Theo Angelopoulos

I remember seeing "The Beekeeper" (starring Marcello Mastroianni) at the Ritz back in the late 80's. The film left a lasting impression on me. I remember wanting to see more of Angelopoulos' films. I don't watch 'Greek TV' (Antenna, Alpha, etc.), with the exception of ERT (which is like PBS here in the States). I am not feeling well. Tonight an excellent documentary on the life of Theo Angelopoulos on ERT made my migraine/nausea a little less intense. (Nothing like a decent documentary to take your mind off of whatever ails you ...)

Theodoros "Theo" Angelopoulos (Θεόδωρος Αγγελόπουλος) died on January 24th at the age of 76 while shooting the final part of a trilogy – "The Other Sea" – after being struck by an off-duty police officer. Angelopoulos attempted to cross a busy road in Drapetsona (near Piraeus) when he was struck by the motorcyclist. He was rushed to the hospital, but died as a result of his injuries several hours later.

Below is a quote by Martin Scorese about this remarkable filmmaker whose films explored the human condition in general and the condition of modern Greece in particular through haunting imagery rooted in myth and epic:

"Theo Angelopoulos is a masterful filmmaker. He really understands how to control the frame. There are sequences in his work -- the wedding scene in The Suspended Step of the Stork; the rape scene in Landscape in the Mist; or any given scene in The Traveling Players -- where the slightest movement, the slightest change in distance, sends reverberations through the film and through the viewer. The total effect is hypnotic, sweeping, and profoundly emotional. His sense of control is almost otherworldly. - Martin Scorsese –"

He began making films after the 1967 coup that began the Greek military dictatorship. In the 1970's he made a series of political films about modern Greece: "Days of ’36" (1972), "The Traveling Players" (1975), and "The Hunters" (1977). Angelopoulos won numerous awards, including the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998 for "Eternity and a Day". A rumination on death, it stars Mr. Ganz as a terminally ill writer who journeys in search of answers to vast metaphysical questions.

Possessed of a singular style that has long divided critics, Mr. Angelopoulos was considered one of the most eminent directors of the second half of the 20th century; reviewers have likened his films to those of Michelangelo Antonioni and Akira Kurosawa. He worked with some of the world’s leading actors, among them Marcello Mastroianni, Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Bruno Ganz and Jeanne Moreau. If Mr. Angelopoulos’s work was not universally known in the States, the explanation could be found in his style, the antithesis of Hollywood studio fare. Seen most often here on the art house circuit, his movies are dreamy, atmospheric and enigmatic. Many are allegories that illuminate the painful history of 20th-century Greece, from its occupation by the Nazis in World War II to its brutal civil war in the late 1940s. Visually evocative, often beautiful, his films contain long sections with little or no dialogue. They are suffused with melancholy symbolism, all of it intensely personal and some of it intensely obscure. They are typically organized around very long takes that can assume the form of wordless meditations on space, as the camera pans slowly across a landscape. What dialogue there is can border on the opaque, at least in English translation. In "Ulysses’ Gaze" (1995), for instance, Mr. Keitel, playing a Greek-American filmmaker on an odyssey in the Balkans in search of lost reels of an early Greek film, utters lines like "Your image, still damp, unchanged since the day I left it, emerges once again from the night."

Some critics adored Mr. Angelopoulos’s films. Others could scarcely abide them. Which side one came down on depended partly on staying power: some of his pictures were three hours long or more.

"Voyage to Cythera" (1984), "The Beekeeper" (1986) and "Landscape in the Mist" (1988), explore the ravages of modern Greece. He directed and co-wrote these three films - {The Trilogy of Silence}. "The Weeping Meadow" (2004), which treats Greek history between the world wars and was the first segment of an unfinished trilogy; and "The Dust of Time" (2008), the trilogy’s second segment, about the fates of refugees from Greece, stars Mr. Dafoe, Mr. Ganz and Irene Jacob. Part 3 of {The Trilogy on Modern Greece} - "The Other Sea" (2012) - was being filmed at the time of Angelopoulos’ death, which dealt with immigration and the crisis in contemporary Greece.

As he explained in interviews, it was the combination of a centuries-old oral tradition and a 20th-century visual medium that let him capture, for better and sometimes for worse, the soul of his homeland.

"I say to myself that I could have made a career anywhere, but I have chosen to speak in the same words that were spoken by so many who preceded me,” Mr. Angelopoulos told The Los Angeles Times in 1999. “Greece is more than a geographical locale to me. It’s a spirit, a culture, and when I’m disgusted with present-day Greece — the loss of spirituality and generosity — I go back to those words said many, many years ago."

It's a shame "The Other Sea" was not finished when Theo's life was cut short unexpectedly. He will always be remembered by those of us who truly loved his movies.

R.I.P. Theo ...