An off-camera narrator (Theo Angelopoulos) provides the sobering demographics of an ancient village in northern Greece – a population that dwindled from 1,250 people based on a 1939 census to 85 in 1965 – as a passenger bus traverses the remote, mountainous region on an unpaved road and becomes stuck in a water-logged ditch, requiring […]
If the jaded tabloid journalist, Marcello, in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita ever found success, he would invariably lead the life of Thomas (David Hemmings) in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup. In the hip culture of 1960s London, Thomas is a famous fashion photographer whose disillusionment is reflected in his expressionless, mannequin-like models. His technical directions have […]
A beautiful and distracted woman named Giuliana (Monica Vitti) wanders aimlessly through the grimy perimeter streets outside a power generation plant amidst the intermittent chaos of a workers’ strike, accompanied by her young son Valerio (Valerio Bartoleschi). Observing one of the striking workers eating his lunch, she instinctually begins to feel hungry, approaches him, and […]
A rugged, inexpressive refinery mechanic, Aldo (Steve Cochran), hurries home after being summoned by his married lover, Irma (Alida Valli). Irma has been informed of her husband’s death in Australia, and Aldo welcomes the tragic news as a resolution to their seven-year affair. However, Aldo is stunned by Irma’s opposition to marriage, and her subsequent […]
In an episode near the conclusion of the film, the expatriate poet and writer Sinan Antoon, having been allowed entry into the military secured Shaheed Monument – an architecturally impressive outdoor memorial commissioned by Saddam Hussein to honor the fallen Iraqi martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War (in a macabre, self-aggrandizing gesture to commemorate the 700,000 […]
Shinji Aoyama returns to the desolate geographical and spiritual landscapes of Eureka to create a thoughtful and idiosyncratic – if patently offbeat and unclassifiable – concoction of doomsday angst, picaresque humor, synthesized cacophony, natural communion, and even redemption in Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani?. The film’s allusive title, taken from the Aramaic transcription of Jesus’ ninth […]