Popular reviews

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★★★ 29

  What is it like to pass from this life into the next? Amongst the dense forest of allusion that Greek director Theodoros Angelopoulos presents, this is the one that stands out for me as the over arching theme. I mentioned this to my wife after our watch and she told me that this film was the third of Angelopoulos’ ‘Trilogy of Borders’. This made perfect sense. While played as a preparation for a journey, it is in fact the journey itself. There are those who help guide us; show us the sign posts that the grownups have left. There are our loved ones who have gone before. There are our reflections on our life; our joys and our regrets.

  The…

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  Review by Rod Sedgwick ★★★★★ 15

  ''My only regret, Anna - but is it only one? - is to not have finished anything. I left all as a draft, shattered words here and there.''

  Drifting in an out of reverie and memory whilst making his final day on Earth amount to something, Alexandre (Bruno Ganz in a performance for the ages) seeks to ease his cancerous passage from this life by discovering what it was that exiled him from his life, his love and his heart, even at one point questioning his ailing mother ''Why, mother, nothing happens as we wish? Why? Why does one have to rot in silence torn between pain and desire? Why did I live my life in exile. Tell me mother,…

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  Review by PopcornIdeology ★★★★★ 4

  This made me want to write an analysis about ships and buses. 

  I don’t really know how to explain my feelings about this film other than by saying it made me feel incredibly fulfilled, it’s very slow at times, but I don’t think I was ever felt detached from the story. This film deals with so many things perfectly, and the score and final scene are just spectacular.

  While at first I didn’t think I’d give this film a 10, after thinking about it I don’t think I could give it anything less. It makes me feel reluctantly optimistic about life, which is something I’ve been yearning to feel for a very long time, and if that isn’t worthy of a 10 I truly don’t know what is.

  10 / 10

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  Review by Jack ★★★★★ 2

  “I know that some day you will leave. The wind pushes your eyes away, but give me this day. As if it were our last. Give me this day.”
  
  This is cinema that pushes me to comprehend my mortality and find the beauty in when our spirit finally breaks away from the conscious body. It’s something straight out of my dreams and it fucking broke me. Time to binge Theo Angelopoulos’ filmography!

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  Review by Dirk Diggler ★★★★½ 5

  Theo, where have you been all my life? Truly one of the greats. Magical, meditative stuff. The bus sequence towards the end is stunning. Eternity and a Day didn't have the same emotional impact that Landscape in the Mist had on me, but it is equally as good, if not even slightly better.

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  Review by Harry Du Bois ★★★★★

  When you’re in the middle of an amusement park at 10PM, all the rides have stopped running and almost all the people have left save for a few stragglers waiting for their family members to come out of the bathrooms, you see the stars over your head and the sweeping of brooms as workers clean the leftover food and cotton candy cones from the ground, you get a certain feeling. A melancholy wave, a mix of tenseness and calm as you reminisce the memories of daytime. It was all so full of laughs and families, carnival music blasting through the microphones, and now it’s complete silence. It’s the end of the ride now. Eternity and a Day is that feeling…

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  Review by abdel ★★★★★ 7

  I had awoken once on a mountainside, alone, unaware of the invariable life that preceded my presence. A writer of sorts, perhaps, yet I could only remember as much as my work had accounted: fragments of a whole that lay plastered under the dark of my eyes, exiled from the breath of humanity. They were free of judgment, for there was nothing concluded to surmise critique. Often had my obliviousness created a shame of art, yet I could not cease spilling my sentience onto the desk in my solitary.

  To write was to grieve at the horrors of this life, to weep a disembodied mourn, a shriek known only to those who have seen not the hands of their mother…

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  Review by Nick ★★★★

  Eternity and a Day deals with both national and personal ordeals, via the vessel of a terminally ill Greek poet, whose last wish is to help a boy refugee to get home. It's a beautifully meditative journey that's both patriotically Greek, and universally heartfelt. Winner of the Palme D'or at Cannes back in '98, Eternity and a Day is for sure a formidable testament to director Theo Angelopoulos' mastery of poetic filmmaking and his own unique arthouse excellence.

  With a breathtaking cinematography and impressive camera work, Eternity and a Day offers an intimate insight into both the Greek society, and the last days of a Greek artist tormented by the fear of death and regrets from the past. The plot…

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  Review by orfeas ★★★★★ 22

  “They were still here yesterday”

  I have just finished watching for the first time and I have not read anything on it, but I don't care, this is one of my favorite films of all time. It is still hard for me to believe that a film this good exists. If you are reading this and have not seen it, I implore you to do so. I am sooo fucking glad I saw it. This was my first Angelopoulos and I already love him.

  
  
  

  
  ”It means, “Too late””

  The image of people climbed up on fences, staring at the other side, is one we see more than once in Theo Angelopoulos' 1998 masterpiece, Eternity and a Day. People looking through…

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  Review by {Todd} ★★★½

  "There's just so much" -Alexandros,

  - Film Club Ranked: boxd.it/3M2sq

  Mortality.

  A slowly paced and loving reflection on mortality and what it means to live a fulfilled life. Eternity and a Day is a really pretty film with a serene vibe that gives you time to take in everything and really think about it. I'm not sure how this would play to a younger crowd, not constantly engaged in thinking about their demise, but I think the messages are conveyed powerfully enough that most people should like this. Bruno Ganz is fantastic and I love the ending.

  Yes.

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  Review by Will Steele ★★★★ 4

  I’m sharing this Sunday with Theo. Watching through a window his languid Greek summer unfold from the knitted insulation of my cardigan-clad British December. To watch those sparkling shores of Greece ignites a warmth within me like the afterglow of ouzo. I feel myself transported, enveloped by the screen, taking me to those white sands and deep turquoise tides that greet the sapphire skies.

  Eternity and a Day tells a story similar to that of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries insofar as being a tale of an old sage reflecting on a life of wistful longing. Here, dying writer Alexandre (Bruno Ganz) finds solace in saving an abandoned boy an Albanian refugee caught between hustling on the streets of Thessaloniki and being…

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  Review by benhack ★★★★½

  we're dancers in the sun and rain, conversing in the language of what it means to be amicable through the agency of virtue. Unconditional love.

  our melancholies registered in the snow and fog, we beseech for celestial fulfillment even despite our material success.

  slow and meditative filmmaking at its best adorned with the discern of a master.