Reviews (11)

Excellent cinematography, photography and lyrical music...!
The STORY of an aging writer, his encounter with a young boy, and memories of the past which this encounter evokes, An Eternity And A Day stars Bruno Ganz as the writer, with supporting roles filled by Isabelle Renaud (France), Fabrizio Bentivoglio (Italy), and from Greece Despina Bebedeli, Achileas Skevis, Alexandra Ladikou, Alekos Oudinotis , and Nikos Kouros. Making a special guest appearance in the film is Greek actress Tania Paleologou, who as a young girl played the leading role in Angelopoulos' Landscape In The Mist.

Veteran Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, together with Greek writer Petros Markaris collaborated with Angelopoulos on the script. The production reunites Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze team -- coproducers are Eric Heumann's Paradis Film (France), Giorgio Silvani's Intermedia Films (France), and Amedeo Pagani's Classic Films (Italy); producer is Phoebe Economopoulos.

Theo Angelopoulos creates a stunningly haunting, seamless fusion of reality, nostalgia, and dreams in Eternity and a Day. Using long takes and reverse tracking, Angelopoulos creates a visual metaphor for the isolation of the soul: the hallway shot of Alexandre after Urania's departure; a team of window washers descending on cars at a stop light; the framed shot of Anna by the gate of the summer house. Moreover, recurrent images of abandoned buildings, repeated flights of Albanian refugees across the border, and the unfinished poem, reflect Alexandre's regret over his own unresolved actions. Figuratively, Alexandre, too, is a stranger - longing to recapture an irretrievable past -unable to return home. The unique point of that film is the poetic dialogues, the excellent soundtrack and the photography that really captures another color of Greece and the Greek world. So good, masterpiece.

..."Alexandre..." After this movie this name with always reminds you poetry... L'éternité et un jour

angelopoulos wins the palme
A dying author spends his final days reminiscing on what he sees as a failed life. His time spent wandering the gloom of Thessoloniki is interspersed with flashbacks of his wife and their home near the sea. In his wanderings around the city he meets an Albanian refugee child and the two share a few moments of friendship before each goes on to his destiny.
Seen by many as Anglopoulos' reward for the tantrum he threw when "Ulysses Gaze" lost to Kuristica's "Underground" a couple of years before, the Cannes critics finally decided to give the director the Palme d'or for this film. Angelopoulos was right to be upset, his very flawed masterpiece was a much better movie than "Underground," and it is also a better movie than "Eternity and a Day." "Eternity and a Day" is a smaller film where the filmmaker tones down many of his more eccentric quirks; it is easily the most "accessible" film he's yet made. But Angelopoulos is not an "accessible" filmmaker, as anyone who has had the particular and often grueling experience of sitting through "Ulysses" or "The Travelling Players" is well aware. Whether you loved or hated those films it was impossible not to come away from them feeling that they were uncompromised visions but "Eternity" feels, well, like a bit of a compromise. At times it almost leans towards the maudlin or even cutesy (and it's not just because of the kid, compare with "Landscape in the Mist" that had not one but two kids). That being said, the film is still frequently powerful and haunting in the manner of Angelopoulos' best works. It's just that unlike his best works, this one doesn't linger in the mind.
The letterboxed transfer on the VHS tape is quite nice, aptly capturing the director's vision of Thessoloniki as a murky, mist-shrouded, rain-soaked city of despair (it aint really) and the protagonist's dreams of life with his wife among the open sea and sand.

