Topio stin omihli (
Landscape in the Mist, Angelopoulos, 1988) – At the beginning, a story told in the dark by a young girl, a story easily relatable to the story of Creation. Her brother tells her it will never end if their mother continuously interrupts. So they go, get rid of the mother (who is never seen onscreen), and depart on a quest for a father that may or may not exist. It's a clear invitation for an allegorical religious reading of the film, but Angelopoulos folds this apparent simplicity with layers of political comments (mostly carried by a theater troupe that can't find nowhere to play anymore), mythology (the children are guided by Orestes), and reflexivity (fun little moments linked to theater, and a brilliant one where they find a piece of film in the street on which they can – or can't – see the ending of their own story: the
Tree of life, appearing here decades before Aronofsky and Malick, but two years after Tarkovsky). An amazingly beautiful film blending cinéma-vérité-like techniques with quasi-surreal imagery, sometimes reminiscent of Jodorowsky but always avoiding the absurd, just bizarre enough to pierce the realism and remind us that it's all a children's tale. If you haven't seen this one, you really should.
9.5/10