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The Weeping Meadow(Το Λιβάδι που δακρύζει)

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Greece, France, Italy · 2004
2h 49m
Director Theo Angelopoulos
Starring Alexandra Aidini, Nikos Poursanidis, Giorgos Armenis, Vasilis Kolovos
Genre Romance, Drama, History

This is the first film of Theo Angelopoulos' trilogy. The story starts in 1919 with some greek refugees from Odessa arriving somewhere near Thessaloniki. Among these people are two small kids, Alexis and Eleni. Eleni is an orphan and she is also taken care by Alexis' family. The refugees build a small village somewhere near a river and we watch as the kids grow up and fall in love. But difficult times of dictatorship and war are coming...

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

80

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

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.

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

Variety by Derek Elley

The movie plays like a career summation in which the 68-year-old writer-director has simply run out new ideas.

50

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

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

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

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.

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

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

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.

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