Smyrna, 1 9 1 9. Panagis is a musician of Rembetiko, a Greek music. His wife, Andriana, gives birth to their daughter, Marika. During the Greco-Turkish War, Smyrna is burned and numerous Greeks flee to Greece, including Panagis, Andriana and Marika. Angered and jealous that Andriana sleeps around with a night club owner to secure their gigs, Panagis kills her by throwing a chair at her. Decades later, Marika has a fling with traveling Yiannis, but when she gives birth to their daughter, Andriana, he feigns he needs to find another job as a sailor and disappears. Marika herself becomes a Rembetiko singer, and performs with Yorgos and bouzouki player Babis. World War II strikes, but the band continues playing, while Andriana is given to foster care. Marika is in love with Babis, but their relationship never works out. A grown up Andriana performs in a bikini in a night club and rejects Marika for abandoning her when she was a child. Marika performs in America for Greek diaspora in the 50s, but the Rembetiko music is dead and out of fashion by this time. Marika returns to Greece, where one night a random stranger stabs her in the stomach and she thus dies.
Even though the Greek Film Association included it in its list of 10 best Greek films of all times in two polls, "Rembetiko" is a melodramatic and syrupy soap opera with overlong music numbers of the Rembetiko music which may be appreciated by Greek culture, but for everyone else in the world it will be a chore. A chronicle of the life of the fictional singer Marika, this saga traverses routinely from one historical benchmark to another, from the Smyrna pogrom, through Metaxas' dictatorship up to World War II, yet without much care, inspiration or justification for bringing them up, and thus Angelopolous did it better in his similar "The Travelling Players". The movie simply lacks highlights. It is strangely straight-forward, without some humor, creativity or ingenuity that would enrich this conventional story. One good moment is when Marika is encouraged to try to sing for the first time in front of the audience, and thus she has flashbacks of her formative events (her father hitting her with a belt when she was a child; her mother dying on the floor; two doves flying into the frame, as symbol for the birth of her daughter), and thus finds inspiration in them to give a very heartfelt performance. There are some parallels between her and her father Panagis, as much as she hated him—both were Rembetiko performers; both became estranged from their daughter; both were forgotten—which are well done, yet most of the film is simply boring, one-dimensional and grey. Some scenes are exaggerated (after Marika's daughter declares she doesn't want to see her, a performer randomly hits a mirror with his fist, breaking it and leaving a bloody spot, to underline their "break up"), but none as much as the stupid, ridiculous and unconvincing finale involving a man randomly stabbing the heroine, which wrecks the film. There are random episodes plastered throughout the film, yet they never align into a harmonious whole, nor are they that interesting to watch to endure the film's running time of 150 minutes.
Grade:+
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