eleni Karaindrou, which is unfortunately never put to the best possible use, due to the visuals that Angelopoulos and editors Yannis Tsitsopoulos and Giorgos Chelidonides pair it with. Also, this film has substantially more shorter takes than most of Angelopoulos's canon, and far fewer longer ones. The script, by Angelopoulos, with some help, apparently, from Tonino Guerra and Petros Markaris, is not up to the usual standards of these men. The DVD, by Artificial Eye, has no extra features, and is in a Region 2 format, so North American viewers will need a codeless DVD player. Languages used are English, Russian, German, and Greek, with subtitling, as necessary.Overall, The Dust Of Time has glimpses of what made Theo Angelopoulos one of the all time greats of cinema, but not enough to make this merely solid, but frustrating, film, great. It is not a bad film, like the later films of other cinematic greats like Ingmar Bergman (Saraband) nor Federico Fellini (Intervista), but it definitely is an 'old master's film,' in the worst possible, and most self indulgent ways. Still, for its moments and its technical skills, it should be seen. More importantly, though, it should have been better. Much better.

Greek screenwriter, producer and director Theodoros Angelopoulos' thirteenth feature film which he co-wrote with Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra and the director's long time collaborator Petros Markaris, is the second part of an unofficial trilogy about modern Greece which was preceded by "The Weeping Meadow" (2004) and became his last film. It was produced by Theo Angelopoulos' frequent collaborator and wife Phoebe Economopoulos and is Greek, Italian, German and Russian co-production. It tells the story about a middle-aged American filmmaker of Jewish ancestry who is in the process of making a film about the story of his mother Eleni and his father Spyros at Cinecitta studios in Rome, Italy. While the producers of the film is worried about the shooting of the film, the director is concerned about finding his missing daughter.Narrated by Willem Dafoe and Irène Jacob and with a fragmented narrative structure that moves between the past and present and has them, this contemplative and imaginary epic about Greek history, family history, love, immigration, friendship, memories and time draws a pervasive portrayal of a destined relationship between two immigrants separated by time and circumstances. This quietly paced, character-driven and extensive journey which spans over fifty years from the mid-19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, depicts a significant love story, is precisely and distinctly directed by Theodoros Angelopoulos (1935-2012) and finely photographed by cinematographer Andreas Sinanos who also worked as the director of photography on the more stylistically prominent first segment of the trilogy.Shot in Russia, Rome in Italy, Cologne and Berlin in Germany, Athens in Greece and Kazakhstan, this subtle continuation of the story about Eleni and Spyros contains some memorable scenes, poetic images, artful and naturalistic milieu depictions and Greek composer and long-time collaborator of the filmmaker, Eleni Karaindrou's distinct score which reinforces this story within a story's poignant atmosphere. The international cast primarily consisting of American actor Willem Dafoe, Swiss actress Irène Jacob, German actor Bruno Ganz, German actress Christiane Paul and French actor Michel Piccoli delivers affective acting performances in this somewhat elegiac, at times humorous, humane and moving historic drama from one of Greece's most reverent and important filmmakers, which is seen from varied points of view.

Master of broken love stories, Theo Angelopoulos, presents us the story of the last 60 years, the struggle between the absoluteness of love and the sadness of life.Three generations move from one place to another like leaves in the winds of immense political changes while we witness the parallels between their personal lives and those social changes in lyrical imagery.The two different paths taken by lovers who have fled Greece after the defeat of the Greek leftists by the American and British led Royalist army forms the basis of the film. Spyros goes to the US and Eleni to the Soviet Union. Spryos' attempt to take Eleni out of the Soviet Union ends dramatically. Eleni is sent to Siberia and Sypros to jail. They are then separated for decades but finally get together in the US. Their love child has become a movie director whose sole purpose in life is his career in the West while their granddaughter has to live the teenage life of divorced parents, lost in a life with no purpose. These social changes accompany political changes, somehow West starts resembling East. Siberian gulag security has now become Western airport security while the Russian secret police did turn into Berlin police. On this gloomy background Angelopoulos is not too pessimistic, there is a glimmer of hope, the only generation that can save the Gen Xers from their selfish Baby boomer parents are their grandparents. Overall, a wonderful movie by one the greatest directors of our time, not only packed with strong historic and political content but also beautiful poetry with many dramatic scenes, one especially standing out. And while Piccoli is good, Bruno Ganz offers a great performance.