As Americans, we fancy ourselves as having monopolized postmodernist existential angst. But Theo Angelopoulos's 1988 masterpiece Landscape in the Mist plaintively reminds us that we are not alone in our search for meaning in a bleak universe.
Alexandros (Michalis Zeke) and Voula (Tania Palaiologou) are winsome children living on the outskirts of an industrial Greek city. Neglected by their mother, the children depart in search of their father, whom they believe resides in Germany. The children, however, are beset by a series of increasingly arduous challenges. They hitchhike with a pedophilic truck driver, a ragtag, vaguely Stoppardian acting troupe and a lonely gay biker. Finally, they trek on foot across the Balkans. The children come to realize the improbability of their wide-eyed fantasy of finding fatherly guidance, as well as of the true nature of humankind in an austere, godless world.
Indeed, any semblance of divine beauty or order has vanished: Stereotypical sun-drenched temples are replaced by smog-stained factories. Adults - jadedly living in the chaos of a morally neutral society - are no longer able to be depended upon for direction. In conveying this tragic odyssey of self-discovery, Angelopoulos and cinematographer Yorgos Arvanitis construct a series of truly striking, quasi-surrealist images. This, combined with a stark mise-en-scŠne and a rich, despondent score by Eleni Karaindrou, renders the film as provocative as it is depressing. At one point, a helicopter salvages from Thessaloniki harbor a large stone hand, ostensibly severed from an enormous statue. As it flies into the distance, the dangling hand points accusatorily at the decadent city below. Indeed, Angelopoulos exhorts us never to forget that it is we who are the residents of that desolate, destitute city.
