Netflix Instant Gems: Theo Angelopoulos (1935 - 2012)

(from The Travelling Players, one of my favorite films)

3 days ago Theo Angelopoulos, one of the most distinctive and greatest filmmakers of all-time, died in the middle of shooting what might've been his last film, The Other Sea. It seems like I was reading two current interviews (here and here) with the director one day and the next reading about his death. In his memory, everyone that has Instant Netflix should add the following films to their queue and watch them. I myself have some catching up to do with Angelopoulos, not having seen Ulysses' Gaze, Alexander the Great or even the Palme d'Or winner Eternity and a Day. I will come back with some comments after watching Eternity and a Day on Instant this weekend.

The three Angelopoulos films available on Instant:

Topio Stin Omichli aka Landscape in the Mist

(For some reason this film is not under its English translation but its original Greek name, making it almost impossible to find unless you search under the director)

The Weeping Meadow

Eternity and a Day

The Germans Strike Again (Alekos Sakellarios, 1948)

A film where such bold statements as, "Sometimes I wish we were living under the occupation again" are not only said nonchalantly and multiple times but come to a reality. A Greek town is under occupation again in 1948 after Hitler comes back from hiding and continues right where he left off, taking over city after city, including the Greek town where our characters are living. Our main character Thodoris, the one associated with the occupation comment mentioned earlier, had claimed that it would teach them some lessons. Abusing their current freedoms and getting into meaningless squabbles over politics. Even the dog wasn't eating bread, it only liked bones. During the occupation the dog would've been grateful if it wasn't made into stew after starving, which we actually see happen to this dog later in order to keep the family from starving. So the Germans strike again and the nightmare seems ten times worse now. After enduring endless suffering Thodoris is caught in a mental hospital having a shootout with the Nazis. In the brink of his death he awakens back to before the new occupation and realizes it was all just one big nightmare. Once he wakes up he couldn't be more ecstatic and claims that, "Every Greek must see this dream." One of the few times in cinema where the "waking up from a dream" ending is used purposefully and not shit to end an endless script. Thodoris screams how the dream will knock some sense into them and hopefully this film will knock some sense into the over-indulgent materialists as well as the politicians that keep fighting over nothing. The acting is something else worth noting. Brechtian to the point of caricature. The actors perform as if in silent films from the teens, every gesture and trait magnified for the lack of speech. A truly unforgettable and important Greek classic.

MUBI page