Customer Reviews

Eternity And A Day (1998 Film)

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4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This film doesn't need me as an advocate. It won the 1998 Palme d'Or and deservedly so. It is a beautiful, meditative, thought-provoking film. Like the Amazon editorial indicated, it is akin to Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," and Kurosawa's "Ikiru." Like them, at its centre is an old man, at the end of his life, looking back, trying to find some meaning to it all. Here is a man, who for all his life has been absorbed by two things, himself and his work. He coasts through life not really relating to those nearest and dearest to him. Now at the end of his life, he opens a letter from his long-dead wife; a letter which speaks of her love for him and recounts what for her was a very special day, but which for him, was just another day which slipped away without much thought. As he reads the letter, he relives that "perfect" day; one that meant so much to his wife but to which he himself was an almost absent participant. He tries to make amends for his life-long distancing and aloofness by trying to help a little Albanian runaway. But in the end, it is too little too late.

In the word-game he plays with the Albanian child, the boy brings him three words which actually make up the central themes of the film. The first word, "Korfulamu," refers to the tender love between mother and child; the second, "Xenitis," refers to being in exile, being a stranger or an outsider; and the third word, "Argathini," means late in the night, or simply too late. He chants these words repeatedly at the end of the film. For these words encapsulate his life. And they encapsulate the themes of this haunting film. But Angelopulos makes clear it is not a pessimistic film. In the final scene before he enters the Hospital to die, he asks the memory of his wife, "How long does Tomorrow last?" and she replies, "An Eternity and a Day." In the end, you have the choice. However short your time, you can make even the slightest act, the most significant; even the briefest moment last forever.

Sadly this film will not appeal to most Americans. Like the previous reviewer has put it so succinctly, most will see it as "excruciatingly slow" and "boring". I also liked the way another reviewer described how its briefest shots are "longer than the longest shots in most Hollywood movies". It is languid. It is not meant to be hurried through. It is an "art-film" and if anything, it is visual poetry. It does require some maturity and will appeal to those who have reached a stage where they can look back and ponder. Give it the chance and you will be rewarded.

Alas, New Yorker Video continues its tradition of shoddy DVD transfers. The print is exceedingly dark. The picture is extremely soft, at points blurry. Nicks, scratches and dirt specks abound. The film is presented in its original 1.66:1 widescreen, letterboxed into a 4:3 frame. It has not been enhanced for widescreen TV. We are given the original Greek 2.0 Dolby Surround track. Sound is serviceable. Optional English subtitles are provided. The Extras are surprisingly very good. The highlight is a 22-minute introduction by Andrew Horton, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He talks of the film in relation to Homer's Odyssey, Angelopulos' visual style, postmodernism and Angelopulos' standing in the history of Cinema. There is a 10-minute "Analysis of a shot," made for French TV, in which Angelopulos himself talks about his shooting style. This is in French with optional English subtitles. Finally there is a collection of Greek poetry from Solomos, Seferis and Cavafy, all in English translations. Solomos is the poet featured in the fantasy sequences and whose poem, the film's protagonist spent his whole life trying to complete. There is also an 8-page foldout featuring an informative interview with Angelopulos. However, the film itself deserves a much better transfer. Hopefully Criterion can release it someday, suitably restored, so it can stand alongside their lovely restorations of the Bergman and Kurosawa classics to which it has been compared.

