To meteoro vima tou pelargou
The film opens with a fade-in on helicopters circling over what turns out to be dead bodies floating in the sea at Piraeus, the port of Athens. The main character, Alexander, a television reporter (Gregory Karr), explains in a voice-over that he was on his way to a border town to do a story on refugees. The bodies are those of stowaways who were refused asylum by the Greek authorities, and rather than be returned to their own countries, jumped to their deaths. The reporter sets up the theme of the film as he wonders, How does one leave? Why? To where?In the second scene, Alexander is now near the Greek-Albanian border, accompanied by a Greek colonel (Ilias Logothetis). After passing a few troops in review, during which the soldiers make totally incongruous remarks, they walk to a bridge which fords a river separating Albania from Greece. The colonel points out a tricolor line which bisects the bridge. He lifts one leg, as if to take a step over the line, but his leg remains suspended as he says, If I take one more step, Im elsewhere, or I die. The Albanian guards are somewhat nervous and on alert. The colonel stands still in that position for a moment, and then slowly brings his leg back into Greece.The two men next drive into the small border village nicknamed the waiting room, where, the colonel explains, thousands of refugees are stranded, waiting for the Greek authorities to give them their papers to go elsewhere. Alexander wanders along the riverfront market, where he spots for the first time a person he seems to recognize as a famous Greek politician (Marcello Mastroianni) who had inexplicably disappeared some time ago, and now seems to have resurfaced here, as an anonymous refugee. Later on, Alexander rejoins the rest of his crew at a local hotel, where they settle for the duration of their assignment. The entire crew walks to another section of the town, where they begin filming with a long tracking shot along a line of boxcars that have become the temporary shelter for refugees from all over Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East.Cut next to an elegant reception, in a town obviously not the waiting room, where Alexander has arranged to meet with the politicians French wife (Jeanne Moreau). She relates her husbands first temporary disappearance, after he had written a controversial book, Despair at the End of the Century, and his return as another man. In a close-up of the cover of the book, we see the portrait of the politician (Mastroianni). In the next scene, in Alexanders apartment, the politicians wife arrives and gives the reporter an audiotape that her husband made before leaving her for the second, and final, time. They listen to the tape and then go for a walk, during which the politicians wife provides more information about her husband and his strange behavior.Alexander returns to the waiting room. At the bar of the hotel where he and his crew stay, the crew members are drinking and dancing, while Alexander sits alone drinking at table. A young woman (Dora Chrisikou) at a nearby table stares insistently at him. Eventually, she follows Alexander back to his room. After she leaves, Alexander walks back to the row of boxcars, where he encounters the politician telling a young boy the story of the future Great Migration, but the man fails to reveal the storys ending. Some time later, Alexander meets the young woman in a café and then stalks her, following her as she returns to her building, a place where refugees live in crowded and tenuous conditions. When he enters her small room, she relates to him how her mother died while crossing the border, and she says she now takes care of her two younger siblings. The politician (her father?) enters and says that he has been at work repairing telephone lines which run along the border. Over a drink, the politician ponders his circumstances: We crossed the border, but were still here. How many borders must we cross before we are home?Alexander goes to the train station to meet the politicians wife. He has pre-arranged a chance meeting between the woman and the man he believes is her husband. This meeting takes place the next morning on a bridge in the town. The crew is filming the encounter, which is entirely seen through the cameras eye. The two stop, and for a brief moment, stare at each other. She then turns toward the camera and states, Its not him.We see some old original footage of the politician at a time when he was to make a very important speech to the Assembly, but instead just made a short statement and abruptly left. Following this scene, while standing by a river, Alexander confronts the politician with the tape recording he gave his wife before leaving her, but it produces no reaction on the politicians part. He simply ignores it. On returning to the village, Alexander meets up with the colonel, who has been all along commenting on the conditions of the waiting room and keeping Alexander informed of the latest gossip and happenings. He tells Alexander that there will be a wedding between a refugee girl from the village and her childhood sweetheart, who lives across the border. As they talk, the girl who is to be married enters the bar: it is the same girl Alexander slept with a few nights earlier. Alexander is obviously shaken. They meet again at his hotel, and we assume they will make love one last time.The next scene is one of the most remarkable of the film, a scene like only Angelopoulos can produce. On a grey, mournful morning, a small group assembles with the bride and her father -- the politician -- on the Greek shore of the river that marks the border. They face another small crowd standing on the opposite shore with the groom. When the Orthodox priest arrives, the wedding commences. It is eventually interrupted by a single gunshot, which disperses the two groups. That same evening, Alexander meets the bride, still in her wedding dress, who is dancing with her father.The next morning, Alexander returns to the bridge on the border and repeats the suspended step as acted out by the colonel at the beginning of the film. He meets the colonel, who tells Alexander that several people had seen the politician leaving the village by different means, in different directions, but all agreed that he was carrying a suitcase. The colonel further states that he is unable to confirm or deny these stories about the vanished politician.The film ends with another striking scene of men in yellow rain suits on the top of telephone polls which run along the border-river, stringing telephone wires from pole to pole.
philosophical