Buckle up because this review is a long and detailed one.
Plot summary
"Landscape in the mist" is a movie about two children traveling from Greece to Germany to find a person who they think is their dad. They have to face the unforgiving reality of isolation, hostility, ideals- a world they don't yet understand and are not prepared for as well as nature's fussy landscapes. It's a piece about human nature, the world we created for ourselves and the unavoidable fall of Icarus (or maybe a successful journey, depends on how you interpret it). Nevertheless, it's a depressing yet hauntingly mesmerizing piece.
My interpretation- the overall part
Theo Angelopoulos presents a world of isolation, with a heavy sky and dismembered nature. Rain pours almost constantly, as if it was meant to cleanse the earth in some way. It falls on the siblings more than it does on anyone else. We see a lot of machines, bland buildings, monotony; nothing stands out. None of this is meant for us to remember, it presents the duality- the human vs the machines. It makes the world seem and feel heavily dehumanized, the creator is a mere addition to the landscape they created. The monotony is increased by one and reoccurring music theme as well as desaturated color palette. It's enough to make the audience sick, however it's also enough to keep us watching the movie with a careful fascination. I see the father not as a person, but as an idea or a destination and children as us- humans. We all have something we believe despite of not having much evidence, we all are on a journey to somewhere, we don't even know if we're ever going to make it. Yet, just like the siblings, we are moving constantly. We may see children as naive but we're not that much different from them. I think the main conclusion I got from the movie can be summarized in eight words: the journey is more important than the destination.
My interpretation- the symbolism of certain scenes
I'm going to express what I thought might bring the sense of my overall interpretation out and just things I have noticed and wanted to share. The scenes I will address are described in somewhat chronological order.
Starting with the fact that we never see the mother of siblings. She's a single mother, we could expect her to have a bond with her children and to appear as a symbol of staidness, maybe even a safe place. We could also expect her to symbolize abuse and emotional absence or neglect on the other end of the spectrum. But she's pictured as none of these things, she's a neutral, almost invisible character, a ghost. She doesn't play any role in the decisions of children. Later in the movie, the girl mentions that they love her but the internal need to seek their father is far stronger. While the father is a real person to them, even though they had never seen him, the mother they see every day is a ghost.
Next scene I will bring up is the one with a wedding and a dead lamb. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind of most people when they see a lamb and try to interpret it is Christian symbolism of Jesus and martyrdom. Wedding can also be symbolically traced to Christianity- to wedding at Cana. But I feel that here, it's not meant to represent Jesus but the pain and the relief. At the beginning we see that the bride runs out of the building crying and is brought back in by a man. Next, we see a tied up dying lamb. After its death, the boy weeps but behind his back, wedding guests storm out dancing accompanied by festive melody. It's a beautiful contrast. Considering my overall interpretation of the path, I feel that the death of the lamb means to represent the death of something in a person, something that was a burden weighing the person down. It's needed to move on. Relief, transformation. Then we can continue walking.
After that we meet Orestes. He's genuine, charming, helpful. An oasis for the tired children. He serves as a faint father figure they never had. He doesn't turn them in to the police, doesn't push them to say too much, he understands there's more to their journey than a stranger sees. When he picked up the clean strip of film, he also wanted to see more, even if there was nothing to see at all, but his words created the landscape with the tree in the mist and puzzled the boy (I see this scene as an omen of their later death and the boy keeping the film as claiming the vision/ unconsciously giving in). His theater automatically brings the theatrum mundi motif in my mind and just like his acting career, life itself is mostly not a very successful quest. Not to most people. Not to the siblings. The theater itself is not where it should be, chairs and costumes on the beach is not something we see a lot (we ourselves are misplaced too). Another beach scene is even more dream-like. An empty caravan, table and chairs as well as spiral stairs leading to nowhere. It's a mesmerizing scene. The stairs- symbol of the journey and growth (or recession) make us aware that children are changing (the girl even mentions it in one of her letters) but for me, it's also a symbol of sudden change or death. The stairs stop so suddenly yet they seem so light. Just like our own interpretations of the things we go through; we're not always prepared. Orestes had faith in their theater. With the theatrum mundi in mind, the costumes may as well represent humanity of a person (just wanted to highlight that at the beginning, we're introduced to a seagull man. He reflects in the actual seagulls at the beach. He had a "costume" and it was his hospital jacket/shirt, his sense of humanity). The man knew that selling them would be equal to admitted to the defeat, the end and selling one's humanity. That's why he called it "a funeral" and walked away. Orestes also witnessed a great artificial hand resurfacing before him from the sea. It can symbolize the hand of god or destiny as well as the lost humanity and hope. It flies away carried by a helicopter. During his last encounter with the children, he knows he won't see them again, but he hopes they will make it. The girl breaks down, maybe she accepts the abysmal reality of hopelessness and the absurdity of her destination. Maybe she's just so tired and mad and exhausted from the constant journey. But she and her brother wander into the night once again. That's where they leave Orestes.
Nearing towards the end, the girl asks the soldier for the money so she can buy a ticket. They never had tickets before, never had enough money to buy one and yet they were able to travel, just in a slower manner. In my personal opinion, she's either too exhausted or she knows she doesn't have much time left. We see that the kids don't have passports, they know they won't be let into the country. They know they have to sneak in and they're aware of how dangerous that is. Finally, they get into the boat and I can't help but think of Chiron and the Styx. One of them mentioned how "Germany is just across that river", just like Hades is across the Styx from the land of the living. With the gunshot sound, we're even more sure of what's happening, even though the only thing we can see is complete darkness.
It cuts to the boy reciting the same biblical story as his sister told him at the beginning ("In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."). When she said it first, they were laying in bed, at home and there was darkness around them. When he mentions it now, they're in the white fog, they're in light. There's only one tree in the frame, could either represent the one tree God forbid eating from in Eden (if we want to go with the Christian symbolism), so knowledge, self-awareness, probably the truth or it can represent eternity, stability, life (as in Nordic culture for example). Either way, children run to it. They're at peace. Their journey came to the end. Many people will say they reached their destination, many will say they didn't but I say that it doesn't really matter. The journey is the only thing that had the meaning, value and was true.
My thoughts
I loved the movie; it was visually stunning. The weight of the nature and surroundings was just perfectly overwhelming. The plot itself, without interpretation, is not cliché, you don't expect a movie about children runaways to have this kind of things happening. The music is not too distracting. My emotional response was pretty muted but it brought my heart down in an unavoidable way. Theo Angelopoulos mastered the art of visible but not too in-your-face symbolism while leaving the space for mundane scenes. I definitely recommend it, it was the first movie I had the internal need to write about, it definitely has a place in my favorites now.
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