Eternity and a Day
Greece/France/Italy/Germany 1998
Reviewed by John Mount
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Present-day Thessaloniki, Greece. Alexander is a terminally ill poet trying to put his affairs in order the day before he goes into a hospice. He visits his daughter and asks her to take his dog. She refuses and tells him that she and her husband have sold the family home by the sea. Memories of Alexander's beautiful wife Anna flood back from letters she wrote. While driving, Alexander helps a young Albanian child to escape arrest for illegally cleaning cars at traffic lights. Later he sees the boy abducted and rescues him from an illegal adoption ring.
Alexander decides to return the boy to Albania by driving him to the border. There he realises the boy has a better chance in exile and returns him to Thessaloniki. Alexander has abandoned his own writing in order to complete an unfinished poem by a great Greek poet who lived in Italy; on returning to Greece, the poet bought words from people in order to write his poems. The Albanian boy sells Alexander words to help him complete the poem. Alexander manages to find a home for his dog with his servant Urania during her son's wedding. The boy's best friend dies and Alexander attends a street kids' funeral for him. Alexander visits his mother in hospital. The boy arranges to sail from Greece. In the last hours before his departure the pair take a late-night bus trip around the town. Numerous mysterious characters, including the dead Greek poet, board and disembark the bus. The boy catches his boat and Alexander decides not to enter the hospice. Contemplating his life, he stares out to sea.
Review
Theo Angelopoulos' favourite quotation by the modern Greek poet George Seferis is: "In the beginning was the journey." In his latest film he seems to be saying that at the end is the journey also. Eternity and a Day is an exquisitely poised film in which the narrative tension derives from a dying poet's decision to postpone his preparations for death in order to involve himself in the problems of an Albanian child refugee. Ironically, the poet's experiences of the grim realities of contemporary Europe and the friendship that grows between him and the child lead him to a better understanding of his own internal exile as a dislocated observer of Greece and his own life. At the same time, his semi-articulate communication with the boy brings him closer to the poem he is trying to complete.
The pairing of an elderly man and an uprooted child has been frequently used in recent European cinema (Kolya, for example) to explore the troubles in the Balkans and the problems of formerly Communist Eastern Europe. In Angelopoulos' hands, the trope seems to represent a need to square the past with the future by looking at the fates of those on the receiving end of obdurate new nationalistic doctrines. Since the 80s Angelopoulos' films have shifted their focus from the examination of groups and the particularities of Greek history to the more universalised thematic approach of the chronicling of a single protagonist's travails in a wider, disintegrating Europe. Although Angelopoulos has expressed his disaffection with political activism, he still wishes to engage with what goes on around him.
In these later films he has used foreign actors such as Marcello Mastroianni and Harvey Keitel to play his troubled Greek artists. Bruno Ganz, whose past roles include detached witnesses in Alain Tanner's In the White City and Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, is an inspired choice for Eternity and a Day. Slowly being sculpted by time into a beautiful older man, Ganz brings a tender, melancholy presence to the film, despite the fact his dialogue is dubbed. (Given Angelopoulos' preference for oblique angles and partially obscured profile shots - what David Bordwell calls "dorsality" - the dubbing remains discreet.)
Angelopoulos is a remarkably consistent director with a rigorous, modernist aesthetic. Made with such longtime creative partners as director of photography Giorgos Arvanitis, composer Eleni Karaindrou and script collaborator Tonino Guerra (also a writing partner of Antonioni), Eternity is permeated with Angelopoulos' socially committed and humane vision. For the most part the film is bathed in cool, opalescent light and muted colours which contrast sharply with warm, richly hued scenes from the writer's past that conjure up the nostalgic memory of his beautiful, beloved wife. The signature long shots and elaborate, fluid camera movements are also present. There are also some dramatic, flat-on compositions. Among the most memorable are a scene of Alexander and the child approaching a misty border crossing where living figures clenching the barbed-wire fence resemble a jagged paper chain, and a final scene of Ganz staring out to sea with his back to the camera. The sight of his crumpled ears and his tangle of damp, thinning hair produces a sublime expression of mortality and resignation. The seamless temporal shifts are also breathtaking in their simplicity and fluency as Ganz steps in and out of his past and relives moments of joy he had underestimated or simply forgotten.
