pantelispa Reviews

Metéora (2012)

Awe inspiring cinema

[8/10 · 6 March 2012]

Meteora is a rugged landscape of unfathomable beauty in the Greek mainland. Several immense monoliths appear to be vying with one another in a futile race towards the sky. The word meteora in Greek translates to lifted up or in the air which pretty much describes the impressions of the first-time visitors when they encounter the vast rocks. This landscape was the refugee of Christian monks who in the Byzantine times fled away here to escape from the oppression of the Ottoman rule. Stathopoulos is masterfully setting up his plot around this historical and geographical landscape.

Stathopoulos has achieved to bind the awe inspiring geography with the psychological landscapes of his passion stricken characters. Surprisingly, there are few scenes in which we see the 2 characters together. Instead, the film is constructed around the expectation of those rare encounters and the speculation about psychological inner states of the main characters. The director is to a great extent leaving it up to the audience to reconstruct the personal stories of Greek monk and the Russian nun. Through the film we don't learn anythings about how their lives winded up in this love story. Stathopoulos is using photography, music and animation to veer the experience of the audience allowing the landscape to have a meditative impact on the reconstruction of the plot .

The director has been studying carefully the light and the photography of the landscape. The results is an awe inspiring experience as one soon feels lost floating totally immersed into the landscape. Stathopoulos achieves that by way of shooting from a limited number of angles under different light conditions.Through the film one can sense that the camera is slightly out of focus an effect which is spreading the attention to entire picture rather that focusing on part of the canvas. One could claim that light is to a great part the language of the film as well as the language in which the lovers communicate their emotions. Furthermore, the director is supplementing the visual experience with the dire sounds of the monastic discipline as well as with religious music from the Byzantine and Russian traditions.

A clever devise used in the film is animating Byzantine icones. The result is brilliant since animation proves to be a great mean to illustrate the imaginary and the religious anguish that the 2 characters experience. Besides from being very pleasing aesthetically, the narrative of the animated parts gives us a hint to the imaginary of the main characters. The depictions of sin and punishment are coming close to literary descriptions taken up from religious texts. In this way, the film is bridging the visual culture of today with the stern visual art of the Christian Orthodox tradition. Animation in tandem with photography and music are guiding the audience through the labyrinth of possible interpretations.

Meteora is a worthy piece of European cinema and a diligent study of the relation between geographical and psychological landscapes. The film has the potential to become a point of reference for this kind of cinema. In his second film, Stathopoulos has made a bold step towards establishing himself as a promising director. Having already shot 2 thematically very different films he has proved both his potential to conceive stories and his skill in directing them.

Caesar Must Die (2012)

Prison, Theater, Freedom...

[10/10 · 24 February 2012]

A week has passed since I watched "Cesare deve morire" and I am still trying to decipher the multiple layers on which this film has worked in my mind. The brothers Taviani have directed a masterpiece of 76' which however is so dense in content that the time is waxing inside one's own memory.

The Tavianis are documenting the mis-en-scene of a Shakespeare piece inside a prison. Probably the most impressive element of "Cesare deve morire" is the performances of the inmate actors. The fact that the film is shot as a documentary in its natural setting spreads the film in two layers which are seamlessly weaved on each other. On the first level we see the prisoners who are passionately rehearsing the lines of their characters and on the second level we stand on front of Cesar, Brutus and Antonius discussing in the alleys of Rome. As in the case of Bergman, the brothers Taviani are very successfully studying the relationship between theater and cinema.

This prison setting is extremely symbolic and renders the actor performances utterly intense. It feels as if the prisoners, lacking their physical freedom, are getting deep into the skin of those new personas seeking the experiences which prison has deprived them of. The performances are so convincing that one has to contemplate on the nature of human destiny. Could it be that one's social condition or even coincidences could make the same persons capable of the best and of the worst? Moreover, the film leads to an unavoidable rumination of the concept of freedom in all its forms.

