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Weeping Meadow, The

Alexandra Aidini, Nikos Poursanidis (Actor) Rated:
NR
Format: DVD
4.2 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
IMDb7.9/10.0
$210.14
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DVD
December 19, 2006 		—
1
$210.14
— $11.57
Format NTSC, Color, Multiple Formats, Widescreen, Closed-captioned
Contributor Alexandra Aidini, Nikos Poursanidis
Language Greek
Runtime 2 hours and 43 minutes
Color Color

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Product Description

Amazon.com

Greek director Theo Angelopoulous' portrayal of war-ravaged Greece is framed by the tragic love story that unfolds in The Weeping Meadow. This first saga in his "Trilogy," spanning 1919-1949, opens with a visually stunning scene of refugees from Odessa crossing estuaries that show their haggard reflections in water, as if to double apparent hardship. While establishing Odessa's history in relation to the rise of Mussolini's Facist takeover, The Weeping Meadow unravels a complicated love triangle between Eleni (Alexandra Aidini), an Odessa girl, her lover, an unnamed young man (Nikos Poursadinis), and his lonely father, Spyros (Vassilis Kolovos), who also happens to be Eleni's fiancé. The plot often focuses on the young man's talent for accordion playing, and his musical group, headed by the feisty, impassioned fiddler, Nikos (Giorgos Armenis). But when Eleni's lover abandons her for America, she's captured by soldiers, imprisoned, and separated from her children. As in Cinema Paradiso, the human drama unfolding mimics its political settings, so that love quarrels heighten the sense of repression, and vice versa. When civil war breaks out, Eleni's life seems in shambles as well. Emotionally wrought, The Weeping Meadow is depressing but still lovely for its depth of character and portrayal of Greek culture. As with any love story, the film reminds the viewer how human relationships are fragile yet enduring. --Trinie Dalton

Review

"A MASTERPIECE." -- Nick Roddick, SIGHT AND SOUND

"A STUNNER. A voluptuously beautiful meditation on love, family, fate." -- Jan Stuart, NEWSDAY

"A sweeping historical odyssey. MESMERIZING!" -- Damon Smith, TIME OUT NEW YORK

"ASTONISHING pure cinema... It's Homeric filmmaking uniquely worthy of the word." -- Michael Atkinson, THE VILLAGE VOICE

Product details

  • MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
  • Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.75 inches; 3.2 ounces
  • Media Format ‏ : ‎ NTSC, Color, Multiple Formats, Widescreen, Closed-captioned
  • Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 43 minutes
  • Release date ‏ : ‎ December 19, 2006
  • Actors ‏ : ‎ Alexandra Aidini, Nikos Poursanidis
  • Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
  • Language ‏ : ‎ Greek (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), Greek (Dolby Digital 5.1)
  • Studio ‏ : ‎ New Yorker
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000J10F7S
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • George D. OBrien
    5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly beautiful
    Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2006
    Verified Purchase
    Having lived in Greece for a year, I wanted to see this film which covers the history of the country through the eyes of a single family line. It starts with the expulsion of the Greeks from Turkey and contiunes through the civil war of the 1940's. But history is not the final point. This film contains scenes of striking beauty and poetry such as I have hardly ever seen. One wonders over and over how these scenes were created and photographed. It is awe inspiring. The first of a trilogy. One can only hope that Angelopoulos completes the task.
    14 people found this helpful
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  • R. Russell Bittner
    3.0 out of 5 stars The threads simply don't connect
    Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2014
    Beautiful images...beautiful music...a lurid history...cinematic virtuosity. But it just doesn't pull together enough to keep my attention. Sorry. Call it my failing as a viewer.

    Russell
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Alex Udvary
    4.0 out of 5 stars The History of Greece
    Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2007
    The first image we see in Theo Angelopoulos' "Weeping Meadow" is an extreme long shot of a man driving a horse and carriage. The camera follows him from the distant, never going in for a close-up. Instead we just pan across the landscape, which looks run down and abandon.

    This is a typical Angelopoulos shot. Another director may have put their camera closer to the subject and pan across and still be able to get the condition of the village, but not Angelopoulos. Angelopoulos is interested in the big picture. He wants us to get a feel for the village, he wants the characters and the landscape to soak into our memory.

    It is precisely because of shots like this wider audiences will never appreciate his style. They will complain his films are too long (this film is over two and a half hours), his camera barely moves, he lingers on his subjects long after the "point" of the scene has been made...ect, ect.

    But if you find you have the patience to sit down and watch one of his films you will be rewarded. I refer to Angelopoulos as the mastery of imagery. No filmmaker has captured such images in the history of cinema which has pleased my eyes more. Oh I know there are other great directors, Herzog, Pasolini, and Renoir but Theo Angelopoulos just seems to go down like a smooth shot of vodka (or should I say ouzo?). There is something I find refreshing in his work. Namely his ability to simply let the story move at its own pace. He doesn't seem constrained by a film's running time.

    In "Weeping Meadow" we get what is suppose to be the first part of a trilogy dealing with the history of Greece. This film takes place from 1919 to 1945. But the film is told from the point of view of a young couple as we see how world events affect their marriage and challenge their love for each other.

    The movie is filled with memorable moments. Many of which take place by the ocean. I'm reminded of a funeral scene, where we see the casket in a boat drifting along the tide as a procession of boats follow it. Then there is a scene where the village is flooded. We see families escape as the water has reached their roofs.

