Landscape in the fog
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Landscape in the fog |
| Original title | Τοπίο στην ομίχλη |
| Country of production | Greece , France , Italy |
| original language | Greek |
| Publishing year | 1988 |
| length | 125 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Theo Angelopoulos |
| script |
Tonino Guerra Thanasis Valtinos Theo Angelopoulos |
| music | Eleni Karaindrou |
| camera | Giorgos Arvanitis |
| cut | Giannis Tsitsopoulos |
| occupation | |
| |
Landscape in the Fog is a road movie by the Greek director Theo Angelopoulos from 1988 about two Greek children in search of their unknown father. Angelopoulos took the basic motif of the film from a newspaper report: “A few years ago I read in a newspaper note that two children were going to Germany to look for their father. I was impressed by this strong desire to find my father. "
The award-winning cinematic masterpiece is the third film after Reise nach Kythera and The Beekeeper and thus the conclusion of the trilogy of silence with which Angelopoulos created a cinematic panorama of (not only Greek) society in the 1980s.
action
Voula and Alexander are looking for their father, whom they have never seen before. Their mother told them that their father lived in Germany, and one day, longing for their father, they secretly set off for Germany. To do this, they simply take the Deutschland-Express at Athens Central Station, but they are caught dodging. They secretly listen to an uncle, to whom the children lead the investigating police officers, as he describes to the police officer that the children have no father in Germany, that the children are rather the result of chance acquaintances and that the story with the father in Germany is one the only lie. But the children do not believe their uncle's story. When suddenly heavy snowfall sets in and people run excitedly into the street, Voula and Alexander manage to escape at the police station.
They continue their search on foot, where they encounter a young man named Orestes on the street, who breaks down his old bus. He offers them to take her and they accept the offer. Orestes asks where they are from and where they were going, but they don't answer, and he senses that the children have a secret within them. Orestes is the driver of a traveling drama group that plays a play about Greek history, but hardly finds any spectators because times have changed and people are looking for easier diversion.
The children soon leave their companion because they have to move on to Germany to find their father. Now a truck driver takes her with him, but he later raped the girl while Alexander was sleeping. The truck driver, appalled at himself, fled, and the children continued on their way. You go black on the train and can escape shortly before the police checkpoint. By chance they run into Orestes, their guardian angel, who leads them to an empty beach café by motorcycle. The drama group meanwhile disband and the actors sell their props. As Voula and Alexander walk along the promenade of a city with Orestes, a huge marble hand suddenly emerges from the sea, which a helicopter lifts out of the sea. The index finger of the hand has broken off.
Orestes sells his motorcycle - he has to start his military service the next day - to a man whom he later meets again in a rock bar, and with whom he is probably having an erotic adventure while Voula and Alexander are resting in the bar. Voula is disappointed with Orestes, with whom she has fallen in love, she leaves again with Alexander, and when Orestes later looks for her and finds her on a godforsaken, newly built motorway, he takes Voula in his arms. Voula cries and he comforts her: “The first time it's always like dying”. The children are leaving Orestes forever, Voula has a soldier at the train station give her money for tickets, and they get on a train to Germany again. Shortly before passport control at the border, they get off the train, see that a river forms the border, get into a boat and drive it across the border. Suddenly there are shots from border guards and a tree appears in the fog. It gets lighter, the children run to the tree and hug it.
The central themes
The film thematizes the farewell to childhood and the uncertainty of the future: the finger on the hand from the sea has broken off, you have to find your own direction. The massive destruction of nature and the overexploitation of the natural foundations of life are also shown in haunting images. It is also about the fragility of human relationships, but also about solidarity among strangers: just think of the angelic Orestes or the soldier at the train station who gives the children the money for the tickets. The change in the possibilities of seeing and entertaining (the group of actors from Angelopoulo's earlier film O thiasos has to give up due to a lack of audience feedback ) he finally takes up as well as the action-determining power of dreams, but also the longing for a father and to know where you come from.
“The two children travel through a film landscape that is like another hope. I want to believe that cinema will save the world. For me, cinema is the world and my journey. I'm trying to find a few small utopias that can make me admire, ”said Theo Angelopoulos in an interview.
Film music
The film music, with echoes of romantic music, not least emphasized by the instrument of the oboe, was composed by Eleni Karaindrou . “The impetuousness of the children […] reminds me a lot of the romantic escapes of earlier times, so I wanted to suggest something of Mendelssohn and Franck, a little perfume from the romantic school of music. An instrument had to be selected for this, and here the oboe seems to me the most suitable, it is romantic and a scream at the same time. "
Reviews
The lexicon of international films describes the film as "an ambiguous, symbolic game with imaginations that expresses hopes and disappointments, fears and threats with impressive staging intensity and sees a glimmer of hope for the future of man in the clear, unswerving gaze of the child".
“Formally, Topio stin omichli presents itself as a road movie, thematically fairytale structures predominate. […] The two children experience and experience a 'landscape in the fog' in a real and metaphysical sense […]. He carefully develops glowing sparks of human hope. "
“The world through which the journey leads appears dreary; the departure of Voula and Alexander is to be understood as an escape. Again and again, however, Angelopoulos lets the light of another, imaginative world shine through, he gives hope that at the end of our dark, historyless and faceless present another day can wait. With Tarkowski he is one of the few film poets who can cancel the dimension of time, in whose films a temporary exit is possible into a realm that obeys its own laws. "
“Time is the most precious resource for the poetics of Theo Angelopoulos. It allows the viewer and listener to measure through a fantasy space in which he can, even has to, form his own picture of the film projections - while “breathing freely” with all the available emotions, in the face of long shots, plan sequences, panorama pans and long shots. They are images of a journey through the world, the complex aesthetic structure of which calls for a second journey within themselves. "
Awards
- 1988: Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice International Film Festival
- 1989: Felix in the category Best European Film of the Year
- 1989: proposed for nomination for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
Soundtrack
- Eleni Karaindrou. Music for films. ECM Records 1429.
DVD release
The film was released on DVD in Germany in 2012 as part of a compilation of six Angelopoulos films published by the Swiss Trigon Foundation.
literature
- Theo Angelopoulos . Film 45 series. With contributions by Wolfgang Jacobsen, Christa Marker, Josef Nagel, Wolfram Schütte and a foreword by Theo Angelopoulos. Carl Hanser Publishing House. Munich 1992. ISBN 3-446-17102-9 .
- Walter Ruggle: Theo Angelopoulos: Cinematic landscape. Lars Müller publishing house: Baden 1990. ISBN 3-906700-24-0 .
Web links
- Landscape in the Mist in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Website for the film on theoangelopoulos.gr
Individual evidence
- ↑ Theo Angelopoulos, cit. after Josef Nagel in: Theo Angelopoulos, Series Film 45, p. 182.
- ↑ Theo Angelopoulos in an interview with Serge Toubiana and Frédéric Strauss, cited above. after Josef Nagel in: Theo Angelopoulos . Film 45 series, p. 199.
- ↑ Theo Angelopoulos quoted. after Josef Nagel in: Theo Angelopoulos . Film 45 series, p. 199.
- ^ Landscape in the Fog. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ^ Josef Nagel in: Theo Angelopoulos . Film 45 series, p. 185.
- ^ Walter Ruggle : Theo Angelopoulos: Filmische Landschaft , p. 124 ff.
- ↑ Wolfram Schütte in: Theo Angelopoulos . Film 45 series, p. 37.