L'éternité et un jour

Since I traveled to Prague in 2003 and bought Eleni Karaidrou's album "Eternity and a Day" I was wondering when and where could I get this movie.

I got it and it was incredible for me. Poetry, photography (I think it is the best photography I've ever seen in a movie) and music in an amazing movie THAT I DID NOT UNDERSTAND because it's in Greek (no English subtitles in the release I've got).

You don't need to understand their words to feel it, to cry and to laugh when the moment comes. Angelopoulos has made, in my honest opinion, a master piece of theater-movie.

Buy it, keep it, show it to your children, to your parents...

The most Bergmanesque of Angolopoulos's films. Simpler and less epic than most of his work, with fewer of his trademark breathtaking images and grand themes. Yet this story of a dying writer spending his last day before entering the hospital -- never to leave -- has a deeply elegiac melancholy, and his attempts to find meaning by saving an Albanian street urchin are often moving, if occasionally sappy. The same is true of Bruno Ganz' (unfortunately dubbed) relationship with his wife and family, told mainly in flashback, Much is moving, some is hokey and forced. But Ageloupolus' use of images to make film a poetic medium is always worth watching, even when flawed.

The basic plot of ETERNITY AND A DAY is straightforward enough - an aging writer Alexandre (Bruno Ganz) meets a young illegal Albainian immigrant (Achileas Skevis) and takes his home. As he does so, the writer reflects on his own life; his past; his relationship with his mother and his wife; and what he has achieved in his life. Yet Theodoros Angeloploulos' film is at heart a meditation on the act of writing: when we set down words on the page, do they actually record our experiences, or can they only provide an approximation of what we are feeling at any particular moment? Alexandre is perpetually tormented by this thought - although successful in his chosen career, he believes that he has been a failure, simply because of the notion that words can only allude to experience, not record it. The child, in his innocence, believes that words can be found, or bought; but however much one pays for that word (in terms of buying a book, for instance, or when a writer receives royalties for what they have done), those words are still inadequate. They are both allusive - in the sense that their relationships to actions and things are contingent upon circumstances - and elusive (in the sense that such relationships are only approximate). With such uncertainties in his mind, Alexandre comes to understand that there is no "final" distinction between "life" and "death" (after all, they are only words); he has to experience both as a continuum, without the support of anyone. Visually speaking, the film is full of stylistic ironies: Angelopoloulos' camera is perpetually tracking forwards; we see cars in the traffic-choked streets driving off to somewhere, or traveling on the freeway; while the characters are seen crossing the frame from left to right. All suggest some kind of forward movement, a desire to go from one place to another. However such movements are not "progressive" at all, but rather suggest a desire not reflect on life's futility (as Alexandre discovers through his words). In a sense such movements are an evasion rather than an engagement with existence. The same also goes for the "narrative" of the film: Angelopoloulos shows that it is not particularly significant: what matters more is for viewers to reflect on the mise-en-scene within individual frames; to listen to the words, focus on the actors' expressions and body movements, and understand Alexandre's state of mind. A long and complex film, ETERNITY AND A DAY befits repeated viewings.

Review of the film eternity and a day – mia aiwnioteta kai mia mera By Peter Maniatis

THEO ANGELOPOULOS THE PHILOSOPHER / FILM MAKER

The issues that this film addresses are "time" and "logos". The question "how long is tomorrow" involves the concept of time.

Since by the expression of "tomorrow" we understand both, the day after today and an eternity, we require the force of "logos" to resolve this chaotic situation. For Alexandros, the use of logos, the accumulation of word-wealth, brings order to his troubled world. It sheds light to his past, present and future.

Defining time as A-series and B-series We can look at the concept of time as Past, Present, and Future. Lets call this an A-series, Past Present Future. Alexandros' past is when he was young, his wife, his friends, his young family, his job, his present is that he is old, and alone, and his future, his tomorrow, is death.