A dying author spends his final days reminiscing on what he sees as a failed life. His time spent wandering the gloom of Thessoloniki is interspersed with flashbacks of his wife and their home near the sea. In his wanderings around the city he meets an Albanian refugee child and the two share a few moments of friendship before each goes on to his destiny.
Seen by many as Anglopoulos' reward for the tantrum he threw when "Ulysses Gaze" lost to Kuristica's "Underground" a couple of years before, the Cannes critics finally decided to give the director the Palme d'or for this film. Angelopoulos was right to be upset, his very flawed masterpiece was a much better movie than "Underground," and it is also a better movie than "Eternity and a Day." "Eternity and a Day" is a smaller film where the filmmaker tones down many of his more eccentric quirks; it is easily the most "accessible" film he's yet made. But Angelopoulos is not an "accessible" filmmaker, as anyone who has had the particular and often grueling experience of sitting through "Ulysses" or "The Travelling Players" is well aware. Whether you loved or hated those films it was impossible not to come away from them feeling that they were uncompromised visions but "Eternity" feels, well, like a bit of a compromise. At times it almost leans towards the maudlin or even cutesy (and it's not just because of the kid, compare with "Landscape in the Mist" that had not one but two kids). That being said, the film is still frequently powerful and haunting in the manner of Angelopoulos' best works. It's just that unlike his best works, this one doesn't linger in the mind.
The letterboxed transfer on the VHS tape is quite nice, aptly capturing the director's vision of Thessoloniki as a murky, mist-shrouded, rain-soaked city of despair (it aint really) and the protagonist's dreams of life with his wife among the open sea and sand.

The STORY of an aging writer, his encounter with a young boy, and memories of the past which this encounter evokes, An Eternity And A Day stars Bruno Ganz as the writer, with supporting roles filled by Isabelle Renaud (France), Fabrizio Bentivoglio (Italy), and from Greece Despina Bebedeli, Achileas Skevis, Alexandra Ladikou, Alekos Oudinotis , and Nikos Kouros. Making a special guest appearance in the film is Greek actress Tania Paleologou, who as a young girl played the leading role in Angelopoulos' Landscape In The Mist.

Veteran Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, together with Greek writer Petros Markaris collaborated with Angelopoulos on the script. The production reunites Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze team -- coproducers are Eric Heumann's Paradis Film (France), Giorgio Silvani's Intermedia Films (France), and Amedeo Pagani's Classic Films (Italy); producer is Phoebe Economopoulos.

Theo Angelopoulos creates a stunningly haunting, seamless fusion of reality, nostalgia, and dreams in Eternity and a Day. Using long takes and reverse tracking, Angelopoulos creates a visual metaphor for the isolation of the soul: the hallway shot of Alexandre after Urania's departure; a team of window washers descending on cars at a stop light; the framed shot of Anna by the gate of the summer house. Moreover, recurrent images of abandoned buildings, repeated flights of Albanian refugees across the border, and the unfinished poem, reflect Alexandre's regret over his own unresolved actions. Figuratively, Alexandre, too, is a stranger - longing to recapture an irretrievable past -unable to return home. The unique point of that film is the poetic dialogues, the excellent soundtrack and the photography that really captures another color of Greece and the Greek world. So good, masterpiece.

..."Alexandre..." After this movie this name with always reminds you poetry... L'éternité et un jour

