Trilogia: To livadi pou dakryzei

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a plan -sequence reminiscent of the one at the beginning of The Travelling Players. A large group of people carrying suitcases and trunks walks from a sea shore to a foreground river bank. At the head of the group walks its leader and spokesman, Spyros (Vassilis Kolovos) and his wife, Danae (Thalia Argirioua). Between them are their five-year-old son and three-year-old adopted daughter. Spyros, answering the voice-over, explains to an unseen character that they are Greek refugees who have escaped from the Bolshevik-overrun Odessa. After being quarantined in Thessaloniki, the refugees have been authorized to settle in the region, and been given this piece of land. This shot is followed by the opening credits, displayed on a grainy background of old photographs.Another long take follows which shows on the same spot, some twelve to fourteen years later, a village erected by these immigrants that they named "New Odessa." On the river, a small rowboat docks and unloads a woman and a teenage girl. The young girl is Spyros' now grownup adopted daughter, Eleni (Alexandra Aidini), accompanied by her mother. Eleni has just given birth to twin boys in secret, away from her home, and has given them up for adoption. She is escorted to Spyros' house, the largest in the village. The twins' father is none other than her step-brother, Alexis, the boy who walked next to Eleni in the prologue shot.In the next scene, horseback riders are combing the area, searching for Eleni. She had just married Spyros, but at the close of the church ceremony, she ran away with Alexis. The couple escapes to Thessaloniki by hailing a passing truck that carries the group of musicians who were returning from the wedding. The group is lead by Nikos (Giorgos Armenis), the violinist, who from then on will be a father figure for Alexis, and take the runaway couple under his protection. In Thessaloniki, Nikos takes Eleni and Alexis to a large theater that has been converted into a refugee shelter, with each family living in curtained boxes and tented stalls. A vengeful Spyros appears in the theater and the fugitives have to escape once more to another shelter.In the morning, Alexis and Eleni go to a musicians' hangout and meet a group of musicians who serenade them. Nikos recognizes the great talent of Alexis as an accordionist and will do his best to promote him. Nikos forms a loose group of musicians and tries to get gigs for them, but without much success. We have just passed the great depression, and we are approaching the Popular Front of 1936. Alexis' accordionist talents get him an audition with Markos, a famous and enterprising musician who is planning to put together a band and go to the United States to play for the Greek immigrant community. Markos, also impressed by Alexis' talent, promises him that he will be part of his group going to the "promised land," but this trip will not happen in the immediate future.Eleni's twins, Yannis and Yorgis, now about twelve years old, are reunited with her. It is 1936, and the musicians have aligned themselves with the Popular Front. In one scene, they are playing in an old beer hall for Union members who have been hunted down by the police. At the dance, a tense scene takes place when Spyros re-appears. He dances with his wife, Eleni, and later collapses of a heart attack. His son Alexis says, "I killed him." What follows is one of those long takes, a beautiful plan-sequence, typical of Angelopoulos' lyrical creations: Spyros' funeral on the water.Following his father's funeral, Alexis returns to his father's house in New Odessa with Eleni and his two children. There, he finds his father's sheep, all slaughtered by the villagers, hanging from a tree by the house. As the family moves into the house, a barrage of stones breaks the windows, thrown by the unforgiving villagers. During the night, the village is flooded by the rising waters of the nearby lake, and has to be abandoned by its inhabitants. At dawn, in another striking plan-sequence, people are rowing their boats among the partly-submerged houses, toward higher ground. They are carrying their meager possessions to safety. By contrast, Alexis and his family huddle together without any belongings. There are now completely destitute. Through the night, the villagers, carrying icons, perform an exorcism dance around a bonfire. In the morning they row their boats while carrying black flags through their flooded village, past a small islet where a school once stood. The teacher is there, among the empty benches, with Yannis and Yorgis.The Popular Front has definitely been vanquished. Many of its members are being rounded up, tortured, lined up against walls to be executed by the Falangists. In a lyrical scene, there is a field of white sheets (but where are the pillowcases?) hanging to dry in the wind. Scattered among them, musicians are playing their various instruments. The musicians eventually gather by the seashore. Shots ring out, and they disperse. Alexis and Eleni take refuge in the upstairs of a nearby house. From the window they