dust of time by theo angelopoulos

Saturday evening's film (september 5) is very difficult to "review" from one viewing .. it is incredibly confusing .. i'm here talking about Theo Angelopoulos's Dust of Time .. which begins (or close to begins) with the death of Stalin ..

here it's announced in a central square in Khazakstan (i can't spell it) Spiros has got forged documents to travel there to rescue Eleni who is in exile .. it doesn't work .. they get caught when running late to catch a night train because they, um, er, paused in an empty tram ..

she is exiled even further to syberia .. i'm not sure where he goes .. in syberia she has a son (because of the tram pause) and gets togtehr with an old friend Max who is from Leipsig ..

all this is the topic of a film by her grown-up son A, who has left new york where he eventually grew up, living with both his parents, who were liberated from wherever .. it is december 1999 .. he has a broken marriage and his young daughter is suicidal and missing ..

never mind that the narrative (is there a narrative?) skips from time to place to time .. the grown-older characters start to say dialog they would've spoken when considerably younger and somewhere else .. or else there is the character's thoughts in voice over ..

and why are all these Europeans speaking English to each other? no, it's definitely not dubbed .. they all speak dialog written in stilted English, which adds to the woodenness of the "acting" ..  okay, Willem Dafoe (who plays the grown-up son born in Syberia and grown-up in New York, and living in Berlin) .. he's a native speaker of English, becuase of the dialog, he too, sounds totally wooden .. (well, maybe, what with all the character's personal troubles, the acting is supposed to be wooden [sigh]) .. the one notable exception to stiffness is Bruno Ganz (Max) ..

and what about make-up? Irene Jacob, who plays Eleni at various times of the character's life, could they only afford talcum powder for her hair to make her appear old?

okay, so i've panned this film .. yet .. there's something to it that is compelling .. something that kept me watching without looking at my watch for the 125-minute duration .. maybe it was piqued curiosity, never satisfied ..

 

cinemoo in montreal