Of all of the 4 films American audiences are allowed to see by Theo Angelopoulos, this is one my favorite. Angelopoulos' films offer the same elements in everyone. He's a bold director when compared to American directors, then again, all foreign directors are bold compared to American ones, even our best like Martin Scorsese, Coppola, or Woody Allen. Angelopoulos' films have long takes. With long single camera shots. And to some, his films are flooded with portentous dialogue. And, I must admit I am usually in awe at the beginning moments of any Angelopoulos film. But, after a while, after I've taken in the subtle charm of the cinematography, the beautiful visuals, and his way of story telling, I can't help but sometimes grow impatient. And, while yes, that happened to me while watching this movie, it's a film that now, after a year or moreso, I think back of fondly. I remember the beautiful scenes by the sea. How beautifully Angelopoulos set up these scenes. He really is a master of imagery.
"Eternity and a Day" tells a rather simple but yet deep and poetic story of a man's dying days, and one day he spends with a small lost boy (Achileas Skevis). The man is Alexandre (Bruno Ganz). Alexandre does not want to die. As the song goes, he has a lot of livin' to do. He now reflects upon his past. Memories of his wife, his mother. He even visit's his daughter whom he has not seen in some time. He wants to rectify all the wrong that has happened in the past. And he gets a chance to when he meets this boy. Here I suppose Angelopoulos is playing with the elements of time. Past, present and future. The more time Alexandre spends with the boy, trying to get him back home, the more he is reminded of his past. Not to mention the fact that he is dying.
"Eternity and a Day" is a film that I'm sure not all will be pleased with. It's too subtle of a film. It takes it's time telling a story. It's moves slow, but it means to. I'm not saying these are faults, but, I know today's society has no time to watch these types of movies. American audiences like fast movies. Filmmakers like Angelopoulos may never find their audiences. But, despite everything, one could not hide the beauty the film has. The script written by Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petro Markaris, & Giorgio Silvagni has moments that are as tender as I've ever seen in any movie. The cinematograhy by Yorgos Arvanitis & Andreas Sinanos is wonderful as well.
"Eternity and a Day" won the Cannes Film Festival's Golden Palm, an award Angelopoulos is no stranger to. His "Suspended Step of the Stork" was nominated before as was "The Hunters". And "Ulysses' Gaze", if I remember right, won second place at the Cannes behind "Underground". "Day" is a movie all foreign film fans should see. You'll be impressed by the simple things the film has to offer. Also, will someone please release "The Suspended Step of the Stork" on video already! And the rest of Angelopoulos' films!
Bottom-line:"Eternity and a Day" is admittedly a slow moving film and does take some patience to watch, but the film has startling imagery. It's subtle charms carry you under it's spell.

What is eternity for a life not shared? Is a day enough to capture all that has slipped away? This movie, with magnificent pictures and captivating music, made me rethink my own life and wonder, "what if this was my last day this time?"

To find yourself asking this question at the end of the movie, is proof that Angelopoulos did it again: he told a story in a way that touches somewhere deep in the viewer. Too bad we stopped "buying new words" though. It explains the impoverishment of our vocabulary.

ETERNITY AND A DAY is a Greek film about a man named Alexandre, a well known writer (played by Bruno Ganz). We meet him as he is about to enter a hospital for the terminally ill. It will be his last day, at least as he knows life, and we see him go through a number of experiences. Two significant things happen that day. First is his visit to his daughter's home where he learns that she's sold his beloved house by the sea. He gives his daughter a letter by her mother which gives us insight into Alaxandre's character and see he was a writer first, husband, lover, and father second. The second significant occurrence involves a street child (Achileas Skevis). Alexandre saves him from kidnappers and sees a life he never knew existed.

The film has a number of flashback scenes where the older Alexandre returns to his past. There are also some puzzling scenes as well. Still, as a whole it's an interesting film about a man's final days as he attempts to make sense of life. We also see some touching scenes between Alexandre and the boy. The director uses the Greek scenery to its advantage. The coastal scenes are beautiful and easily evoke the images of Alexandre's happier moments. Alexandre's home seems to be a place with little life, again rather appropriate. The scenes of where the lower classes of Greece, particularly the street children, most of whom who are exiles from Albania, has the grittiness and hopelessness of life on the streets.

The film is a little over two hours, and while it's not a fast paced film, it is engrossing and keeps the viewer interested. The acting in the film, particularly that of Ganz who does cause us to feel sympathetic and the endearing but never cutesy performance of Skevis is superb. It's a fine work and one that if viewed more than once will likely yield more insights about what's important in life and what we might change if we could.

