Clearly, Angelopoulos intends an embryonic state as though we and A. have entered the darkness of a womb in which the whole of Balkan history resides. It's an impressive stratagem that emphasizes the universality of the Balkan story, but also contributes to Angelopoulos's concept of the fluidity of time and space. In one sequence, she's a Monastir film archivist who shows A. the withered quiescence of his heart. In another, she's very moving as a traumatized Serbian widow who clothes A. in the garments of her dead husband in the ruins of the house where they must have loved and laughed. Finally, she's a young Jewish woman amidst the horrors of Sarajevo during wartime, who coaxes the beginnings of a rebirth of his heart.
Most directors use the cinema simply to illustrate the connecting of narrative dots.
A barge carrying the gargantuan remains of a statue of Lenin up the Danube with a Lilliputian A. at its side sums up the fall of Communism, yes, but also engraves upon us the monumental absurdity and tragedy of all dictatorial schemes. The emptiness of Sarajevo, as cars burn in the street and later vanish in fog, causing the snipers to pause and musicians to take back the streets, may have no basis in reality, but transmits the truth of the tenacity of survivors in an impossible dilemma. In the length, breadth, and depth of them, they seek to provide an antidote to the splintering of peoples and nations, to visualize the contiguous spiritual foundation beneath the fractured world. While Hollywood seeks to grab the attention and hold it in blatantly superficial ways, Angelopoulos succeeds in illuminating the tragic self-destructiveness of the world and the hope of individuals who refuse to give up the journey, with arresting images the eye seems capable of discovering on its own. With their outwardly reasonable voices and dissociative minds, it's difficult to know which words to trust.