The Suspended Step of the Stork

The Suspended Step of the Stork is a film of Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos in 1991 with Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni in the lead roles.

Action

When working on a documentary about the problems of the Greek northern frontier (probably the limit for Yugoslav successor state of Macedonia ) believes a young TV journalist in an old man ( Mastroianni ) to see a politician who years ago was a highly anticipated speech in Parliament with an enigmatic sentence - " Sometimes you have to be silent in order to understand the music." - broke off and disappeared from one moment to the next without ever reappear. Finally, he was pronounced dead.

Back in the capital Athens he seeks his former wife on ( Moreau ), and attempts at a rapprochement to this enigmatic figure. He manages to return with a small team to the limit, to search for the politician (who is never mentioned by name ). It is not difficult he finds the old man again, who denies to be Submitted politicians, although the similarities are obvious. The old man leading a poor life as a telecommunications technician and part-time farmer with his family, do not reject the journalists, but carries with it more in-depth conversations, mostly on the outskirts of tragic, depressing episodes that take place in the winter landscape along the border river.

First dramatic climax of the film is one of a Greek Orthodox priest consummated marriage over the border river of time, where the bride - the old man's daughter - on the one hand, the groom stands on the other side of the river. The ceremony is ended by warning shots, the border patrols. The young bride spends her wedding night in the arms of the journalist, who much later realizes, however, that he's only been a deputy. The journalist persuaded the wife of the politician on the phone, to come to him in the border town, where he arranged a meeting with the old man. The encounter takes place on a small harbor bridge, and is secretly filmed by the TV crew. The old man and the woman face each other oppressive minutes without saying a word against. It is clear that it is with the old man around that disappeared politicians. Nevertheless, his wife denied his former identity before the film crew - in connivance with the old politician who leads another, truer life.

In a grandiose final chord of the young, visibly matured journalist is on the border, lifts the foot to symbolically indicated step over the forbidden line, after which the border guards go on both sides in the attack, as in the opening scene of the film, as the commander of the Border Guard so the danger of the border demonstrated. Now, however, rise like a ballet staged technicians - including the old man - in bright yellow oilskins against gray sky a series of telegraph poles up to install a storm destroyed the phone line again.

Interpretation

The politician, who suddenly disappears shortly before the peak of his career to lead in a barren, hostile frontier landscape as adoptive father of a refugee family life as "underdog ", the philosopher word is drastically by the fact that there will be no life in falsity could. Radical he turns away from the equally glamorous from as unreal illusory world of Specimen urbanity, and goes to the hardest and most unreal part of the country - to a limit which is an iron curtain, to the ever people die, have to fight for daily survival, as well as for their dignity and identity. The border, the border river and the barren, cold and unfriendly landscape, are of equal stars of the movie besides the actors. They are concrete and metaphorical, the boundaries between people, in the hearts and in the minds of people to their control such as overcoming fought a mostly silent, tough and relentless struggle in which people lose and - sometimes - even back to himself find.

More in Grodzka silence, as in their dialogues shine the two veteran stars of European cinema in the personification of people in existential situation that culminates in to meet each other again after many years, and still be able to prove to each other only the single act of love, in turn, to deny. The distinction between true and false turns out to be far more difficult, as it pretend superficial daily ratings. Despite its deep melancholy mood of the film ends with the optimistic symbol of the journalists, who seems to have ' now understood the importance of, border, and the workers who always keep in self-sacrificing effort, the thin, vulnerable wires repair and renew the people can connect with each other about their boundaries.

Criticism

" A cinematic masterpiece full ( cinema ) magical moments and with tremendous wealth, a philosophical and political discourse on borders between countries and cultures, on the border lines in each. The film explores the crossing of these lines and registered with sadness the loss of utopias. ( Kinotip the Catholic film criticism [ ...]) - worth seeing. "

Awards

The film participated in the competition at the International Film Festival of Cannes 1991, was at the award ceremony but left empty-handed.

France Greece 1991 in film Screenplay Tonino Guerra Film score Eleni Karaindrou Giorgos Arvanitis 1991 Cannes Film Festival
231405
de