Angelopoulos’s The Dust of Time

Even for Greek Communists exiled after the Civil War, the USSR was a cold, inhospitable place to live. The mother of Greek-American filmmaker “A” was eventually sentenced to a Siberian gulag and his father was deported, yet somehow, they still managed to find each other again. Their story inspired A’s film within the film, but memory is a tricky thing and so is the narrative approach in Theo Angelopoulos’s The Dust of Time, which screens as part of the UCLA Library Film & TV Archive’s Angelopoulos retrospective, Landscape of Time.

A's latest film is based on the letters his mother Eleni wrote to his father Spyros, while she was banished to a Siberian gulag. Even though he is filming in the illustrious Cinecetta studio in Italy, he is distracted by personal problems, mostly those generated by his disturbed daughter, also named Eleni. It appears she ran away from home, but on the plus side, he finds one of his mother’s missing letters in her room.

Flashing back to early 1950s Temirtau in Kazakhstan, where the Greek exiles had set up their own Soviet style colony, A’s parents are briefly reunited. He had assumed the identity of a dead comrade to sneak her out, but they are discovered by the other Communists. Ironically, Eleni would then spend decades with their torch-carrying Jewish family-friend, Jacob, who would become a Refusenik during his long tenure in the gulag with her.

Angelopoulos’s temporal shifts can be especially confusing, because of the way he blends the time periods in the transitional scenes, with A appearing in the past, or his youthful parents seemingly walking through the present (circa Y2K New Year’s Eve), but that also gives the film a rather striking sense of un-reality. Dust of Time also features a gorgeous score composed by the late Angelopoulos’s regular collaborator, Eleni Karaindrou. The “Dance Theme,” heard performed by a full orchestra in a recording session for A’s film and as a piano solo performed by Spyros, is wonderfully melancholy and nostalgic-sounding.

Dust is a lovely film to look at and listen to, but it still manages to capture the bleakness of the Soviet Communism—rather surprisingly so, given the general ideological tenor of contemporary Greek art house cinema. With wide, wide-swept shots of the mean, Brutalist gulag buildings and the icy surrounding tundra, Angelopoulos and cinematographer Andreas Sinanos vividly evoke the loneliness of Siberian exile. The scene of Jacob translating in a storeroom full of Stalin statues and paintings, hastily withdrawn from public display in the early days of the Khrushchev thaw, is also wonderfully surreal.

The late great Bruno Ganz gave one of the best performances of his accomplished career as the tragically friend-zoned Jacob. Irene Jacob also shows tremendous range portraying both the youthful-gulag-bound and grandmotherly Eleni. Of course, Willem Dafoe broods dependably as “A”—after the fifth or sixth time you write out “Angelopoulos,” you start to appreciate the brevity of his one-initial name (never actually heard in the film itself).

Karaindrou Scores Angelopoulos: Dust of Time

Dust of Time: Music for the Film by Theo Angelopoulos
By Eleni Karaindrou
ECM New Series 2070

You haven’t seen the film, now buy the soundtrack. Relatively few people have had the chance to screen Theo Angelopoulos’s Dust of Time at European film festivals, but international cineastes will already be well aware of the new film from the Cannes award winning director. Many will also be familiar with the music of Eleni Karaindrou, who since 1983 has scored Angelopoulos’s films, as has been documented on six previous CDs of film music released on the ECM label. Thanks to label founder Manfred Eicher’s commitment to Karaindrou’s music and his confidence in the enduring value of the finest film scores, Karaindrou’s music from Dust of Time is now available in America, well ahead of the film itself.

Though jazz was an early influence on Karaindrou, her collaborations with Angelopoulos have largely been contemporary classical music, at times seasoned with traditional Greek folk music. Such is the case again with Dust (starring Willem Dafoe, Irene Jacob, and Michel Piccoli), which intertwines a filmmaker’s search for his missing daughter with his memories of his own parents, cruelly separated by the Second World War and its aftermath.

