Reconstruction

Tymphaia, a village in the foothills of the Pindus mountain in Greece; people have lived here since the classic age. The population ran to 1250 inhabitants in 1939, but by 1965, only 85 remained. An off-screen narrator opens the film with a sober description of the setting. And Theo Angelopoulos also presents a sober reconstruction of a crime committed here, seemingly out of passion. Is this a retelling of the timeless story of Clytemnestra murdering her husband, or is this act of violence connected to the socioeconomic conditions in the barren mountain village, revealed by the figures listed at the start of the film? Jumping between different time periods, Angelopoulos’s virtuoso feature debut explicitly avoids answering this question, allowing it to hang in the air instead by juxtaposing the crime with documentary-like impressions of living conditions in the village. Giorgos Arvanitis’s black-and-white images lend additional severity to the wintery impressions of a dying community. (Berlinale)