Now let us look at P. P. & F. in relation to each other. The arrival of Captain Cook in Australia is a past event. The destruction of Earth or the Second Coming if you wish, is a Future event. But there was a time that the arrival of Captain Cook was a Future event, and there will be a time that the destruction of the Earth will be a Past event. So we can say that Past Present and Future can be viewed in relative terms, without defined boarders.

In the film, we see Alexandros in his present form, with his rain coat and seemingly old, intermingling with people in spaces of his past, in the form of the time that the events took place at a present time.

With this perspective, we view past, present, and future, relatively to our position in space that we find ourselves at the time (space time). Alexandros does just that.

DEFINING TIME BY WAY OF CHANGE:

Dimension of change in the sense of coming to be and passing away.

Alexandros came to be, he was born, he grew old (changed from young to old) and then tomorrow he will pass away. It is the same with everything in nature. The young child is young at the present time, he too will get old and eventually pass away.

Changes in space, variations we experience in space. When we say that the road changes from being narrow to become wide we speak metaphorically. Philosophers connected with the theory of relativity do not see that there is a difference in the change of the road becoming wider and in the changes of the person becoming older. Events deemed past in one frame of reference are deemed future in other frames. The difference is only subjective, experiential, rather than reflecting an ontological fact.

Events of Alexandros past are viewed from a spatial position in the present, and according to Agelopoulos, those past events are at the same time present events. Alexandros wears the same raincoat and is the same age. Past events are present in his mind. One can say that looking at time, from space time perspective, time is static.

Static view of time: According to Parmenides and Zeno, appearance of temporal change is an illusion.

Dynamic view of time: Heracletus and Aristotle, held that future lacks the reality of present and Past. Reality continuously is added to as time passes.

The theory of relativity allows that some events are past or future no matter which frame of reference is selected. The relativity of simultaneity, looking at past present and future at the same time, only requires us to revise our conception of the present.

Alexandros, I think, does just that. He revises is conception of his present situation relatively, from space –time perspective.

THE THREE BIKE RIDERS DRESSED IN YELLOW

The Fates, Klotho, Atropos and Lachesis, the daughters of Necessity, are the three forms of time out of which human life is woven. In the film, the three bike riders we see in the distance and dressed in yellow represent them.

In the ancient Greek myth, there is a cosmic spindle where all strands of human life exist separately. In the film, Alexandros', Ana's, his mother, his daughters', and the child's lives all exist separately.

Klotho spins them together at some present time, the wife with the husband, the father with the children in their young years, the old man and the child refugee.

Atropos, the future, will unravel them as to give the illusion of freedom. The future of the child seems to be free. He does not go back to his grand mother, he goes of to seemingly freedom, but all the time his life is determined by Lachesis the Aloter.

In this chaotic situation, it is only logos that brings order, that gives some sense to seemingly world of fate or chance.

LOGOS:

Logos in its multiple meanings, word, speech, dialogue, language, debate, account, etc. makes the above thoughts possible. It is the uniting force. In the chaotic world of change, logos comes to give some comfort by ordering things, by putting events and actions in their right place.

Alexandros, in order to make sense of his life, wants as many words as he can find, to make sense of the time he spend being alive. And in the spirit of Capitalism, he is prepared to buy the words. He is prepared to buy them and gain his freedom, freedom from the tyranny of time, from the tyranny of death. Like his predecessor, Dionysios Solomos who was buying words to write the Ode to Freedom that became the Greek National Anthem.

Alexandros, I think gained his freedom. At the end of the day he was making plans. "Tomorrow" after all, did not seem for Alexandros the end of time. It did not seem the end of his time.

A very good film.

This film was such a pleasurable experience to watch. I was expecting a considerably depressing venture but the end left me filled with a variety of conflicting emotions, including a hint of rapture and a dash of melancholy. There are times where Angelopoulos left me contemplating about the life I have led. To many critics, the pace of this film was too slow, on the other hand I felt that it flowed beautifully, taking its time to arouse the audience's emotions. The music by Eleni Karaindrou touched my soul for it was able to guide the actors to make a truly magnificent tale from the heart.