Angelopoulos doggedly pursues an undervalued cinematic objective: to create time and space for an audience to think and ask themselves questions during his films. This is the antithesis of most contemporary mainstream cinema where the goal is to fill the audience with sensations and emotional excess, holding back reasoning at all costs. What's most fascinating about this beautiful and touching film is the way the protagonist's conundrum reflects Angelopoulos' own challenge as a film-maker. By making art from life and living as an artist, the opportunity to experience the world in an unmediated manner and to participate unselfconsciously in it is lost. It's possible the rigorous formal system Angelopoulos imposes to express his concerns may, ultimately, cause the object of his attention to recede and become more elusive. For all that, the quiet, hypnotic intensity of the cinematic journey one experiences in Eternity and a Day is a rare and lasting pleasure.
Credits
- Producer
- Fibi Ikonomopoulou
- Screenplay
- Theo Angelopoulos
- Script Collaborators
- Tonino Guerra
- Petros Markaris
- Based on an idea by
- Theo Angelopoulos
- Directors of Photography
- Giorgos Arvanitis
- Andreas Sinanos
- Editor
- Giannis Tsitsopoulos
- Production Designers
- Giorgos Ziakas
- Kostas Dimitriadis
- Music
- Eleni Karaindrou
- ©Theo Angelopoulos
- Production Companies
- Theo Angelopoulos/Eric Heumann/Giorgio Silvagni/Amedeo Pagani and the Elliniko Kentro Kinimatographou present a Theo Angelopoulos/E.K.K./ET1/Paradis Films Srl/Intermedias S.A./La Sept Cinéma production with the assistance of Canal+/Classic Srl/Istituto Luce and with W.D.R. and Arte with the support of Eurimages
- Arte Associate Producer
- Martin Wiebel
- Production Managers
- Lefteris Harontis
- Nikos Sekeris
- Unit Production Manager
- Stefanos Danilhidis
- Assistant Director
- Takis Katchelis
- Continuity/Casting
- Alexandros Lambridis
- Special Effects
- Manolis Sakadakis
- Costumes
- Giorgos Patsas
- Make-up
- Giannis Pamoukis
- Titles
- D. Th. Arvanitis
- Accordion
- Andreas Chekouras
- Musicians
- I Kamerata
- Conductor:
- Lucas Karytinos
- Oboe Soloist:
- Vangelis Kristopoulos
- Clarinet Soloist:
- N. Ginos
- Bassoon:
- E. Kazianis
- French Horn:
- V. Skouras
- Mandolin:
- A. Dimitriadis
- Accordion:
- Andreas Chekouras
- I. Vavachikas
- Folk Clarinet:
- M. Halkias
- Music Recording
- Giannis Smyrnaios
- Soundtrack
- "Asma Asmaton" by Mikis Theodorakis, Iacobou Kambanelis; "Tis Agapis Asmata" by Mikis
- Theodorakis, Odyssea Eliti; "Panselinos o Erotas" by Eleni Karaindrou, K.H. Myri, performed by Haris Alexiou
- Sound
- Nikos Papadimitriou
- Sound Mixer
- Kostas Varybopiotis
- Cast
- Vassilis Seimenis
- son-in-law
- Bruno Ganz
- Alexander
- Fabrizio Bentivoglio
- the poet
- Isabelle Renauld
- Anna
- Ahilleas Skevis
- the child
- Despina Bebedeli
- mother
- Eleni Gerasimidou
- Urania
- Iris Hadjantoniou
- daughter
- Petros Fyssoun
- voice of Alexander
- Pemi Zouni
- voice of Anna
- K. Sahinidis
- K. Chiamidis
- wedding singers
- Th. Papadimitriou
- P. Pappas
- Th. Asteridis
- coach singers
- Giorgos Popov
- Dimitris Photsinos-Safrantsas
- Giorgos Halaris
- Themis Gousoulis
- children
- Alexandra Ladikou
- Nikos Kouros
- Alekos Oudinotis
- Nikos Kolovos
- Michalis Giannatos
- Leonidas Vardaros
- Vasilia Kavouka
- Petros Markaris
- Melpo Lekatsa
- Giannis Karabinis
- Maria Hadjioannidou
- Andreas Chekouras
- Giannis Mochlas
- Maria Saltiri
- Makis Pappas
- Tania Paliologou
- Aristotelis Aposkitis
- Ronny Gianniari
- Panos Papagiorgopoulos
- Maria Koskina
- Thodoros Chalouhidis
- Thodoros Technedsidis
- Lazaros Andreou
- Christos Sougaris
- Giannis Papadopoulos
- Gianni Giannakidou
- Argiris Kesoglou
- Melpomeni Choulou
- Gianni Mitsoiu
- Petros Patses
- Certificate
- PG
- Distributor
- Artificial Eye Film Company
- 11,966 feet
- 132 minutes 57 seconds
- Dolby stereo SR
- In Colour
- Subtitles