The train crossing the frontiers, to Germany, is yet to start, and Voula and Alexander are yet to begin their journey in search of their unknown father, when Alexander relates a very recent dream that he has of his father. The train departs, before the children enter, and at the brim of the platform they stood sad and motionless. The red light of the train slowly merges with the infinite , when we hear for the first time the heart freezing ‘Adagio’ of Eleni karaindrou.
This is the opening sequence of Theo Angelopoulos’ ‘landscape in the mist’, a heart renting drama of the invisible, who are searching for a medium to communicate with the immense, and somewhat apathetic world.
The departed train, never bars the kids from searching their unknown father, but they are still adamant in their attitude. For them , their father is a bridge that connects them to the world of the unknowns, it is their dream, which always provoke them to move, and Voula’s monologue at some point is this.’ ‘We've been traveling like a leaf blowing in the wind. What a strange world! Suitcases...freezing railway stations.. words and gestures we don't understand... and the night which scares us! But we are happy. We are moving on.’
This mystic quest for the unknown, in a world, harsh most times, yet showing occasional glimpses of love, a world populated by gigantic heights and forsaken landscapes, where the children are dropped in proportion to infinitely small insects, is a theme , that we are not much familiar with. The severed communications between the man and the world is the main theme, that Angelopoulose has always tried to portray. In many, they were people, lost in a world of unknown languages – as in the case of refugees in most of his films.
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