observe their friend Nikos, mortally wounded, stumbling through the field of sheets. A crowd, gathered at the foot of the habitations, looks on, as Nikos, waving goodbye, collapses on the ground.By the rainy, gray morning, a small crowd of well-wishers has assembled on a quay to send Markos and his group off to America. Alexis is to join them on the long-dreamed voyage. A large ocean liner is waiting some distance away to take them to the "promised land." Eleni and the children are also present to see him off. She has knitted him a red sweater, which she did not have time to finish. Alexis grabs a thread from it and undoes the knitting as he boards the small boat that takes him to the ocean liner. Eventually, the thread breaks off.A letter from Alexis, written on March 5, 1937 from Ellis Island, reaches Eleni. It describes Alexis' disappointment in the "promised land." Soon after, as Eleni is writing back to her husband, there are knocks on the door. She is arrested by the Fascists and taken into the night to a prison, most likely because of her association with the Leftist musicians. She is liberated as WWII commences with the Italian invasion of Greece, followed by the Nazi occupation. Eleni returns to her house in Thessaloniki only to discover that it has burned down, along with the whole neighborhood. She gets a letter from Alexis dated October 30, 1940, telling her that he has joined the US Army in order to become a citizen, which will allow him to bring Eleni and the children to America.Soon after the end of WWII, the Greek civil war begins. Eleni has again been thrown in jail for harboring a wounded partisan. We see her in 1949, leaving the jail, as the warden gives her a letter from Alexis, written four years earlier, from Okinawa, the last battle in the Pacific. The letter had been found next to "the body of a dead soldier," later identified as Alexis. Eleni is being liberated so that she can go and claim the body of her dead son, Yannis, who had joined the Government's side against the Communist partisans. Eleni collapses in the field where Yannis' body is laying, and she is taken in by some old women of her old village who are now remorseful about the way they treated Eleni's family. One of these women (Toula Stathopoulos) tells her about the death of Eleni's other son, Yorgis. She takes Eleni to a spot where she witnessed the two brothers, fighting for opposing sides, briefly reunited as Yannis brought the erroneous news of the death of their mother to his brother. The scene of the meeting between the two brothers is not recounted by the old lady, but through a shift in time, we actually the two brothers' brief, poignant meeting. The old lady tells Eleni that Yorgis's body is still where he fell in Spyros' old house, now practically swallowed up by the waters, in the middle of the lake. Eleni rows a boat to the house, and collapses on her son's body. She rises from his body, releasing several heart-wrenching screams of grief. She is now totally alone in the world.

Tags: romantic, flashback

Review:
Theo Angelopolous, the Greek director, undertakes the colossal task of putting in a film some thirty years of history in his country.
The director has a poetical way to present his story, which was written in collaboration with some of the best minds of the business, namely, Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Silvani and Petros Markaris, one of our own favorite Greek writers.The result is a complex canvas in which Mr. Angelopolous paints for us, the viewer, in dark colors that gives us an idea of what the country went through during that period.
In a way, the director seems to be taking an outside position in recounting the tragedy his country lived by photographing in long shots almost every frame of the film.
Of course, this being his style, it suits the poetical way in which he conceives the basic idea.There are lots of moments in the film that take the viewer's breath away by the beauty of the composition of a particular scene.
The opening scene with the returning people from the Odessa massacre being one of the most effective things in the film.
The excellent fading cinematography by Andreas Sinanos gives a rich texture to the film, as well as the music score by Eleni Karaindrou, that greatly enhances the mood of it.While this film is definitely for a general public, it shows great moments of brilliance created by Theo Angelopolous working at his best..
I had watched years ago some older films of Aggelopoulos and i was expecting a slow movie, with minimal dialogues, many symbolisms, weak plot and superb photography.
That's exactly interactive art.These are some of my interpretations of some scenes: village flooding (Climate Change and the forces of Nature), immigration/separation (departure of my girlfriend), mother crying over her soldier sons dead bodies (this is a real war scene, not the computer games style).
THE WEEPING MEADOW ('Trilogia I: To Livadi pou dakryzei') is writer/director Theodoros Angelopoulos (with influences from Tonino Guerra plus assistance from Petros Markaris and Giorgio Silvagni) creating a personal vision of the 20th century.