A stark black and white photography pronounces the prison architecture and recreates ancient Rome in its bare corridors. The photography is perfectly self-standing and it would be of great artistic value even in the absence of a plot. The black and white may emphasize the lack of freedom of the inmates but also allows the spectator to ignore redundant information and to concentrate on the performances of the actors. It is remarkable how architectural beauty arises even in a prison. The common spaces are illustrated exceptionally well and after a while one feels lost in a limbo between the prison and Rome.

Finally, although the audience reaches catharsis after the end of Shakespeare's narration the narration of brothers Taviani remains unresolved into ones psyche. I personally believe that "Cesare deve morire" is one of those rare cinematic experiences that are capable to shake away well entrenched beliefs. That alone would make the film worth seeing. Gladly, those 76' are so much more.

The White Meadows (2009)

Haunting Masterpiece

[10/10 · 20 June 2010]

Mohammad Rasoulof's "The White Meadows" is a masterpiece that will creep deep in your skin and will haunt your memory for a long time. The allegory of the film is a punch into the stomach, it's imagery of insuperable beauty and the story line an anthropological journey into the very essence of human societies. The ambiguous main character of the film Rahman, reserves for the spectator a place on his boat. Following him the viewer collects the tears of humans patiently getting immersed in a overwhelming study of human sorrow. In Rahman's boat one glides from island to island beholding speechless the rites, customs and superstitions of an unknown, but very familiar society.

Art, as every human action, requires the combination of scarce means towards the achievement of valued ends. Rasoulof picks as the setting of his film the lake Daryacheh in the north of Iran, which is a landscape of utmost harshness and physical beauty. While the means of the filmmaker seem to be quite limited, Rasoulof exploits tremendously well the physical beauty of the lake. He sets before our eyes an archipelagos of islands and islets and gives us the impression of an endless world from where no escape is possible. In these extremities the director establishes his plot, reconstructing effectively an entire human society. As the movie progresses we get insights in the customs and the institutions of the people, a puzzle that won't be completed until the very last scene . Then, with a masterful regression the film starts again at its very end. The director attains an astonishing cinematic achievement, with very little means at his disposition.

One could claim that Rasoulof, is discovering his own language assimilating elements from Iranian and European Masters. The cinematography of the film is of extraordinary beauty. The director draws on canvases playing with the water, the mistiness, the reflections, the white rugged rock and the salty scenery to produce a stunning and dreamlike world. The imagery functions on a poetic level by way of symbols and allegory. Some of the images are so exceptional than converted into photography or poetry they could retain their forcefulness. The director moves slowly and carefully from a scene to another allowing us the time to sit comfortably in the stern of Rahman's boat and reflect on the nature of his world. The more we behold the people the more we can envisage how it would feel like to be among them. The journey that we undertake is a vicarious experience immersed into visceral emotions. In the White Meadows, Rasoulof is possibly learning from currents and directors like the Italian Neorealism, Kurastami, Tarkovski and Angelopoulos, however his attainment belongs distinguishably to Rasoulof.

The White Meadows can be seen as an allegory to the current political regime of Iran, nonetheless the message conveyed by it is universal. The characters of the film could stand as the prototypes of a disutopian Platonic state. Rahman, the main character, remains an illegible until the very end of the film. The rules of his profession are simple. He wanders like a country-side doctor ,to places where people are mourning, collecting their tears, unaffected by the plights of his patients. During the film, one might try in vain to find the driving elements of his behavior. The laymen of this society appear to be fearful and extremely concerned with their own superstitions to have any critical thought. A little renegade who represents the curious, passionate and adventurous mind and an artist who sees the world differently from his fellows are sacrificed in a setting that could be inspired by ancient Greek tragedy. The director was actually arrested along with Panahi on the 1st of March 2010.

In my humble view, Rasoulof, in his 37,has directed a masterpiece of utmost intricacy and aesthetic value. His work is one of those destined to reside in our memory for a long time. Thus, I hope that the White Meadows will find their way to the movie theaters, our memories and ultimately film history . In the meanwhile, I hope that Rasoulof will continue to deliver us great films and to ameliorate his artistic language, despite the difficulties encountered in his homeland.