This is a film I saw again and again.
This film is about Alexandre, a renowned author, who spent his last years trying to finish a 19th-century poet's work. He unwittingly neglected his loved ones for his writing, to where he feels like an exile whether promoting his books or in his own room writing. Now he is dying. We first hear 8-year-old Alexandre and his friends, asking profound questions for their age: What's time? He sneaks out to join the boys at the beach, swimming out to sea, and his mother calls him back. This harkens him back to the present, aging, lying back in a chair in the same house, in pain, with the taste of salt in his mouth. He tells his housekeeper not to pack too much for where he's going. She begs him to let her go to hospital with him, he pats her hand and explains why not. He takes his beautiful but sad old dog to his daughter, who obviously married a wealthy man, the house is high-end, but cold and ultra-modern, with the bad taste of having a large working clock over the mantle to remind us time is running out. He says he's going away and can't take his dog; she reminds him Nikos doesn't like animals in the house. She reads an old letter from his wife. We now see Anna, vital, lovely yet needy, just after Katerina's birth and celebrating with the family by the sea. When the letter's finished he's brought rudely back to the present: Nikos, robed, appearing, announcing offhand he's sold the seaside house and the wreckers will arrive tomorrow. Shocked, Alexandre reacts: "you sold the house!" Nikos asks, jerking his head pointedly: "Is that your dog? I'm getting dressed," and vanishes. Dad talks of some irrelevant matter: a tennis match she'd lost and how devastated she was. She lamely explains the house was too big, unsafe etc. Alexandre touches her face and leads the dog out. Tomorrow he--and the beloved house as well--will be gone. Katerina doesn't know he's actually dying: but she's really like Nikos, which is redolent of the Buchanans in The Great Gatsby: the careless rich, tearing down things, letting others (here, the "wreckers") clean it up.

Between flashbacks and aiding an 8-year-old (same age as he is when he and his friends carved a date on a rock by his seaside home) Albanian refugee with a gift for expression, he visits his formerly vital mother, now senile, at her hospital window wailing, "Alexandre! Dinner..." When he leaves her, he asks: "Why, Mother, why must we rot?...Why didn't we know how to love?"

The doctor's ominous intonations, the boy's poetic street-bonfire tribute to a murdered friend, and finally, the joyful duo on a round-trip around the quay: all are journeys within journeys, poems within poems, finished in a most unusual way.

Earlier on, he'd interrupted the wedding party of Urania's son, the couple dancing down the streets, bride in stark white in contrast to everyone else in black. Here as throughout the film, Angelopoulos' gift of metaphoric expression is so mesmerizing. I've read that the movie is too long, but I wanted more. The groom and bride dancing in the wind down the stark gray street, she gliding like a flower ("korfoula"): only her hands moving sinuously and her full snowy gown bobbing gracefully to rapid concertina music. Again Urania asks to go with him to hospital tomorrow. He smiles and merely compliments the bride's beauty. As he turns away, she lovingly pats the head of her new canine charge, and watches Alexandre go. All of this is key to (perhaps only) me. She and his doctor know he's dying, no one else.

Both are exiles: the kid with no one accepts him, listens to his tale of the poet who bought words, and Alexander sharing his last day, making him rethink (I think). One's journey is just beginning and the other's is just ending. Alexandre now understands how long time is: an eternity and a day.

