In Theo Angelopoulos’ “Landscape in the Mist”, two kids run away from their home in Athens in search for their father whom they were told lives in Germany; but beneath the surface this film is about so much more. The journey they embark on is a metaphor of life itself. We all travel through time in search of something that may not even be there.
Everything goes by so fast, the cities we visit, the strangers we meet, painful chapters and joyful occurrences- it all comes and goes in a flash. At one point, a traveller looks at the kids, smiles and utters words that ring so true for each and every one of us.
“You’re funny kids you know that? It’s as if you don’t care about time passing, yet I know that you are in a hurry to leave. It’s as if you’re going nowhere, and yet you’re going somewhere…Me? I’m a snail slithering away into nothingness. I don’t know where I’m going. Once I thought I knew.”
We’re all aware of time passing, yet we pretend that we have all the time in the world. In a way, we’re all clueless kids travelling in a chaotic odyssey through time. We think we know where we’re going, but we really don’t. We’re all searching for different things, yet ultimately we’re looking for the same things, closure, wholeness, a sense of fulfilment. Everything seems like it’s within reach yet completely unattainable.
Will we ultimately reach our destination? Or will everything we long for forever remain a landscape in the mist? Theodoros Angelopoulos creates films with images so hauntingly beautiful, they will be seared into your brain. “Landscape in the Mist” transcends the medium with poetic lyricism that is rarely matched by any work of art.
The Cinephile Fix 