LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST
TOPIO STIN OMICHLI



Greece-France-Italy, 1988, 126 min, color

"Landscape in the Mist" is a film about the void. It is a film about despair, about the failure of contemporary society. The prodigal father who figures in almost every Angelopoulos film here has evaporated into his mythical essence - leaving his children to become the wanderers in search of him. In the "chaos", two children appear, little Alexandros and his older sister Voula. In order to exorcise their loneliness, they invent a secret universe for themselves, inhabited by their dreams. Every night they go to a train station to watch the departure of a train to Germany, where they have been deceived by their mother (herself an off-screen presence) into believing that their absent father is living. One night they finally dare to get on the train. But their voyage turns out to be hazardous and pointless and disappointing. They confront physical and moral sufferings, jealousy, evil and death, if also love - as many ordeals and rites as initiations. The film is filled with extraordinary moments and contains intriguing references to other Angelopoulos films (the children even encounter the Travelling Players now, thirteen years later, without a stage to act on, their costumes put up for sale).

It is a journey which is the initiation into life. On the road the children learn everything - love and death, lies and truth, beauty and destruction.