Landschaft im Nebel

Finally, a consistent Angelopoulos film. Otherwise, films very similar in their approach such as Voyage to Cythera and The Beekeeper had one flaw amidst their otherwise meticulously crafted beauty: the use of long shots á la Tarr or Tarkovsky along with minimalist character expression certainly created the effect of human and intellectual depth, but from my perspective, it was at the cost of a paradoxical dehumanization of the same characters. The slow camera movements, classical music, a mournful or probing gaze with a face frozen by emotional tension staring into the distance - all of this turned the characters in the director's films, especially in their most powerful moments, into mere fulfillments of artistic figures. They ceased to be flesh and bone characters and transformed into silent embodiments of general human principles, precisely when the viewer should try to understand them in the most human way possible. The situation here is almost identical, with one difference: here, Theo occasionally admits the rhetorical nature of his characters and the artistic constructiveness of the situations they find themselves in (the scene with falling snow and police officers is symptomatic in this regard). This is facilitated by the use of the road movie genre, which allows for a sequence of disparate scenes and characters, where it doesn't matter that they are just pawns/figures in the hands of the author (e.g., the ensemble cast). It also allows for the little that is truly human and spontaneous in the characters to be truly appreciated by the viewer. (22.09.2015)

Here are scenes that may not bother you at all, and then suddenly one comes along that knocks you out and makes you realize how beautiful this world is, or rather, how ugly it is. There are scenes here that refer to its beauty, but the ugliness somehow feels stronger, more intense, and sometimes it can overshadow the beautiful. Hopefully not forever. (04.02.2016)