The beekeeper
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The beekeeper |
| Original title | O Melissokomos Ο Μελισσοκόμος |
| Country of production | Greece , France |
| original language | Greek |
| Publishing year | 1986 |
| length | 122 (Pal-DVD) minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Theo Angelopoulos |
| script | Theo Angelopoulos, Dimitris Nollas , Tonino Guerra |
| production | Theo Angelopoulos |
| music | Eleni Karaindrou |
| camera | Giorgos Arvanitis |
| cut | Takis Yannopoulos |
| occupation | |
| |
The Beekeeper is a film directed by Theo Angelopoulos and made in Greece in 1986. The screenplay by Tonino Guerra is based on motifs from the novel The Death of a Beekeeper by Lars Gustafsson .
action
The aging teacher and hobby beekeeper, Spyros, has had enough of life, family and old friends after his wife's divorce and daughter's marriage. He wants to leave his home village and makes one last trip south with a truck full of beehives. On the way he takes a fascinating young hitchhiker with him, with whom a strange relationship develops, but which cannot dissuade him from his longing for death.
Complement:
The plot in the film is very subjective, the images, music and impressions leave the viewer room for their own interpretations. Spyros thinks back to when he was happy. He is divorced. Like every year, he takes his bees on a trip to the south. He drives a group of other breeders every year, but every year the number is decreasing. As with the wedding, he realizes that he is old and getting lonelier and lonelier.
He visits the house where he grew up. The house looks old, dilapidated. It's deserted and lifeless. His life is like that of the house.
On the way he meets the fascinating young hitchhiker and he is not sure of his feelings: They are a mixture of father feelings and love. The hitchhiker could be his daughter, but it gives him a boost and the feeling of being able to change his life, to start over. For moments he seems happy. But then she leaves him, he's too old.
That throws him completely off track and he destroys the last thing he cared about: his bee colonies. He blames them (or the beekeeping itself) for his unhappy life or he realizes that soon he will no longer be able to indulge in his hobby like his friends because he is too old. His future life no longer seems worth living to him, the happiness of past years has disappeared from his life.
music
The music for the film was composed by Eleni Karaindrou ; Jan Garbarek plays a key role with his saxophone.
Reviews
“With Théo Angelopoulos, the multi-dimensionality of the cinema becomes reality in several respects: Not only does he design the rooms and their staging like no other, with him the fourth dimension also becomes a cinematic means of expression: time. Its long takes, spanning entire scenes, seem to want to free the film from the yoke of montage. "
"A moving, philosophically rich film, the gentle melancholy of which is reflected in the sparse narrative and in the concise play of the excellent main actor."
“The old master Theo Angelopoulos, Greece's most important filmmaker, staged a strict, serious and very melancholy drama about loneliness, which Marcello Mastroianni presented in a brilliant role as the main actor. The motif of love and death pervades this poetic masterpiece. The soundtrack by the Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou is dominated by the melancholy saxophone playing of the Norwegian jazz musician Jan Garbarek. "
Web links
- Beekeepers in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Website for the film with picture gallery and film clips
Individual evidence
- ↑ filmzentrale.com
- ↑ The beekeeper. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ prisma.de: The beekeeper