ruedevariance Reviews

Landscape in the Mist (1988)

Another flawed occasionally brilliant film

[7/10 · 15 July 2012]

Landscape in the Mist is the third in a Trilogy of Silence that began with Voyage to Cythera and continued with The Bee-Keeper. In all three films the qualities that distinguished the first trilogy -Days of '36, The Travelling Players, and The Hunters- are absent. The music in the first trilogy is precise and precisely used at key moments of the film; whereas in the second trilogy the music is repetitive and not traditionally Greek but some sort of middle European slop which heard again and again becomes an irritating nuisance and a diversion from the film. The music in Megalexandros is even more important and deftly used. Second, the cinematography in the first trilogy and Megalexandros is pristine and superb in its use of Northern Greek landscape, whereas in the second trilogy, with the exception of the closing scenes of Voyage to Cythera and Landscape in the Mist, the landscape rarely works as a commentary other than, perhaps the empty roads in Landscape in the Mist. Third, the introduction of Tonino Guerra as writer complicates the vision Angelopoulos had before, giving his films an existential despair familiar from Antonionio's films on which Guerra wrote, and which are part of the problem. The unreality of two children who rarely eat or drink or wash may not matter as they represent a transition from innocence to maturity, but the adults around them are by turns indifferent (the uncle), brutal (the truck driver), loving (Orestes) but seem not to contribute anything to the children's lives, other than the obvious problem of the truck scene. Perhaps in this film the father's silence is equivalent to God's silence, yet the solitary tree at the end suggests the eternal spring of life, and that the children have found their peace. What a pity this ravishing scene is so polluted by that whining oboe and that relentless repetition of such third rate muzak.

I have the Artificial Eye Boxed sets, and all the films seem to be missing up to 5-15 minutes, are there no definitive versions of Angelopoulos' films?

Pina (2011)

A Loving Tribute to a Genius

[10/10 · 30 January 2012]

Wim Wenders was planning a film about Pina Bausch before her sudden death from cancer in 2010, so the film that he has made has become a loving tribute to one of the most innovative choreographers of the 20th century. The film opens with a simple explanation of how to dance by presenting the four seasons in four simple movements, if you watch it closely or repeat it, you can do it yourself. From these simple movements with the hands, Pina gives you a sense of the joy of dance, but it was from these elemental movements that she developed some of the most complex, and physically demanding pieces of 'dance theatre' which never lose a sense of poetry and expression, be it pain, violence, sarcasm, childishness, joy or love. She was capable, as the film shows at the outset, of creating new ways of seeing now standard ballets like The Rite of Spring; and capable of using her childhood experiences in the Ruhr, where her parents owned a run-down hotel-restaurant, in Cafe Muller. But her works were collaborations with the dancers and mostly developed from themes rather than stories which is what made her work difficult for some audiences to understand, were they ever lucky enough to see the company. Wenders offers the dancers their chance to say how Pina got them to perform -some say nothing but express their thoughts in dance, often in the streets or on the overhead train in Wuppertal where Pina's theatre was based. One dancer says: She said to me: Think about Joy, and from that she created a sequence in Vollmond that is exhilarating and wonderful to see. I haven't seen the 3D version but I have to say the dancing is superb, and while the primary focus is on the works rather than the person, Pina emerges as an intense, difficult, but loving person who generated equally intense loyalty among the members of her company. Wenders own impeccable artistic integrity has produced one of the best films about dance, and one of the best documentaries ever made.