Landscape in the Mist by Theodoros Angelopoulos, starring Michalis Zeke, Tania Palaiologou, Stratos Tzortzoglou, Eva Kotamanidou, Aliki Georgouli: DVDNear.com

Landscape in the Mist

Landscape in the Mist
by Theodoros Angelopoulos

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Aliki Georgouli, Eva Kotamanidou, Michalis Zeke, Stratos Tzortzoglou, Tania Palaiologou
Director: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Producer: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Writer: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Producer: Amedeo Pagani
Producer: Eric Heumann
Producer: Stéphane Sorlat
Writer: Thanassis Valtinos
Writer: Tonino Guerra
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Greek (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 127 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-29
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video

Movie Reviews of Landscape in the Mist

Movie Review: Great
Summary: 5 Stars

There is a superlative scene in Theo Angelopoulos's 1988 film Landscape In The Mist (''''' '''' '''''' or Topio Stin Omichli) that is amongst the best filmic depictions of sexual abuse ever shown, and should be shown as a primer to Hollywood directors on how to be subtle and poetic, especially when dealing with such terminally PC topics. In it, the young ten or twelve year heroine of the film, Voula (Tania Palaiologou), who is on the run, in search of her nonexistent father (whom her never seen onscreen mother has told the children resides in Germany, even though she has no idea who their father/s is/are), with her five or six year old brother Alexandre (Michalis Zeke), has hitched a ride with a nameless truck driver (Vassilis Kolovos). After he tries to dump the kids off at a truck stop diner, but they follow him, he pulls over on the side of a road, as the boy sleeps. He tells her to get out of the truck, and then grabs her into the body of the truck, which is covered with a sheet, or tarp. Manifestly, he wants to sexually abuse her in some way. The camera never pans away from the back of the truck. We hear nothing, and after a minute or two, the young boy pops out of the truck cab and goes in search of his sister, calling her name. He runs out of frame, and a minute or two later the trucker gets out of the back of the truck. Now, the camera zooms in, slowly, to the truck, so that nothing but its back exists in the frame. Then, we see Voula slowly emerge from under the tarp. Her legs, then body. She looks shell-shocked, and her hands are bloodies. Whether this is from her hymen being broken, and feeling herself, or from an injury given to her by the trucker, or scratching him, we are not sure. The blood is not substantial, although likely too much for a broken hymen. Whether she was raped or merely fondled, we watch her face as she smears the blood on the side of the truck. This says far more than any graphic shot of the violence could, especially if quick cut in an MTV style. It also allows us to zoom in and feel her numbness and wonder at the blood.
Yet, this is merely one of many bravura shots in this great, great film, which opens with a shot at a train station, then hits the credits. Angelopoulos is a master of the picaresque, stringing together a brilliantly unobtrusive yet powerful narrative through a series of realistic, yet utterly poetic, moments. He also trusts his audience to watch and get the little moments of insight he slips in and never condescends to them. He leaves much in the film unexplained. But, we can fill in the blanks, and even if my answer is a bit different from yours, the overall arc coheres. This tack is brilliantly illustrated in yet another scene, where the kids encounter a twentysomething motorcyclist who drives the family bus for a troupe of entertainers, The Traveling Players (a group that is a direct nod to Fellini's La Strada and Variety Lights, and was the titular subject of his 1975 film of that name). The way Angelopoulos films the group of old would be Vaudevilleans as they rehearse on a beach for a performance is a direct nod to Fellini in his 8½.... This film has long been grouped with two other of Angelopoulos's films (Voyage To Cythera and Ulysses' Gaze) as a voyage trilogy, but it certainly stands alone, self-contained, as a great work of art. If the other two films are as powerful, Angelopoulos will have authored a trilogy that stands with the best that Bergman, Antonioni, Ozu, or Kieslowski have offered. Of course, detractors have claimed what they usually do about great films that depend upon a penetrating beyond the ordinary- that this and other films by Angelopoulos are slow and boring. But, given the depth this film covers, it is a film that could have gone on another hour and remained fascinating. Also, the film is filled with movement- emotional, material, or narrative, even if the frame stands still. Then, there is the mixture of the personal, political, mythic and sexual, so no critic worth their salt can claim the films are boring, unless they are simply wishing for Orestes to have crashed and burnt on his motorcycle.
Landscape In The Mist is a truly great film and work of art, loaded with little moments (a cock that struts into a train station and is caught before the camera pans to the sleeping children) and those grand (as mentioned). It strives for a sort of an implicate order even as it specifies its claims to two individual children, and it is in the fluid melding of such high aims in such an easily achieved manner that Angelopoulos's greatness in this film is achieved. It is one of those films where, even without thinking, the perfection of its image and message succeeds in moving the viewer. Sit still, be moved, and watch. Landscape In The Mist is that great.

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