Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

KobusAdAstra Alexandre (Bruno Ganz), a respected writer, received bad news: He is terminally ill and has to enter the hospice tomorrow. It may be his last day. And then the question: "How long does tomorrow last?" He tries to wrap up his life; he only has today to do it. To find a new home for his dog seems to be a priority.Alexandre has flash-backs to his youth, and becomes quite nostalgic. He visits his daughter, suggesting that she looks after his dog "as he will be going away tomorrow". Fruitless; her husband does not like dogs. He hands his daughter a bundle of letters, all from his wife Anna (Isabelle Renauld), dating back many years. She reads one of her mother's letters to Alexandre, and as she does so, a picture unfolds: An aloof Alexandre not returning his doting wife's affection, too self-centered and preoccupied with his writings. The aged Alexandre's regret is palpable.On his way home, on this last day, Alexandre spots a street urchin who cleans car windows at stop streets being chased by police. Impulsively he opens the door and tells the young boy to get in. Alexandre decides to help the boy (Achileas Skevis), an illegal immigrant from Albania. He tries to get the boy back to the Albanian border so that the boy can return home in safety. But does the boy really want to go back?The dialogue between Alexandre and the boy is illuminating. "I see you smiling, but you are sad", the boy tells Alexandre. Alexandre narrates a story that changes into something more: the art of writing and imagination, 'buying' words when you have run out of them. Alexandre realizes he is running out of time; he would like to get the lad safely on his way, and he still has to pay his elderly mother a last visit.'Eternity and a Day' is a complex film with many elements: It touches on the nature of life and art, regret and the inevitability of closure. The cinematography by Yorgos Arvanitis and Andreas Sinanos is glorious; the sunny coastal scenes, but with discontentment simmering below the surface; the misty landscapes in the mountains close to the Albanian border. The sound track and effects superbly fit the ambiance of the film. Good work by Eleni Karaindrou and Nikos Papadimitriou. Then the acting: Bruno Ganz gives a powerful performance. Acting by Isabelle Renauld, Achileas Skevis and Fabrizio Bentivoglio is excellent too. 'Eternity and a Day' deservedly was awarded the Palme D'Or. My score: 10/10.

jandesimpson The tragic death of Theo Angelopoulos in a street accident early this year deprived us of one of cinema's greatest poets. His was a unique way of looking at the world, so much so that he seemed to attract admirers and detractors in equal number. To love his work, however, is to have succumbed to an adagio tempo that allows us to meditate, as we watch,, on what is being revealed, be it character, history or legend. So strongly is the spirit of place conveyed that the viewer feels he is actually there in those wintry landscapes of northern Greece that Angelopoulos made very much his own.Possibly the single most important DVD issue in recent months has been Artificial Eye's release of all Angelopoulos's feature films in three boxed sets. This has enabled me to fall in love again with the few I previously knew such as "Landscape in the Mist", "The Beekeeper" and "Eternity and a Day" and to discover other masterworks such as "The Travelling Players" and "The Suspended Step of the Stork". If I concentrate this review on "Eternity and a Day" it is because it is the most recent I have re-experienced after a gap of several years. In many ways this study of a possibly terminally ill writer meditating on his life whilst at the same time struggling with his present, is the director's most personal film. Certainly it is his most immediate in the way it gets far nearer to its characters than usual, often viewing them in close-up rather than middle distance. The film commences with the boy Alexander responding, as he wakes one summer morning, to the summons of his friends to join them on the beach which faces his family home. Thereafter we only see him as an old man regardless of the time zone into which the film slips. Indeed it is the fluid use of time, often passing from present to past within a single shot, that is a salient and wonderfully satisfying feature of an Angelopoulos film. In his bleak present Alexander often thinks back to a day of perfect happiness, shortly after the birth of his daughter, with his late wife and family on the beach where he played as a child. There is little comfort in a present that prefigures the end. About to admit himself to hospital he visits his daughter hoping to leave his dog with her, only to find that his beloved house by the sea is about to be sold to developers. The big issues of history with which Angelopoulos is usually preoccupied are largely absent apart from the refugee problem resulting from the Balkan conflict. Alexander's accidental encounter with a young Albanian boy whom he rescues first from a police raid on a gang of unsolicited traffic window cleaners and later from child adoption racketeers provides the temporary solace of someone to care for during a period of almost unendurable loneliness. Like many brief and meaningful encounters this is short lived. The boy is about to board a ship for yet another clime. What to do to while away their last hour before departure? A nearby bus operating a circular city route provides an answer that fills the youngster's face with glee. It proves to be a magical ride taken by an assortment of characters, a querulous couple, a tired revolutionary from some demonstration bearing a cumbersome red flag, a trio of conservatoire musicians who perform more for themselves that for those around them and finally the poet from a previous century whom we have met earlier in the film searching for and buying words of an unfamiliar language. Who but Angelopoulos could have conjured up such an imaginative conceit! Moreover, those three cyclists clad in yellow heavy waterproofs who appear in other of his films (I read somewhere that they represent the Fates) take the same journey as the bus. Alexander is sad in the knowledge that he may be approaching death without finishing the book he is writing. Ironically Angelopoulos died before completing the final film of the trilogy he had been working on since "Eternity and a Day". Tragic as this was, there is at least the consolation that he left behind him some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful films the cinema has given us.

zweimann Since I traveled to Prague in 2003 and bought Eleni Karaidrou's album "Eternity and a Day" I was wondering when and where could I get this movie.I got it and it was incredible for me. Poetry, photography (I think it is the best photography I've ever seen in a movie) and music in an amazing movie THAT I DID NOT UNDERSTAND because it's in Greek (no English subtitles in the release I've got). You don't need to understand their words to feel it, to cry and to laugh when the moment comes. Angelopoulos has made, in my honest opinion, a master piece of theater-movie.Buy it, keep it, show it to your children, to your parents...

irina-3 Beautiful, poetical narration about the last day of a deadly sick man. Seldom one gets to see such unhurried film today. Eternal questions as life, death , love, are addressed. The film makes one's heart cry, and at the same time exulted with joy, from getting to know another big artist.