My Favorite Angelopoulos Film!
Of all of the 4 films American audiences are allowed to see by Theo Angelopoulos, this is one my favorite. Angelopoulos' films offer the same elements in everyone. He's a bold director when compared to American directors, then again, all foreign directors are bold compared to American ones, even our best like Martin Scorsese, Coppola, or Woody Allen. Angelopoulos' films have long takes. With long single camera shots. And to some, his films are flooded with portentous dialogue. And, I must admit I am usually in awe at the beginning moments of any Angelopoulos film. But, after a while, after I've taken in the subtle charm of the cinematography, the beautiful visuals, and his way of story telling, I can't help but sometimes grow impatient. And, while yes, that happened to me while watching this movie, it's a film that now, after a year or moreso, I think back of fondly. I remember the beautiful scenes by the sea. How beautifully Angelopoulos set up these scenes. He really is a master of imagery.
"Eternity and a Day" tells a rather simple but yet deep and poetic story of a man's dying days, and one day he spends with a small lost boy (Achileas Skevis). The man is Alexandre (Bruno Ganz). Alexandre does not want to die. As the song goes, he has a lot of livin' to do. He now reflects upon his past. Memories of his wife, his mother. He even visit's his daughter whom he has not seen in some time. He wants to rectify all the wrong that has happened in the past. And he gets a chance to when he meets this boy. Here I suppose Angelopoulos is playing with the elements of time. Past, present and future. The more time Alexandre spends with the boy, trying to get him back home, the more he is reminded of his past. Not to mention the fact that he is dying.
"Eternity and a Day" is a film that I'm sure not all will be pleased with. It's too subtle of a film. It takes it's time telling a story. It's moves slow, but it means to. I'm not saying these are faults, but, I know today's society has no time to watch these types of movies. American audiences like fast movies. Filmmakers like Angelopoulos may never find their audiences. But, despite everything, one could not hide the beauty the film has. The script written by Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petro Markaris, & Giorgio Silvagni has moments that are as tender as I've ever seen in any movie. The cinematograhy by Yorgos Arvanitis & Andreas Sinanos is wonderful as well.
"Eternity and a Day" won the Cannes Film Festival's Golden Palm, an award Angelopoulos is no stranger to. His "Suspended Step of the Stork" was nominated before as was "The Hunters". And "Ulysses' Gaze", if I remember right, won second place at the Cannes behind "Underground". "Day" is a movie all foreign film fans should see. You'll be impressed by the simple things the film has to offer. Also, will someone please release "The Suspended Step of the Stork" on video already! And the rest of Angelopoulos' films!
Bottom-line:"Eternity and a Day" is admittedly a slow moving film and does take some patience to watch, but the film has startling imagery. It's subtle charms carry you under it's spell.

Worst movie I have seen in 10 years.
I kept waiting for something to happen that I could care about. But after 60 minutes of drivel, I had to bail. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

shallow symbolism+conflicted logic. (spoilers and stuff)
there is a part in this film where the characters find a strip of film in a trash can. one of the characters (orestes) holds this piece of film up to the light. the two children, alexander and voula, crowd around to see what's printed on the film. "don't you see, through the mist, the tree?" orestes asks. the children cannot see anything, and orestes admits that he was joking. there is nothing printed on the film, just transparency.

that is a pretty good example of how i felt watching the movie. there is something about the film that makes you take notice, asks you to try to interpret the symbolism, strain to involve yourself in its landscape. but there's nothing there, you'd have to invent it. whoever thought that one could wring emotional poignancy out of antonioni's model of long, static takes, subverted plot expectations and inexpressive characters must be seriously disturbed. in antonioni, this format works because he is dealing with emptiness and emotional paucity, in the disconnection between individuals and classes. antonioni doesn't ask you to interpret this behavior, because human life and the natural world are too complex and spontaneous for complete understanding. we don't have an emotional attachment in the characters, but we are glad, because antonioni lets us observe them so clearly, and we come out with a great deal having been learned.

in this film, angelopoulos dares to ask us to try to bridge the gap, to really put in an emotional investment in these characters, although they are just as inexpressive and inscrutable as the characters in antonioni. if he had either played with this investment, and robbed the viewer of the satisfaction of the conclusion of their journey, making the film's ambiguity more intentional and clear, or if he had fully integrated us into their suffering, by giving these characters more to do than look at scenery and read unremarkable, "poetic" voiceovers, then the film could possibly have succeeded in its confines as a metaphysical, avant-garde road film. as it is, the film seems unintentionally ambiguous and underdeveloped. angelopoulos tries to distance us and integrate us at the same time, forcing us to take pity on these miserable children while not giving us any credible shred of their motivation. furthermore, he tries to involve us emotionally in this way by employing a grotesque and overbearing level of symbolism, which to some might seem like genius, but to me seems like a bit of a strain on the already rickety narrative. the last sequence, for example, visually plays on the dynamic of dark/light that has been a motif in the film. as the characters cross the border of germany, they move from black night to a misty, pure-white day. "first there was darkness, then there was light". this sequence emphatically insists on this type of bland binary division between innocence and guilt, childhood and maturity, good and evil. this is reflected in the integration of the symbolism: scenes of narrative, sudden intrusion of overbearing symbolic interlude, resumption of narrative as if nothing had happened. two types of scenes make up this film, making it as if the characters are not allowed to react to the world around them, just to "play their part", making the audience "laugh...or cry", as orestes describes his role. sure, but isn't possible to do both at the same time? (for example, the films of david lynch, kusturica's "underground", fellini, altman, imamura, and other filmmakers who can explore the middle grounds of desire, society, morality and politics).

