The Travelling Players

Greece may be a sunny paradise to many, leave it to filmmakers to turn it into a gray and sullen place. Apparently Angelopoulos wanted to explore why it took Greece so long to become a democratic nation, I'm probably missing the proper background to get that from The Travelling Players.

Angelopoulos focuses on a family of travelling actors. As they go from place to place to perform their play, the audience is given a look at Greece during the Fascist, Nazi and Communist conflict. That doesn't sound too bad, only at almost 4 hours long and moving along at a snail's pace, it's a real tribulation.

I've never seen Greece look so uninviting. The cinematography is stark and sluggish, the soundtrack isn't very atmospheric and the performances are poor. The film lost me pretty early on, which made the runtime an even bigger obstacle. I think I'm going to wait a bit before trying another one of Angelopoulos' films.