Countries & Movies: Greece

 The film "Topio stin omichli   Τοπίο στην ομίχλη (Landscape in the Mist)" directed by Theodoros Angelopoulos was recognized as the best film of Greek cinema according to FilmGourmand version.

"Landscape in the Mist" was inspired by a newspaper article about two children traveling from Greece to Germany to find their father. Angelopoulos was so impressed by the overwhelming desire of the children to find a father they had never seen described in the article that he came up with the idea to make a film about it. For help in creating the script for the future film, Angelopoulos turned to the great Tonino Guerra, the scriptwriter of many film masterpieces by Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio De Sica and Federico Fellini.

Theo Angelopoulos' film "Landscape in the Mist" premiered on 31 August 1988 at the Venice International Film Festival. At this festival, the film was nominated for the main award - the Golden Lion. But the jury of the festival, chaired by the famous creator of spaghetti westerns Sergio Leone, gave preference to the Italian film "La leggenda del santo bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker)" by Ermanno Olmi. Nevertheless, Angelopoulos' film can be called a true triumph of this festival, since it was awarded 7 other festival prizes, including such prestigious ones as the Silver Lion for Best Director and the Pacinetti Prize, usually awarded to the best foreign films.

In 1989, by the decision of the European Film Academy, Theo Angelopoulos' film "Landscape in the Mist" was recognized as the Best European Film of the year. 

The film's evaluation by film critics cannot be called unambiguous. Angelopoulos' picture received a number of negative reviews. The most striking example of such a review is the review of The Washington Post film reviewer Hal Hinson: "In terms of genre, "Landscape" is a mytho-poetic road movie. To the extent that its ambiguities can be parsed, it's about an existential search, a voyage toward the unattainable. In the beginning, before the narrative shifts to dime store surrealism, the urgency of the children's quest is affecting. As a story of innocents abroad, it has genuine emotional power. But the further from reality the story strays, the further into allegory and metaphor, the less compelling it becomes." Personally, this characteristic seemed to me a manifestation of typically American rationalism.

The assessment of one of the most authoritative Russian film critics Sergey Kudryavtsev seemed more in tune with my impressions of the film: "Despite the harshness and even cruelty of a number of scenes that only confirm the impression of a degenerate humanity, the Greek director gives us a rare opportunity not just to be touched to the depths of the soul, but to experience the most real, classic feeling of catharsis, when you really purify yourself completely and are filled with hopes that came from nowhere. And at the same time, he still tells a sly fairy tale about a journey after a dream that always remains ghostly, like a landscape in a fog, but still unbearably attractive, calling to itself like a light that must eventually cut through the darkness. Unexpectedly, the biblical ending is unusual for Angelopoulos, although the power of the visual image conquers emotionally, touches the soul with its childlike simplicity and naivety, which, perhaps, contains as much deep meaning as in the wise lines of Holy Scripture." 

Judging by the estimates given to the film by ordinary moviegoers, most of them found the allegories and metaphors contained in the film more understandable than the columnist of the leading American publication. 69% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film scores from 8 to 10. And 22% of users gave Theo Angelopoulos' film "Landscape in the Mist" the highest score - "ten".

With that said, the rating of Theo Angelopoulos' film "Landscape in the Mist" according to FilmGourmand's version was 8,862, thanks to which it took 199th Rank in the Golden Thousand.