what results is a film that might have resulted from a script written by antonioni, rewritten by fellini and then directed by bresson. in other words, it's a totally conflicted, overwrought film torn between two extreme poles of existence, with no comfortable middle ground that could engage us either as viewers or as interpreters. the symbolic nature of the work insists on interpretation, and it can draw you into to its complexity, but i don't think it offers any real, consistent emotional or political outlook (besides bleakness and despair, that is). skip this and watch "spirit of the beehive", the best film about children, politics, and family ever made.

Unforgetable Movie for a Life Time
This is an unforgetable movie for a life time to me. Master piece of Art!

A movie not to miss
I saw this movie years ago. Whenever anyone asks what my favorite movie is, my reply is always the same. The only film in my life that really stuck, "Landscape in the Mist". Allot of movies Iv seen are good but I soon forget its name and the plot. This film would be defiantely worth anyone's time. Beautiful and touching and unforgettable!

This movie is easily the greatest movie I have ever seen.
It is hard to explain why I like this movie so much. I think the best way to describe it is that it speaks to my soul, more than any other movie. The film operates on many levels (see Robert Horton's excellent books on Angelopoulos to explore further) such as Greek mythology, modern Greek history, the issues of borders, innocence and growing up, male role models, etc. However, the real power of the movie, I feel, lies in its ability to transport you to a place where the hidden truths of life, those truths that lie under the surface of our every day existence, are openly displayed and heartbreakingly rendered on screen. I think many independent film fans, especially in the US look for films that are realistic. This film is not realistic in the traditional sense, but it arrives at the core of our existence in a poetic way, and in a way that many people mistake for pretentiousness, false symbolism, and unnecessary artiness. The movie speaks volumes to me, and I hope it does to you too.

The best movie i ever seen
I saw this greek movie, and i did not even know it was so great, it was late at night and i started crying all the time, it`s a really heavy drama, there are a lot of symbolisms during the movie, long silence shots that makes you think about the chaos around us, if you like drama, you can't miss this one! ... Read more

Amazon.com

The Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, winner of the top prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for Eternity and a Day, will never build an audience of casual filmgoers. But then he doesn't mean to. Demanding, difficult, portentous, Angelopoulos makes films in his own deliberate style: sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes mystifying. When he's at his best, as in the beautiful and devastating Landscape in the Mist, the results can be spellbinding. Ulysses' Gaze is a typically fascinating, typically long (three hours) work. Harvey Keitel, moving through the film at an intense murmur, plays a Greek filmmaker known only as "A." After many years in America, he returns home for an odyssey in search of some early film footage shot in the Balkans, a quest that leads him through that war-torn area and finally into the bombed-out city of Sarajevo. Angelopoulos establishes such a dreamlike rhythm, and his images (like a giant stone head of Lenin, floating down a river) are so striking, that adventurous filmgoers should find this experience absorbing, if enigmatic. On the other hand, Roger Ebert described Ulysses' Gaze as "a numbing bore." But even he would probably admit that no one else on earth makes movies quite like Theo Angelopoulos. --Robert Horton ... Read more

Reviews (29)

A haunting search for purpose and for meaning in life
Truly I am struck deeply each time I watch this film. Though I do not purport to understand fully the lines of the plot (the rapid shifting between languages and character transitions make it exquisitely challenging to follow), the cinematography is hauntingly gorgeous. The image of the massive statue of Lenin being lifted by crane onto a barge, and floated down the Sava River stays with me even months afterwards.