    These scenes will linger in your mind as well, but, if there is one flaw to the film it is that the politics of Greece are not a prominent enough part of the story. Only at the end of the film, when dealing with WW2 does politics come front and center. Before that I honestly could not tell you what historical moments were taking place.

    The film follows the young couple, Eleni (Alexandra Aidini) and her husband, whom isn't given a name (Nikos Poursadinis) as he searches for a job. He is a musician who gets a job playing in a band led by Nikos (Giorgos Armenis). But as this goes on I couldn't begin to tell you what was going on as far as Greece's history is concerned.

    If Angelopoulos really wanted to tell this story correctly I think he should have abandon this trilogy idea and made one long epic movie.

    Other films have attempted to tell their country's history through a few characters. Right now I'm thinking of Bernardo Bertolucci's "1900" and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz". Also the more recent "Best of Youth".

    "Weeping Meadow" doesn't have that epic feel to it. Had Angelopoulos put more of Greece's politics into the story I would have enjoyed it more. As someone who isn't Greek the idea of seeing a film about the country's history, from one of my favorite directors, excited me. But I didn't gather a true sense of Greece or it's history. Maybe the other two films in this trilogy will expand upon this aspect.

    Angelopoulos has told the story of his country before. He made a film about Alexander the Great and even films such as "The Traveling Players" and "Landscape in the Mist" touched upon Greece's history. In fact at times I thought of "Players" as I watched this film. "Players" also followed a group of entertainers as Greece's history was being made just as we follow the group of musicians in this movie.

    "Weeping Meadow" despite everything is not a bad movie. It is worth seeing especially if you are a filmbuff or an Angelopoulos fan. The reason the film works mostly for me is because of those startling images he gives us. He really is the master of imagery.

    Bottom-line: Theo Angelopoulos's ambitious tale of the history of Greece doesn't quite live up to what could have been. The movie doesn't give the viewer much of an understanding of Greece's history but it is filled with such memorable cinematograpy and images it makes it hard to resist.
    24 people found this helpful
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  • Mikki Xayiya
    5.0 out of 5 stars A magical feat
    Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    What an abundance of cultural wealth and profound emotion captured by this authentic and involved epic of love, land and searing memory. Eleni Karaindou's hauntingly beautiful music, painting the ancient sounds of Greece with sustained orchestral voices and symphonic monuments, complements the magic. A cinematic feat indeed.
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  • Dekka
    5.0 out of 5 stars Weeping Meadow
    Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    Great movie. Have to see it many times to really appreciate the cinematography. Fabulous scenes.
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  • Scott Emery
    4.0 out of 5 stars Script Does Not Support the Ambitious Vision
    Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2013
    The Weeping Meadow has the potential to be a masterwork, but the cinematic vision of director/co-writer Angelopoulos is, unfortunately, not fulfilled. The magnificent images and the well-conceived but perhaps overly ambitious theme of the tragedy of Greece in the first half of the twentieth century as realized through the fortunes of one family is not sufficiently supported by the screenplay to allow for this film to truly satisfy its powerful vision.

    The visual portions of the film are carefully conceived and evocative. All is gray and chilled in sunny Greece in this film, the warmth and color of human existence drained, primarily due to the hubris and folly of mankind. The only occasion for communal entertainment and exhilaration, the worker's union dance, is interrupted by the small-time oligarch who seeks one last reunion with his youthful wife. His death is embematic of the fall of even the locally powerful as the forces of global depression and war envelop tiny Greece.

    The personal story to the point of the father/husband's fall is sufficiently limited and while metaphorical, still coherent - as historical dramas must be. There are real events occurring which demand elucidation for the the framework of the personal tragedy and its symbolism to be understood and to have its literary and cinematic power. In the second half of the film, however, it seems that the momentum of what Angelopoulos wants to convey overwhelms him as vast periods of time, with truly momentous European historical overwhelm Greece as well. Unfortunately, there is little explanation of those events or even sufficient careful illustration or mention of them in the context of the particulars that personally impact Eleni and Alexis - nor, crucially, of the decisions they themselves make in this context.

    There are, for instance, no demonstrations of everyday hardship, or of the relationship of the children to the parents as they grew up, who knows where, and with what sources of material provision. There is of course death, as the horror of World War II and civil war devastate Greece, but we learn little of the political dynamics and choices made during this time or of the factionalism of which hints are left, nor of the rationale for the ultimate perspectives taken by the two sons regarding the sources of Greece's problems. We are also left curious about the momentous decision of Alexis, a course taken that is not necessarily the result of circumstance.

    The second half of the film is more akin to melodrama, not carefully conceived historical drama, and thus, even at 2 hours and 48 minutes of beauty and promise, fails to deliver on its possibilities. Ultimately, I think Angelopoulos's reach exceeded his grasp, as he struggled to bring all he wanted to bear into this film, which could easily have been 3 hours and 15 minutes, and perhaps met his objectives. The first half of the film is beautiful, careful, tight, with meaningful character development and motivations and actions that make sense. The second half is rushed, careening through history both general and personal without sufficient attention, with the resulting loss of character oxposition and appropriate explanation of the broader tragedy to Greece, both externally conceived and self-inflicted. More is the pity.
    One person found this helpful
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