The incredibly gifted Greek poet of a filmmaker mirrored the life and death of his own mother whose time on earth spanned a century and elected to capture the 100 years of sadness in a trilogy of films: The Weeping Meadow is Part I and details the years 1919 through 1949.
It is a masterwork.The film opens with what will be the trademark look of the movie - vistas of lonely people in a nearly monochromatic color space that uses water, both from rain and the collected results of rain.
As time passes we find that Eleni at a very early age has just given birth to twin boys while she has been sent away for the family's appearances: the father is the young son of the family.
The cinematography by Andreas Sinanos is a long gallery of miraculously composed, beautiful images: the cortège on the river, the flapping white sheets behind which we discover musicians, the constant vistas of the ocean and the river, the village and the battlegrounds burn themselves onto our visual fields and into memory.
I think anyone familiar with Angelopoulos knows what to expect with his films: long, drawn out, meticulously planned shots that slowly scan environments, with the image composed of not only the foreground but hundreds of yards into the background.
I definitely see the man as a master of his medium, and The Weeping Meadow is as good as any of his other films  every one I've seen so far is a masterpiece or close to it.
It follows a little girl, Eleni, from 1919 to the time of the Greek Civil War, at the end of WWII.
The film can skip ahead years in just a second, when the pace usually makes each second feel like years (in a good way!).
Theo Angelopoulos is one of the greatest directors working in films today.
There is a superb scene at jusr about the end of the first third, where Eleni,the film's principal character, wants to leave and walks down to the water.
I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Angelopoulos at the premier of his film and believe me for a movie buff like me it was a great honor even thought I did not realize it at the time.
History and human relationships are emphasized through the symbolic order of ancient Greek tragedy and that is what makes the film have a more "heavy" character, which makes it a little harder to follow than a usual Hollywood production- do not misjudge me, I love it too.
The film itself is the most mature of the Greek director and has all his personal characteristics bound together in an excellent work!.
Greek screenwriter, producer and director Theodoros Angelopoulos' twelfth feature film is a Germany-France-Greece-Italy co-production and the first part of a trilogy about the history of Greece, which tells a story set in Northern Greece 1919 where a group of Greek refugees from the Russian harbour Odessa arrives at a place near Thessaloniki.
Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos' subtle filming visualizes his affection for images of people, animals and objects reflected in water.
The humane and engaging screenplay with minimal use of dialog written by Theodoros Angelopoulos and screenwriters Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris and Giorgio Silvagni, tells a story which spans over 30 years and examines themes such as love, grief, immigration, fellowship, melancholy, music, war and hope.
The old and accurate costume design and the naturalistic milieu depictions reflects the era it portrays with great conviction in this European art film which contains hauntingly beautiful cinematography by cinematographer Andreas Sinanos, reverent acting performances by the actors who personifies the central characters and scenes of such poetic intensity that it touches one's soul.
Most of the acting is interpreted in a low-keyed and internal way which strengthens the effect of the climactic emotional scenes in this quiet and unforgettable movie experience which is filled with an elegiac and longing atmosphere which is increased by composer Eleni Karaindrou's melodic instrumental score.
Coming from a Greek background and taking my 65 year old father to see this film, as he was resorted to tears, I came to realise that this is not just a fictional film, but that reality was close to home and to the heart for many Greek refugees who were forced to flee their country.
The only thing I didn't like, was that the film was too long to fit on a tape and the movie was interrupted when the tape ran out, half way through.
Theodoros Angelopoulos presents 30 years of Greek history beginning with the return of the exiles from Odessa after WWI to the rise of the Colonels.Eleni, who witnesses the history, is played by an unknown, Alexandra Aidini.
He does not use her in the second film.She is to marry Spyros (Vassilis Kolovos), but loves his son Alexis (Nikos Poursadinis), She runs off with him.
It is not meant to be joyful as the period is not joyful, as we watch dreams shattered, and people surviving, but just barely.With music by Eleni Karaindrou and cinematography by Andreas Sinanos, you are not bored by the lack of dialog.
In fact, you are left to enjoy and experience the time and the film.Those who enjoy Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, and other great masters, will certainly enjoy Theodoros Angelopoulos.
For some time into the film I didn't understand why the director decided to keep so much distance to the main characters.