Harvey Keitel is cast as a Greek-American film director/producer, returned to his Balkan home (north Greece), seeking lost reels of film shot by the Manakis brothers. He believes these to be the very first cinema images of life in the Balkans...in searching for these films, he is metaphorically searching for his own identity...a sense of deeper connection with a past with which his ties have been broken. Hungarian actress Maia Morgenstern is cast as a myriad of women whom Keitel (his character is known only as K...almost Kafkaesque in its enigmatic nature, I find this particular element...) meets throughout his journey through the Balkans...Greece, (FYR)Macedonia, Bosnia.

Though it may be that I am struck by the "Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome" in purporting to understand a kernel of Angelopoulos' intent in this film, I find it particularly effecting because I, like K, am on a journey...both to find out where I am from, and to see where I am going...and perhaps these twain shall meet somewhere beyond my present horizon. In this regard, we can each only hope...more than a film, Angelopoulos has succeeded in creating a successful reflection of what it is to live...it is to journey, ofttimes in search of ourselves...but more than the search, it is the journey that is important...we all come to our Ithaca in the end; only our paths differ.

A Masterpiece
"A numbing bore?" If Roger Ebert really said that of this film, all i can say is that there is something terribly wrong with Roger Ebert as of late. I beleive he has given his thumbs up to movies like "The Sum of All fears" and "Sam I Am" (this last one litterally being nothing more than a Star Bucks comercial shot like a shampoo comercial).
Ulysses' Gaze is a wonderfull film that like any great pieace of art can be interpreted in any number of ways, depending on the viewer.
The pace of the film is certainly slow, but not in the boring sense but in the character and context building one. In other words, the director is in no hurry to finish the film at the expense of any of the subtlty and humanity necessary to paint his canvass. And in order to drive certain themes home, which unfortunatly are indeed universal, he creates scenes and shoots images that are so charged with emotion and symbolism that anyone who has ever lived in a country with similar situations as those in the balkans can readily identify with them.
This is a powerfull film and its subtlty is worth emphasizing. He really manages to capture the essence of specific situations without ever being at all explicit.
(For those of you interested as well in photography, it is interesting to note that one of the most beautiful scenes in this movie, that of the barge carrying a statue of Lenin down a river, was also used by Josef Koudelka for a picture that appears in his "Caos" book. [ I do have to admit, however, that in my personal belief the scene is a little too long...The one scene of the movie that i personally would have cut a little shorter.Josef Koudelka managed beter results i think]It would be interesting to know if they both, the director and photographer, simply coincided in wanting to incorporate the dismanteling of this one particular statue of Lenin, or if they had previously arranged to both be there...At any rate, the resulting photograph by Koudelka is in my opinion, one of the most beautiful photographs ever.)

One of the top ten movies of the nineties if not the best!
This film deserves all the supreme adjectives that you can imagine. Much more than a simple film ; this work will let you thinking due its deep and disturbing ideas involved. It deals about the human condition , the seek for the epic sense of our life , the bitter sight about the western civilization , the decadence of Greece in the actual world , the weight of the memory , the old images of our parents , the nosthalgy for our beloved country , the vulgarity vs. the aristos , the tragedy of a world that has lost its center , the insanity of the Balcan war , the reflexion about the ancient mythology , the fall of Lenin statue in the Danube , the unforgettable sequence between Kaitel and Josephson in that dark room in which Erland Josephson thinks in loud voice : I{m a cinema lover ; a collector of lost images!. This is a mythical journey through the devasted and hopeless Europe.
I don't know why , but i reminded all along the film this statement from Curzio Malaparte : "Europe is dead , because its sons are born from dead mothers". This thought emerges from Malaparte's pen when he watches a dying mother when his baby is born at once!
Let me tell you something . I've watching almost the films of this poet : Theo Angelopoulus , this film maker is at the level of the giants , I mean Tarkovsky , Bresson , Bergman or Fellini . And if you inquire me about his masterpiece this one wins by far .
Angeloulus thought in Al Pacino at first , but Pacino was busy in another work . So he decided for Kaitel and believe me : this became a wise decision , because Keitel has been one of the giants actors all over the world . And in this case Kaitel makes a personal tour de force and breathtaking acting .
There are so many issues involved in this picture that I hardly may comment in this brief review. But if you want to convince by yourself about an artistic film , this is for you.
Cannes : Grand Jury Prize winner 1995.

