Review: The Weeping Meadow

DVD Review: The Weeping Meadow

Dir: Theodoros Angelopoulos

Runtime: 162 mins

Genre: Historical Drama

Country: Greece

Language: Greek w/ English subtitles

The first part of acclaimed Greek director Theodoros Angelopoulos’ ‘trilogy on modern Greece’, The Weeping Meadow is a lavish and expansive tragedy focussing on the displaced immigrants of the Odessa massacre. The ‘trilogy on modern Greece’ is the fourth in a series of such trilogies from Cannes darling Angelopoulos, whose works are known for their poetic detachment and exquisite mise-en-scene.

The Weeping Meadow follows a band of immigrants fleeing the massacre of Odessa as they alight on the Grecian shores near Thessaloniki. The film is a bildungsroman, taking in the greater part of the lives of two young immigrants as they develop from frightened and displaced children into young lovers, through to the fraught and tumultuous years of their adulthood. Alexis is brought to Greece by his ailing parents, and with him, an orphaned girl named Eleni. The pair, driven together as children through forces beyond their control, develop a natural affinity as teenagers thanks to their shared experiences.

Unfortunately for the young couple, Eleni falls pregnant with twins; sending the babies off for adoption and covering up her pregnancy by feigning illness. Back in the refugees’ village, Alexis’ father Spyros, now a widower, arranges to marry Eleni in an attempt to save face. Alexis and Eleni flee the ceremony, hoping to create a life for themselves free from the well-intentioned tyranny of their small community. They encounter a band of travelling musicians and journey on with them to Thessaloniki.

Alexis, a talented accordionist, attempts to find work with the troupe; but paid gigs are in short supply. The runaways are pursued by an incensed Spyros, now obsessed with Eleni and convinced that his son has taken what is rightfully his. The couple have companionship, freedom and a roof over their heads, and yet something still feels missing...

Alexis and Eleni slowly begin to introduce their twin boys, Yannis and Yorgis, back into their lives. With Spyros out of the picture for now, their family unit begins to feel complete. However, with revolution in the air, the couple align themselves with the Popular Front against the threat of fascism. These are unsettling times; political unrest is everywhere, work is hard to come by and violence and war are just around the corner. With these forces acting against them, will Alexis and Eleni be able to hold their fragile lives together or will they too become victims of an appalling global conflict?

Over the past two decades, resistance to the charms of foreign-language cinema has slowly become less widespread, with the uninitiated exposed to more world cinema adaptations, theatrical releases and legal downloads than ever before. There are still those yet to acquire a taste for the exotic however; with many claiming that world-cinema titles are impregnable cultural artefacts, slow-paced and pompous fare rich in symbolism but lacking in story and spectacle. For the most part, these views are born out of blinkered impatience and a reluctance to embrace the different, but where the films of Theodoros Angelopoulos are concerned, they can sometimes seem uncomfortably apposite. Certainly, the director’s style is not an easy one to warm to. Angelopoulos is a director who seeks to challenge his audience; although it can be argued that his exceptionally sparse, subtle and slow-paced storytelling often surpasses the merely ‘challenging’ and enters the realm of the wilfully obtuse. His films frequently run to around three hours in length; minimal epics constructed to unravel the narrative at a stubbornly sedate pace. So is The Weeping Meadow an example of truculent arthouse self-indulgence, or is it something worth persevering with?

Typically for an Angelopoulos feature, The Weeping Meadow is a thing of rare beauty. Cinematography, particularly in reference to composition, framing and light, is universally sublime. This is further borne out through the art direction; with costumes and set design of a particularly high standard. The film exhibits some wonderfully lavish set pieces, such as the refugees traipsing en masse along a windswept and desolate beach, but it is the little details that really capture the eye. An arrangement of objects on a bedside table for example, or the worn and battered furniture of the protagonist’s favourite coffee house, all speak of experiences shared and lives lived. These aren’t merely sets constructed by a cynical film crew; the sense of reality and history present in these most mundane of details is practically palpable.

Angelopoulos has never struggled where style is concerned, though. A director who describes his own works as ‘melancholic’; Angelopoulos is a man who wilfully defies convention, encouraging detachment from his characters and narratives through the use of prolonged wide-angle shots and minimal dialogue. Angelopoulos is not a man who panders to the whims of the audience; instead of courting their attentions he challenges them to find the meaning in his films, to put almost as much of themselves into viewing the piece as he has into making it. Critics often set much store by Angelopoulos’ brave and confrontational approach to filmmaking, but it pays to bear in mind that cinematic conventions are conventional for a reason. Using an extreme close-up to best exhibit an actor or actress’ portrayal of a certain emotion may be manipulative, but it has been long considered an effective means of establishing empathy with a character. By effectively minimising the audience’s emotional involvement with the film, Angelopoulos runs the risk of losing them completely.

The Weeping Meadow is far from the director’s most challenging of titles (there is an infinitely more engaging narrative here than in Alexander the Great, for example) but the film is far from a rewarding watch. Any sense of enjoyment you take form this or any Angelopoulos feature is going to be directly proportional to how much you actively seek to engage with the film. The aforementioned world-cinema sceptic is likely to watch The Weeping Meadow and be put off foreign film forever; their prejudices fully justified. On the other hand, a dyed-in-the-wool cineaste would (and do) praise Angelopoulos to the rafters. Make no mistake, a Theo Angelopoulos film is ‘high art’, complete with all the pitfalls and pretentions, arrogance and artistry that that title implies.

Depending on your point of view, The Weeping Meadow is a masterpiece or an abject failure; if Hollywood cinema could be considered akin to Alton Towers, then this is the Tate Modern. You could heap praise on The Weeping Meadow with one breath and deride it with the next; both arguments would have a valid point.

3-Stars