Since the prodigal father character is a pianist, the piano logically has a significant role in Karaindrou’s score, but violin, cello, and harp are in fact the dominant voices of Dust. Indeed, Sergiu Nastasa’s violin sets the elegiac tone right from the beginning, while Maria Bildea’s harp adds a nostalgic once-upon-a-time ambiance to “Les Temps Perdu.” Like many of Angelopoulos’s films, Dust is, by most reports, more concerned with plumbing the mysteries of the past (both the intimately personal and the grandly historical) than observing orderly narrative structures. Clearly, Karaindrou’s chamber-like themes are perfectly suited to such a memory play.

Several motifs repeat throughout Karaindrou’s score, perhaps the most critical being the “Dance Theme,” which is used in Dust for the soundtrack recording session of the protagonist’s film-within-the-film. Both variations (the CD release actually programs the second before the first), employ cello, strings, bassoon, oboe, and accordion to create darkly hued musical vignettes. However, the fully orchestrated, symphonic rendition of “Dance” is a sweepingly passionate piece, featuring Natalia Michailidou’s delicate piano interpretation of Karaindrou’s stirring theme.

Inherently part of a greater whole, the themes from Dust are most rewarding when heard in their full context, but there are several tracks that would stand alone quite well, including the symphonic “Dance.” Likewise, Dinos Hadjiiordanou’s accordion gives “Waltz By the River” a sadly romantic old world feeling that holds up nicely as a self contained composition. Yet, perhaps the most dramatic, emotionally unified excerpt from Karaindrou’s score is “Memories from Siberia,” featuring Renato Ripo’s achingly mournful cello introduction.

Despite the fragmentary nature of film scores in general, Karaindrou’s music from Dust is surprisingly effective independent of Angelopoulos’s film. Her themes and motifs fit seamlessly together in a gorgeously rendered set of ruminative music.

Elegy of the Uprooting

Elegy of the Uprooting
By Eleni Karaindrou
ECM New Series 1952/53

110 musicians were assembled for the Eleni Karaindrou concert documented on the double CD Elegy for the Uprooting, including a concert orchestra, choir, an ensemble of traditional Greek instruments, celebrated Greek vocalist Maria Farantouri, and the composer herself on piano. Remarkably, despite the presence of so many, the results are striking for their effective simplicity.

For the Elegy concert, Karaindrou integrated themes she had composed for ten films and two stage dramas, all of which had thematic commonalities. As the title suggests, displacement and mourning figure prominently the works Karaindrou scored, so they coalesce together fluidly.

Karaindrou is best known for collaborating with the filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, with eight of his films represented in Elegy. His latest film The Weeping Meadow (2004) and an adaptation of Euripides’ Trojan Women are the touchstones, to which she returns throughout the program.

Meadow is a refuge story twice-over. A young Greek girl fleeing 1919 Russia finds shelter with a Greek family. Despite her attraction to the son, bearing him twins, she is forced to flee the unwelcome marriage proposition of the father. “The Weeping Meadow” theme, heard several times orchestrated for French horn, accordion, and strings, is an elegant melody, appropriate to the elegiac concept. The first version (disk 1, track 3) is a dramatic string feature, while the final (disk 2, track 19) is more dirge-like.

The other cornerstone of Elegy is Trojan Women. Karaindrou’s themes and Farantouri’s voice interpret lyrics adapted by K.X. Myris, capturing the sorrow of the imprisoned women of Troy. Selections like “The City That Gave Birth to You” have a more exotic sound, as they incorporate traditional Greek instruments. Hearing them layered under the choir, one can easily envision a Greek chorus standing against a wind-swept vista.

There are many delicate moments in Elegy, like the solo piano performance of “Refugee’s Theme” from Angelopoulos’ The Suspended Step of the Stork, a film about a border town consisting entirely of stateless people. “Dance” is also a haunting theme carried by oboe, from another Angelopoulos film Ulysses Gaze which starred Harvey Keitel as a prodigal filmmaker adrift in the war-torn Balkans.

Karaindrou is a powerful classical composer, though she has been influenced by traditional Greek music, as well as jazz, particularly label-mate Jan Garbarek (although those influences are not pronounced on Elegy). Clearly Karaindrou is inspired by the themes of her film and theater collaborators, having experienced exile from Greece during the 1970’s. Again, what is most impressive is her use of a large assembly of musicians to pare the music down to its essence, achieving emotional and expressive clarity. It is arresting music that rewards repeated listening.