This film is about Alexandre, a renowned author, who spent his last years trying to finish a 19th-century poet's work. He unwittingly neglected his loved ones for his writing, to where he feels like an exile whether promoting his books or in his own room writing. Now he is dying. We first hear 8-year-old Alexandre and his friends, asking profound questions for their age: What's time? He sneaks out to join the boys at the beach, swimming out to sea, and his mother calls him back. This harkens him back to the present, aging, lying back in a chair in the same house, in pain, with the taste of salt in his mouth. He tells his housekeeper not to pack too much for where he's going. She begs him to let her go to hospital with him, he pats her hand and explains why not. He takes his beautiful but sad old dog to his daughter, who obviously married a wealthy man, the house is high-end, but cold and ultra-modern, with the bad taste of having a large working clock over the mantle to remind us time is running out. He says he's going away and can't take his dog; she reminds him Nikos doesn't like animals in the house. She reads an old letter from his wife. We now see Anna, vital, lovely yet needy, just after Katerina's birth and celebrating with the family by the sea. When the letter's finished he's brought rudely back to the present: Nikos, robed, appearing, announcing offhand he's sold the seaside house and the wreckers will arrive tomorrow. Shocked, Alexandre reacts: "you sold the house!" Nikos asks, jerking his head pointedly: "Is that your dog? I'm getting dressed," and vanishes. Dad talks of some irrelevant matter: a tennis match she'd lost and how devastated she was. She lamely explains the house was too big, unsafe etc. Alexandre touches her face and leads the dog out. Tomorrow he--and the beloved house as well--will be gone. Katerina doesn't know he's actually dying: but she's really like Nikos, which is redolent of the Buchanans in The Great Gatsby: the careless rich, tearing down things, letting others (here, the "wreckers") clean it up.

Between flashbacks and aiding an 8-year-old (same age as he is when he and his friends carved a date on a rock by his seaside home) Albanian refugee with a gift for expression, he visits his formerly vital mother, now senile, at her hospital window wailing, "Alexandre! Dinner..." When he leaves her, he asks: "Why, Mother, why must we rot?...Why didn't we know how to love?"

The doctor's ominous intonations, the boy's poetic street-bonfire tribute to a murdered friend, and finally, the joyful duo on a round-trip around the quay: all are journeys within journeys, poems within poems, finished in a most unusual way.

Earlier on, he'd interrupted the wedding party of Urania's son, the couple dancing down the streets, bride in stark white in contrast to everyone else in black. Here as throughout the film, Angelopoulos' gift of metaphoric expression is so mesmerizing. I've read that the movie is too long, but I wanted more. The groom and bride dancing in the wind down the stark gray street, she gliding like a flower ("korfoula"): only her hands moving sinuously and her full snowy gown bobbing gracefully to rapid concertina music. Again Urania asks to go with him to hospital tomorrow. He smiles and merely compliments the bride's beauty. As he turns away, she lovingly pats the head of her new canine charge, and watches Alexandre go. All of this is key to (perhaps only) me. She and his doctor know he's dying, no one else.

Both are exiles: the kid with no one accepts him, listens to his tale of the poet who bought words, and Alexander sharing his last day, making him rethink (I think). One's journey is just beginning and the other's is just ending. Alexandre now understands how long time is: an eternity and a day.

I saw this film as part of my new european cinema class at school and I was simply taken away by the images in the film. The other thing that suck with me was the beautiful music in the film, the sound is simple and at the same time adds so much meaning. If you haven't seen Eternity and a Day go see it, and enjoy the music long after the film.

