jandesimpson The tragic death of Theo Angelopoulos in a street accident early this year deprived us of one of cinema's greatest poets. His was a unique way of looking at the world, so much so that he seemed to attract admirers and detractors in equal number. To love his work, however, is to have succumbed to an adagio tempo that allows us to meditate, as we watch,, on what is being revealed, be it character, history or legend. So strongly is the spirit of place conveyed that the viewer feels he is actually there in those wintry landscapes of northern Greece that Angelopoulos made very much his own.Possibly the single most important DVD issue in recent months has been Artificial Eye's release of all Angelopoulos's feature films in three boxed sets. This has enabled me to fall in love again with the few I previously knew such as "Landscape in the Mist", "The Beekeeper" and "Eternity and a Day" and to discover other masterworks such as "The Travelling Players" and "The Suspended Step of the Stork". If I concentrate this review on "Eternity and a Day" it is because it is the most recent I have re-experienced after a gap of several years. In many ways this study of a possibly terminally ill writer meditating on his life whilst at the same time struggling with his present, is the director's most personal film. Certainly it is his most immediate in the way it gets far nearer to its characters than usual, often viewing them in close-up rather than middle distance. The film commences with the boy Alexander responding, as he wakes one summer morning, to the summons of his friends to join them on the beach which faces his family home. Thereafter we only see him as an old man regardless of the time zone into which the film slips. Indeed it is the fluid use of time, often passing from present to past within a single shot, that is a salient and wonderfully satisfying feature of an Angelopoulos film. In his bleak present Alexander often thinks back to a day of perfect happiness, shortly after the birth of his daughter, with his late wife and family on the beach where he played as a child. There is little comfort in a present that prefigures the end. About to admit himself to hospital he visits his daughter hoping to leave his dog with her, only to find that his beloved house by the sea is about to be sold to developers. The big issues of history with which Angelopoulos is usually preoccupied are largely absent apart from the refugee problem resulting from the Balkan conflict. Alexander's accidental encounter with a young Albanian boy whom he rescues first from a police raid on a gang of unsolicited traffic window cleaners and later from child adoption racketeers provides the temporary solace of someone to care for during a period of almost unendurable loneliness. Like many brief and meaningful encounters this is short lived. The boy is about to board a ship for yet another clime. What to do to while away their last hour before departure? A nearby bus operating a circular city route provides an answer that fills the youngster's face with glee. It proves to be a magical ride taken by an assortment of characters, a querulous couple, a tired revolutionary from some demonstration bearing a cumbersome red flag, a trio of conservatoire musicians who perform more for themselves that for those around them and finally the poet from a previous century whom we have met earlier in the film searching for and buying words of an unfamiliar language. Who but Angelopoulos could have conjured up such an imaginative conceit! Moreover, those three cyclists clad in yellow heavy waterproofs who appear in other of his films (I read somewhere that they represent the Fates) take the same journey as the bus. Alexander is sad in the knowledge that he may be approaching death without finishing the book he is writing. Ironically Angelopoulos died before completing the final film of the trilogy he had been working on since "Eternity and a Day". Tragic as this was, there is at least the consolation that he left behind him some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful films the cinema has given us.

doiyu2 Alexandre tries to find the meaning through a whole of his life on his last day simultaneously in the meditative way, how to have had influenced one another, might be his lated beautiful wife, with her recurrent letter. Finally he could cut across the unbroken wholeness in the last scene that Theo Angelopoulos as director could not end to make this film. He or we should know "eternity" composed with all its parts and "a day" is just the instant but cyclically over recurring and longer. This film could be the teaching material of literature, what the synchronic linguistics is. We have to watch the sequential scenes in the notes depicting by Theo entirely after then, to consider as he maintained anytime.The tale of Solomos presented obviously Theo's literary stranger thoughts what he has been holding still today and three words that a boy picked out for Alexandre let take Greek climate being set off by it to heart.

ghamburg What a beautiful film. Dreamlike, poetic, wise; also sober, down-to-earth.Delivers home-truths too: connecting with another human being gives one hope. Connections are possible across age, country, culture gaps. The images are gorgeous, the slowness fits. You have to sit on your impatience now and then. But thats entirely worth it.Also, I loved listening to the Greek language. But that is because I love Greece.It is a film that reminds me of Antonioni's L'Avventura and La Notte; they bring you into a trance where you can tell the beauty of this universe.

zetes A film straight from my dreams, drifting in and out of logical existence into the land of the dead. The story, as much as there is a story, involves an aging poet (played by European film staple Bruno Ganz) who has a terminal disease. He is apparently destined to die tomorrow, and we spend his final day following him, from his waking to midnight. Early in the morning he picks up a young homeless boy, an Albanian refugee, who tries to wash his window at a stoplight. Together they go on silent adventures. At regular intervals the film flashes back to Ganz's interactions with his beautiful wife, who never appears in the present, nor do we find out where she is. Most of the film's power is visual and aural. It is truly a sensual experience, along the lines of a Tarkovsky film. Because of its sensual prominence and lack of a coherent plot, it will surely fade from the surface of my memory. However, it is guaranteed to haunt me for the rest of my life. 10/10.