Review: Eternity and a Day

DVD Review: Eternity and a Day

Dir: Theodoros Angelopoulos

Runtime: 137 mins

Genre: Drama / Tragedy

Country: Greece / France / Germany / Italy

Language: Greek w/ English subtitles

Eternity and a Day is a sumptuous, Palme d’Or winning tragedy form renowned Greek director Theodoros Angelopoulos. Like many of Angelopoulos’ films, Eternity and a Day focuses on themes such as nationhood, identity and exile, age, loss and death experiments with a non-linear timeline.

Alexander, a famous and successful writer, has lived a long and fulfilled life. Now in his autumn years, he has the misfortune of seeing all he’s accumulated fade away before his eyes; first his wife, then his family home, his work and finally his health and vitality. Terminally ill with days to live, a chance encounter with a young boy slowly restores Alexander’s focus.

The boy is an orphaned Albanian immigrant, scraping a living by washing car windscreens at traffic lights. As Alexander’s car draws to the lights, the sound of sirens fast approaching causes him to make a snap decision, inviting the child into his car and shielding him from the clutches of the police.

Alexander’s path merges with the boy’s for a second time when he witness the child and another boy being abducted. Alexander trails the abductors’ car to an abandoned building somewhere in Thessaloniki, where orphaned street-children are being auctioned off to childless parents. An older child attempts to make good his escape and in the ensuing chaos Alexander is able to liberate the boy from under the noses of his abductors.

At first Alexander decides to return the boy to Albania but the pair’s relationship soon becomes mutually dependent. As the two become closer, Alexander learns a little of the boy’s life and past experiences in his war-torn village, which in turn encourages Alexander to dwell on his own life; the joys and mistakes of his past.

Alexander shares with the boy a story about the Greek poet Dionysios Solomos who, upon returning to his native land from Italy, was said to have purchased words from the native people in order to complete his poems. His last work, however, was left unfinished, and Alexander had set himself the task of completing it. Forced to face the realities of their respective situations, Alexander and his young companion are set to undertake two journeys; the boy’s to a frightening and uncertain future and Alexander’s the final journey towards death...

Angelopoulos’ films are often slow-paced, patient affairs, light on score and dialogue but heavy on style and symbolism. Eternity and a Day is no exception, and the Angelopoulos trademarks do not end there. Like many films emanating from the Greek’s stable, Eternity and a Day is concerned with ideas of nationhood, exile, immigration and the role of the outsider. Furthermore, the film exhibits the director’s trademark reluctance to conform to Hollywood conventions, and primarily in this instance, a linear chronology.

As the film progresses and Alexander begins to dwell more and more upon the experiences of his past, Angelopoulos experiments with narrative form and structure. Scenes following the present-day Alexander merge seamlessly with events from the past, as Bruno Ganz portrays a man mentally re-living the mistakes made in his youth. The film’s editing supports and enhances this brave take on chronology, with clever invisible cuts used to link scenes shot at different times and in different locations. Angelopoulos’ narrative experimentation is one of the film’s strongest elements, as he is able to tell the tale of a life lived over many decades in an inventive and legible way.

Another area in which Eternity and a Day excels is in its visuals. The film frequently juxtaposes images from Alexander’s past, lavish, high-contrast panoramas, beautiful scenery and bright blue skies, with his present existence in the washed-out urban dystopia of Thessaloniki. Even landscapes that could easily seem beautiful, like the mountainous region bordering Albania, seem oppressive in Alexander’s dotage; with snow, sky and mountain blending together in monochrome uniformity while refugees cling in a frozen rictus to the grim fence of the border. Angelopoulos exhibits his usual mastery of mise-en-scene here, knowing exactly when to stylise and conversely, when to demystify his superbly scouted locations.

Eternity and a Day is a typically minimal undertaking, employing a large number of long shots, extremely slow zooms, pans and tilts, slow paced editing and marginal scoring. Although this is clearly a stylistic consideration on the part of Angelopoulos, it is a technique that, like it or not, is liable to disassociate the audience from the narrative. It is a challenge for the audience to establish much empathy with the film’s characters, while the pacing and excessive length of the whole is likely to put off many potential viewers. This approach is typical of Angelopoulos however, and Eternity and a Day works nicely within the paradigms of his output.

Where this film fails to impress though, is in its tone. The story is a timeless and engaging one, but the excessively earnest, maudlin execution makes it very difficult to commit to. Eternity and a Day is expressly a tragedy, and as its protagonist is an author and a poet you would expect the voiceover to be at times indulgent and obtuse, but here it is relentless. Two and a quarter hours are a long time to go without a shred of levity, and Eternity and a Day offers little in the way of escapism. As Angelopoulos has gone to such great lengths to minimise the audience’s emotional involvement in the film, and as the story is such an expansive and tragic one, it is regretfully easy to find yourself losing interest.

Eternity and a Day is typical Angelopoulos and it would be a mistake to expect anything else. The film is a triumph of its kind, but perhaps best enjoyed in the rarefied air of a film festival than for the home cinema market.

3-Star