Eternity and a Day

Mia aioniotita kai mia mera; art-drama, Greece / France / Germany / Italy, 1998; D: Theo Angelopoulos, S: Bruno Ganz, Achileas Skevis, Isabelle Renauld, Fabrizio Bentivoglio

Winter. The story follows the last day in life of bearded poet Alexandre who is dying from a terminal disease. Knowing he will be transferred to the hospital the next day, he decides to finish all the unsolved business in his life, like finding someone who will take care of his dog and talk to his daughter Katarina, but is shocked to find out that she sold his old mansion for demolition. He saves an Albanian boy from human trafficking and spends the day trying to find a way to bring him back home. Alexandre manages to send the boy away on a ship to the sea. Finally, by entering an abandoned building, he has hallucinations of his deceased wife Anna when she was young, at the beach.

This unknown Golden Palm winner in Cannes is a surprisingly fluent and stylistically pleasant piece of small art-drama revolving around the simple, but stimulative story about an ill man, Alexandre (very good German actor Bruno Ganz) who decides to spend the last 24 hours of his life on a good deed, on helping an Albanian boy find way back to his home country. There is no need for mystification since this is a fairly straightfroward storyline, yet enriched with neat poetic moments (i.e. in one scene, Katarina reads the two decade old letter of her mother, who was describing her feelings for her sleeping husband: "I still felt his warmth on my body... I dared not dream that he was dreaming about me"; in another, Aldexndre says this to his sick, bed-ridden mother: "Why mother, nothing happens as we wish? Why do we have to rot, helpless, between pain and desire? Why did I live my life in exile?") and wonderfully balanced tone. As the terminal illness spreads, Alexandre starts having hallucinations which signal his end.

Some attempts at poetry backfire, though, and seem rather naive. Director Theo Angelopoulos is more a "normal" talent than an "extraordinary" talent, yet has a sense for delicious shot composition and long takes reminiscent of Takrovsky and Antonioni, crafting scenes with a "floating camera" that slowly glides through the scene, which makes even conventional situations, like a wedding or the hero walking on a cliff near a beach, somehow engaging and aesthetic. Angelopoulos doesn't always hit the right mark—there is too much empty walk and disconnected episodes which feel incomplete or poorly thought-out. For instance, in the bus, Alexandre and the boy observe how three musicians enter and start playing violins; a man with a red flag; and a couple that argues—all these brief episodes are superficial, just come and go without any point, more as attempts to prolong the movie than a real depiction of the society as a whole or a one that is necessary. Though, Alexandre and the boy enter the bus when three people with yellow suits on bicycles pass them by, and exit the bus just as said three cyclists pass them again. Even though Angelopoulos resorts of "artistic bluffing" here and there, this is overal a quality slow movie.

Grade:+++