pretentious blaha
One of the most pretentious attempts to overdo things, this one is utterly boring. It is too long. One hour of it is totally useless. And a display of artistic ego and navel gazing. Nothing else. Unfortunately, it also became one of those movies that rightly did not pass thru the meticulous Cannes Festival, and the prize went fairly to Kusturica's "Underground".
It is supposed to be about Bosnia and the conflict in Balkans, but what we see an aimlessly wandering Keitel - who apparently does not know why he is in that movie - and lots of meaningless shots and empty monologues.
That said, let us get the record straight. Theo Anghelopoulos is one of the greatest film makers and humanists ever, and this is frankly his worst movie. Because he is uneven. He created a masterpiece: "Eternity and a Day", which is a must for movie lovers.
His "Theatre Company" (1975) and "Landscape in a Mist" (1985) are other jewels. Demand and wait for them instead.

The Search for Meaning
This film never made it completely through my DVD player - I suffered through about 3/4 of it, and I'd had enough.

Two things struck me - actually, they crept up on me slowly, since this film has absolutely no forward momentum.

First, is everyone in the filmmaker's world so miserable? Why is a "meaning for life search" film have to be about how horrible and meaningless our world is? There's so much beauty and love, art and perfection to be enjoyed. Yet, if you believe this masterbatory offering, everything is dingy greys and blues, and no one experiences joy. How sad.

Second, it's very common for a craftsman (I can't call the filmmaker an artist, because this isn't art) who doesn't understand his material to hide behind a threadbare curtain of the enigmatic. It never works. Never.

And it doesn't here. Having the lead actor walk around for hours and stare at things, sitting in little chairs looking at the ground, this isn't storytelling. It's nihilistic self-aggrandizement.

And that went out with Andy Warhol. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

A study of corruption and innocence
One of the world's finest directors, Theo Angelopoulos made The Travelling Players in 1974 under the hardline rule of Greece's military junta. Set between 1939 and 1952, it follows a group of itinerant actors touring a pastoral folk drama, getting caught up in the political events of the period. It's a miracle the military police allowed the film to be completed since it is so clearly critical of Greece's troubled history. Four hours long, and composed of only 80 shots, this is no zingy date movie, but it's a great protest film.

REMARKABLE
I wrote a Master Thesis on this film, concentrating in the subject of the long take. It is written in French. Going through each sequence shot several times was an exhilarating experience.

Distributors should release all films by Angelopoulos. Of course, there are a lot a deals to be made with the GREEK FILM CENTER, one of the financers of Angelopoulo's films.

Excellent cinematography, photography and lyrical music...
This is a film, the ultimate film...

A theatrical troupe travels through Greece, while metaphorically travelling through Greek history and all its ups and downs, including military dictatorship, Nazi occupation, and NATO domination. A deeply rich film from acclaimed director Angelopoulos.

If you like pure cinematigraphy, it is an excellent choise.

Criterion, where are you?
This is a perfect film for DVD, and the folks at Criterion should be the ones to do it. And the supplemental material: a time-line of historial events related to the film; a summary of modern Greek history: late 30's to early 50's.

And while we're at it. How about a DVD version of Angelopoulos's "The Suspended Step of the Stork" and "Voyage to Cythera." Criterion, are you listening?

great films
Some films force you to look again at the way cinema works- the four hours of this is definitely one of them. Brilliant. ... Read more