Landscape in the Mist
(Topio stin omichli)
With Michalis Zeke, Tania Palaiologou, Stratos Tzortzoglou.
Greece, 1988, 35mm, color, 127 min.
Greek with English subtitles.
Print source: Greek Film Centre
The bleakness of life on the road continues in the last film in Angelopoulos’ “trilogy of silence.” An adolescent girl and her little brother flee their small town in search of their absent father, who they believe has emigrated to Germany. Between hopping trains and hitchhiking, they befriend a young man who helps them on their way. Despite moments of awkward tenderness, this harsh film refuses to sentimentalize the experiences of its characters and the conditions of their lives. The children are told again and again that “there is no father, there is no Germany,” yet they grimly travel north toward the border and their fate. As in The Beekeeper, the materiality of film itself intrudes on the children’s journey, in the form of some 35mm frames that seem to guide them to the end.