The 1998 film by Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, Eternity And A Day (Mia Aioniotita Kai Mia Mera or ''' '''''''''' ''' ''' ''''), is not merely another film about a supposed poet wherein the art of poetry and the act of poesizing are never on display. Yes, it's true that, technically, neither are onscreen, but it is a superior film about a supposed poet wherein the art of poetry and the act of poesizing are never on display, for the film does capture the dead cliché of `a soul of a poet' as well as just about any I've ever seen. It does it with imagery, and Angelopoulos's patented long takes, but it does capture it, and exceedingly well. The film was not only directed by Angelopoulos, but he wrote the screenplay. That it won that year's Cannes Film Festival's coveted Palm D'Or shows that, sometimes, quality still counts.
The tale subtly weaves the past, present, and future tenses of a dying man, the bearded poet Alexander (Bruno Ganz, best known for starring in Wim Wenders' Wings Of Desire, and the later Adolf Hitler biopic Downfall, as Hitler), as he muses on life a day before he is to enter a hospital for an unspecified `test.' In this manner, the film is in the fine tradition of films on dying men trying top come to grips with their lives, such as Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, and Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries. Yet, where the former film achieves its aims by balancing out the life of the dying man with that of a young woman, then turns the film on its head by dealing with the legacy of the man after his death, and the latter film evokes dread by displaying the subconscious memories of its lead character, Eternity And A Day splits the difference, as Alexander, after leaving his seaside apartment in Thessaloniki, after learning he has a terminal illness and must enter a hospital the next day, muses on a neighbor across the way who mirrors his taste in music, befriends a young unnamed immigrant Albanian boy (Achilleas Skevis) who is being exploited and slips in and out of his and others' pasts by simply walking into them. Angelopoulos does not cut to the past. His characters' pasts are extensions of their presents.... Of course, the length of most of the takes, with the shortest being longer than most Hollywood shots, means most speed-addicted American viewers will be bored by the film. Yet, can there be a better recommendation for such a work? And, despite the long takes, the 126 minute long film feels far shorter, and this is because each scene leaves an immense intellectual and emotional impact. It was written by Angelopoulos, longtime Fellini screenwriter Tonino Guerra ,and Petros Markaris. The scoring by Eleni Karaindrou is pitch perfect, as it never overwhelms nor guides the viewer beyond what the scenes' immanent power holds.
The acting by Ganz is wonderful, and a textbook display of full body acting. In the modern scenes he moves slowly and with a slump in his bearing, while when he enters the past, he has alacrity and grace. It is stated, in online descriptions of the film, that Ganz's lines were dubbed into Greek, but this presents little problem as there is not much dialogue, Alexander's facial hair partially covers his lips, and many of the speaking scenes are from a distance or the back. Again, the conveyance of his emotional and psychological states is predominantly by bodily acting. The same is not true for the boy, and Achilleas Skevis gives yet another terrific acting performance for a European child actor. His face has hints of the American Culkin acting clan, yet he is far more subtle and expressive, and when he jokes to Alexander that `buying words' on the docks may be expensive, there is an impishness to his glinting eyes that few American brat actors could capture....Eternity And A Day is another great film by a master of the art who has been sorely neglected in the United States. It asks of its two lead characters, Why am I always a stranger in exile?, and gives no clear answer, save to estrange the two of them from each other and themselves....Alexander's final estrangement is not as cheery, and comes as he enters his old home- the one his daughter has sold for demolition. He looks about, exits out the back door, and into the sunny past where Anna and other friends are singing. They stop, ask him to join them, then they all dance, and soon, there is only the poet and his wife in motion. Then, she slowly pulls away, and he claims his hearing is gone. He also cannot see her, it seems. He calls out and asks how long tomorrow will be, after he has told her he refuses to go into the hospital, as planned. She tells him tomorrow will last eternity and a day. The film ends with Alexander, back to us, mumbling in untranslated Greek (do we really need to know what he is saying at this point, anyway?) watching the waves on the ocean do what they do, for a long time. It is in moments like this that Angelopoulos reveals that, while he is the equal of the best filmmakers in the art's history, such as Fellini or Bergman, he has more seriousness than the former, and a more profound empathy than the latter. Where that ultimately places him on the scale of the cinematic pantheon is to be argued over, but not the fact that he belongs. He and this film are that great.

This is a superb work from one of the best and most eloquent living composers of Greece,Eleni Karaindrou.The composer invites us to a deeply moving journey where nostalgy and hope,sadness and joy coexist in harmony.Once again,Karaindrou creates a music where local tastes are perfectly expressed in universal forms.This is not only very good music but also poetry that carries tastes of red wine and salty smell of the sea.Everything that's human is in this music which is a hymn to the life itself...