However, in the second half of the movie, Angelopoulos moves closer on the main characters, and the movie takes a much firmer emotional grip of your heart.
I didn't start to really feel for any of these people until about an hour into the film, but at that point I suddenly found myself completely hooked.I was particularly amazed by my reaction to Eleni, played by Alexandra Aidini.
Her performance likewise became extremely powerful, and unless Angelopoulos shot this film in sequence I have to assume it was engineered that way somehow.
Perhaps it's simply that Angelopoulos spends so much time distancing the audience from the drama that when he finally goes in for a close-up (figuratively -- in literal terms there's nothing tighter than a medium shot here) the emotion just smacks you in the face.Beyond the characters, the film is amazing simply for its visual audacity, the way every long shot is planned to the minutest detail a la Bela Tarr, and they only become more staggering as time wears on.
The story also feels ancient; despite taking place (mostly) in the 1940's, you sense a profound connection to the heritage of its characters and their history, such that moments which in other cases might seem like melodramatic clichés (the unraveling of Eleni's scarf, for instance) instead feel like deeply rooted folk symbolism..
View , not means fresh picture's and extreme long shut but views full of history and feel of heavy truth of person pain .
If rely on said,s Angelo , when he want relate mother,s pains of now century and also with make a pause in front of Eleni,s name ( in Greek language it,s mean Greece) , couldn't interpret except mother,s history .
Characters performance old theater of Greece like as traditional actors .Where Spyros come to amphitheater and cry Eleni,s name .
In next place and while Spyros funeral ceremony , persons show live roles them selves in front of Angelo,s cine camera similar to actors of real theater and while dancing and special ceremonies of villages of Greek .
Howker musicians and Nikos can be refuge for think to history , music and culture even in train plan where group with empty handed come back to city .
The film was just one beautiful tragic scene after another, with no involving narrative thread and no humanity.
Beautiful story, strong characters, captivating scenery, breath taking music and ultimately of cource great production.Its a long movie and the start might be a bit boring but as the story progresses it will hold your attentionI recommend this movie if you are looking for some sensitive piece of art.
Though there is quite a lot of tragedy in it but it does give a glimpse of the life of Greek immigrants of that time and the horrors of war.Two Thumbs Up............
While the film has one redeeming feature, namely some striking shots e.g. the shot of the sheep hanging from the tree, the scene of the funeral procession on the raft, or the scene of the boats leaving the village (which seemed influenced by the scene when the warships approach in the fantastic "Fellini Satyricon"), these were more photographic than cinematographic, and would have been better appreciated hung on a wall in an art gallery than embedded in a painfully slow-paced film that comes in at a whopping 162 minutes and suffers from terrible dialogue, extremely poor character development, over-acting, uninspired symbolism and heavy stylisation.
This is the first film I have seen by Angelopoulos, and his reputation having preceded him, I expected a lot better, but can honestly say that this is one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I won't go out of my way to watch any of the director's other work in the future.
Reading the summary of the film (refugees from Odessa) I thought that perhaps I might learn something more about the forced migrations of modern Greeks.
Having seen some Theo Angelopoulos films before and bearing in mind that dialogue is minimal, meaning that there would not be much to do, I accepted albeit with a heavy heart.
This time Angelopoulos (a rich lefty who gets lots of cash from the lefties at the Greek Cinema Centre) has surpassed all limits of pretentiousness and boredom!.
Not an easy film, and some of the history may be confusing unless you happen to be up on the history of Greece in the 20th century (I'll admit I'm not), but very worth the time and effort.Re the DVD: As with most of Angelopoulos' films, the edition you want to find if you can is the Greek 'New Star' release (it has English subtitles).
In the case of the acting, he presents his characters "from the outside," his intent being to compel his audience to study and explore their identities."The Weeping Meadow" is the first film of "The Trilogy," Angelopoulos' latest and most ambitious project.
The story proceeds in a straight-forward, linear fashion, unusual for Angelopoulos' treatment of time, which is often somewhat convoluted, and covers from 1919 until the end of the Greek Civil War, in 1949.
The central character of a film, Eleni, is interpreted by Alexandra Aidini, in her screen appearance debut.
