80
It's a gorgeous and resonant work, full of the memorable images and passages of pathos the director's fans expect. It's also a painful, unforgiving film, the kind of thing that sharply divides audiences from critics.
We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
How can one not revere a movie director who causes the printers of travel brochures to cry out in distress? The Greece of sun, sand, and sea is not open for business here, Angelopoulos having decided that grandeur, grief, and grayness are more his line of work.
50
The movie plays like a career summation in which the 68-year-old writer-director has simply run out new ideas.
50
The imagery eventually becomes the only reason to keep watching. This is the first of an announced trilogy, but it already feels as long as the 20th century itself.
100
There are moments of such breathtaking grace and artistry that you'd be forgiven for thinking you're watching the most beautiful movie ever made.
80
The New York Times by Lawrence Van Gelder
A beautiful and devastating meditation on war, history and loss.
70
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
The Weeping Meadow shares the awed sense of solemn apocalypse with his (Angelopoulos) signature films, but it's lighter, more musical and folktale-ish.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Richard James Havis
It's a typically poetic film, rich in powerful imagery, which sees a bitter personal tragedy unfold against the major events of 20th century Greece. Although the director doesn't mine any new ground here, either in terms of style or content, it's still a pleasure to sit through nearly three hours of perfectly controlled, visually evocative filmmaking.
70
Chicago Reader by Ronnie Scheib
Unfortunately, instead of the usual larger-than-life male figures--Marcello Mastroianni, Harvey Keitel, Bruno Ganz--of Angelopoulos's recent films, we get a distractingly vapid couple who tend to drain the emotional resonance of these extraordinary, ever-shifting tableaux.
88
In his fourth outing with the director, cinematographer Andreas Sinanos produces stunning scene after stunning scene, almost as if each frame were a small painting.