Cheap Landscape in the Mist (Video) (Theo Angelopoulos) Price

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Customer Reviews of Landscape in the Mist

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.

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

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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!