The action, as in the classic Greek theater, takes place offstage and is described not by the chorus, but by some of the different characters functioning, in turn, as the chorus.Angelopoulos' productions are always filmed on location in remote areas, using the available decor, with minimal construction.
The colors, the characters and their costumes, the usual decors of the familial tales are all represented in tableaux and plans-sequences of an Angelopoulos who has totally reverted to the aesthetics of his first films.
The music is by Angelopoulos' long time collaborator, Eleni Karaindrou.
Her music is not a background accompaniment, but a dramatic element, a living component of the story, an actor adding some words that had not been spoken.In "The Trilogy," Angelopoulos plans to recall his country's history, from the early years of the last century to the present, as seen through the eyes of a woman, Eleni, as she lives her life.
Angelopoulos tackles his themes as he would in a Greek tragedy, and as in all Greek tragedies, a single primordial mistake leads to an unstoppable chain of events, one that crushes inexorably the main character.In the present film, History is relegated to the background over which Eleni's story is told.
Eleni, whose very name evokes Greece, becomes a metaphor for the Greek nation and its people.
In "The Weeping Meadow," History is simply there, absolute, and not open to interpretations.Since we became familiar with the cinema of Angelopoulos, we know his fascination with the Greek myths, that they are eternal, and that History repeats itself.
Director Theo Angelopoulos taught me a good lesson about Greek history with elegant way.
I am looking forward to watching remaining two films though they have not been finished yet.A great Greek drama.
It often feels like Angelopoulos has eschewed narrative, and is telling a story with just two tools: images and music.The Weeping Meadow begins as a group of refugees tell the story of their expulsion from Odessa to Thessaloniki in 1919, by the shore of a river.
Often it feels like sepia historic photographs have been brought subtly to life.The film is a breathtaking antidote to much of what passes for international cinema today.
By the end, for me, it felt dis-satisfyingly schematic, and yet there are images that will haunt you for years, and a feeling that Angelopoulos has found a way to distill the fraught years of European history from the First World War to the Cold War into an extraordinary cinematic vision.The music of Eleni Karaindrou is very beautiful, and will resonate long after the film has finished.
Fate and History are not presented as flesh and blood characters in this first part of Theodoros Angelopoulos' "Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow," but the presence of each is so tangible that they could be exactly that.
The central characters, Alexis and Eleni first meet as children driven together by the destruction of the town of Odessa, Greece, during World War I.
She becomes a kind of "Everywoman" of the first half of the twentieth century, an era when countries worldwide repeatedly called men to war while women became casualties of the grief, poverty, and physical destruction left behind.From its opening scene of Greek refugees from Odessa moving toward a river, to its conclusion, "The Weeping Meadow" floods the screen with some of the most eerily surrealistic images in cinematic history.
Were it not for the progression of a precise time-line moving from one World War to another, and providing a solid structure for the overall drama, a viewer might easily get lost drifting along in such haunting images as dead sheep hanging from the branches of a tree, a funeral service conducted in row boats alongside rooftops, or a crowd of wailing women running toward a field of dead "husbands, sons, and brothers." The images take on even greater intensity framed by composer Eleni Karaindrou's brilliant soundtrack.That this first part of Theo Angelopoulos' Trilogy is an indisputable masterpiece is a fact that speaks for itself.
In some ways, this film takes the best parts of the work of Federico Fellini, Terrence Malick, and Michelangelo Antonioni, and stews them until they melt into a work only Angelopoulos could make.
This film was written by him, longtime Fellini collaborator Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, and Giorgio Silvagni, and even though- like the other films of his I've seen, this one is spare in dialogue, the story coheres because of the way the scenes are written to allow the actors' expressions convey what words need not.
The film's cinematography, by Andreas Sinanos, is spectacular, from the long shots that follow characters from afar, to well-composed foregrounded scenes, to the uses of color throughout.
Yet, several times in the film, there seems to be an odd noise- like jet sounds in the aural background of some scenes.
Yet, at the center of this great film is not only the ellipsis of information, but the ellipsis of self- the exile from everywhere, a theme that defines much of Angelopoulos's work, even if it does not define his art, for that is always on target, and brilliantly wrought.
It's such a beautiful film it's a shame that the director and cinematographer chose to shoot every scene the same because this just heaps on tedium, why would I want to see the same set-up over, and over.