THE WEEPING MEADOW
Directed by: Theo Angelopoulos.
Produced by: Phoebe Economopoulos.
Written by: Theo Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris & Giorgio Silvagni.
Director of Photography: Andreas Sinanos.
Edited by: Giorgos Triantafyllou.
Music by: Eleni Karaindrou.
Released by: New Yorker.
Language: Greek with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Greece/Italy/France. 170 min. Not Rated.
With: Alexandra Aidini, Nikos Poursanidis, Giorgos Armenis & Vassilis Kolovos.

The turbulent history of modern Greece is crammed into this visually mesmerizing but remote epic. Beginning in 1919, Eleni, a young orphan, has fled from Odessa under the care of Syros (Vassilis Kolovos) and his family. Years later, Eleni (Alexandra Aidini), now a young woman, runs away from her own wedding, leaving her father figure - widower Syros - at the alter. She is in love with his son, who is her adopted brother Alexis (Nikos Poursanidis), by whom she has already had children. They escape their small village to the big city, where the older man doggedly pursues them as they become part of a traveling folk band, with hopes of one day reaching America.

Director Theo Angelopoulos’ sweeping visual command challenges that of any director, including Martin Scorsese. In one overhead tracking shot, he and cinematographer Andreas Sinanos capture rural village life at its fullest and most mundane: scarfed women sweep their stoops and stack hay as a nearby horse lazily rolls on its back. In Thessaloniki, Eleni and Alexis find refuge in an opera house, where laundry drapes the stage and each box has been converted into a family dwelling with bed sheets as curtains, lit by the glow of kerosene lamps. Even without recent images in the news, a sequence where the young lovers row a small boat through a flooded village as black-clad women wait on rooftops would still be indelible.

However, Eleni and Alexis are merely pawns in the game of history. Though The Weeping Meadow is as visually dazzling as Angelopoulos' Landscape in the Mist (well remembered 17 years after its release), the slight characterizations work more effectively in the latter as its main characters, two children, trek across Europe searching for their father. That film comes across as a fairy tale for adults. But most of Weeping's traumatic events occur off-camera, (Eleni's pregnancy and her plight during two wars, for example), and it feels arbitrary and perfunctory that her sons would end up on opposing sides of the civil war. As one tragedy bleeds into another, the shots are so beautifully composed they seem inadequate to capture the suffering and misfortune. In the film's conclusion, Aidini delivers a harrowing, grieving wail, but it doesn't feel nearly as powerful as it should. Instead, it's like looking at a technically-polished painting, but not being fully drawn in. Kent Turner
September 14, 2005