Meteoro vima tou pelargou, To

(Viewed on 20/05/11): Angelopoulos tackled issues relating to borders, immigration and European identity long before it became fashionable. His mannered long take style was anachronistic in 1991, but there are several stunning set pieces here that rank among his best work, including a wedding where the bride and groom are standing on opposite ends of a river bank and a striking vertical composition of yellow coated workers suspended on tall telephone poles.

Some very memorable sequences, above all, the opening shot, and consistently visually impressive. Watching this with hindsight, it is hard not to feel that its sense of foreboding amounts to a prophecy about looming crises of identity, war and the fate of the powerless. Still, the elements are disparate, and the wedding scene too contrived to effectively resolve them. Smiled when the colonel said the journalist’s leaving would mean he had no one to talk to: the guy was a nearly mute protagonist.