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In memory of Angelopoulos

 

The history of Greece reflected in poetic terms

 

Untimely the Greek film director Angelopoulos died after a tragic road accident which happened near Pireaus on 24th of January 2010. It happened at night. A motorcycle driven by an off duty policeman apparently did not see him in time as he was crossing a dark street and hit him so severely that he never recovered in hospital from the injuries. He was just filming a night scene of his new film to reflect upon the current crisis in Greece. Contrary to his film crew, he did not wear a yellow efforescent vest to be visible at night. It was both a fluke accident and tragic.

Unforgetable is his film 'the theatre troubadours'. The film depicts how a theatre group wanders through the various phases of Greek history. Always the staging of their plays was interrupted by mainly outside interventions e.g. the start of Second World War with Germans entering to occupy the country, then at the end of the war the liberation, but that too was short lived for Left and Right plunged into a civil war that cost many more lives; finally, the Americans enter to mark the beginning of Greek society sliding towards a new form of dictatorship.

Outside interventions have wounded the Greek soul over many centuries. It may explain some of the confusion or the unwillingness to depart from the role of victim when it comes to face the current financial crisis.

The films by Angelopoulos highlight another Greece. He does so in a most poetic and melancholic way. Indeed, all his films touch upon wounds no one wishes to talk about in today's modern Greece. Many more are even infuriated at his slow moving pictures. Yet this sign of impatience is a sign of people caught up a what they believe is a fast moving world, and in which efficiency is demonstrated by merely rushing on.

Angelopoulos shows above all times when not only schisms between Left and Right divided Greek society, but there prevailed during hard winters also deeply honest equally resistent people. Often they had to learn to survive not only with bare hands through a cold winter but also everything from torture or rape to prosecution and imprisonment.

Hatto Fischer 
January 25, 2012

There is one article which pays tribute to this great work by Angelopoulos: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/27/greece-theo-angelopoulos?INTCMP=SRCH

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