Veteran Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, together with Greek writer Petros Markaris collaborated with Angelopoulos on the script. The production reunites Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze team -- coproducers are Eric Heumann's Paradis Film (France), Giorgio Silvani's Intermedia Films (France), and Amedeo Pagani's Classic Films (Italy); producer is Phoebe Economopoulos.

Theo Angelopoulos creates a stunningly haunting, seamless fusion of reality, nostalgia, and dreams in Eternity and a Day. Using long takes and reverse tracking, Angelopoulos creates a visual metaphor for the isolation of the soul: the hallway shot of Alexandre after Urania's departure; a team of window washers descending on cars at a stop light; the framed shot of Anna by the gate of the summer house. Moreover, recurrent images of abandoned buildings, repeated flights of Albanian refugees across the border, and the unfinished poem, reflect Alexandre's regret over his own unresolved actions. Figuratively, Alexandre, too, is a stranger - longing to recapture an irretrievable past -unable to return home. The unique point of that film is the poetic dialogues, the excellent soundtrack and the photography that really captures another color of Greece and the Greek world. So good, masterpiece.

..."Alexandre..." After this movie this name with always reminds you poetry... L'éternité et un jour

angelopoulos wins the palme (Rating: 4.00)
Review : A dying author spends his final days reminiscing on what he sees as a failed life. His time spent wandering the gloom of Thessoloniki is interspersed with flashbacks of his wife and their home near the sea. In his wanderings around the city he meets an Albanian refugee child and the two share a few moments of friendship before each goes on to his destiny.
Seen by many as Anglopoulos' reward for the tantrum he threw when "Ulysses Gaze" lost to Kuristica's "Underground" a couple of years before, the Cannes critics finally decided to give the director the Palme d'or for this film. Angelopoulos was right to be upset, his very flawed masterpiece was a much better movie than "Underground," and it is also a better movie than "Eternity and a Day." "Eternity and a Day" is a smaller film where the filmmaker tones down many of his more eccentric quirks; it is easily the most "accessible" film he's yet made. But Angelopoulos is not an "accessible" filmmaker, as anyone who has had the particular and often grueling experience of sitting through "Ulysses" or "The Travelling Players" is well aware. Whether you loved or hated those films it was impossible not to come away from them feeling that they were uncompromised visions but "Eternity" feels, well, like a bit of a compromise. At times it almost leans towards the maudlin or even cutesy (and it's not just because of the kid, compare with "Landscape in the Mist" that had not one but two kids). That being said, the film is still frequently powerful and haunting in the manner of Angelopoulos' best works. It's just that unlike his best works, this one doesn't linger in the mind.
The letterboxed transfer on the VHS tape is quite nice, aptly capturing the director's vision of Thessoloniki as a murky, mist-shrouded, rain-soaked city of despair (it aint really) and the protagonist's dreams of life with his wife among the open sea and sand.

My Favorite Angelopoulos Film! (Rating: 4.00)
Review : Of all of the 4 films American audiences are allowed to see by Theo Angelopoulos, this is one my favorite. Angelopoulos' films offer the same elements in everyone. He's a bold director when compared to American directors, then again, all foreign directors are bold compared to American ones, even our best like Martin Scorsese, Coppola, or Woody Allen. Angelopoulos' films have long takes. With long single camera shots. And to some, his films are flooded with portentous dialogue. And, I must admit I am usually in awe at the beginning moments of any Angelopoulos film. But, after a while, after I've taken in the subtle charm of the cinematography, the beautiful visuals, and his way of story telling, I can't help but sometimes grow impatient. And, while yes, that happened to me while watching this movie, it's a film that now, after a year or moreso, I think back of fondly. I remember the beautiful scenes by the sea. How beautifully Angelopoulos set up these scenes. He really is a master of imagery.
"Eternity and a Day" tells a rather simple but yet deep and poetic story of a man's dying days, and one day he spends with a small lost boy (Achileas Skevis). The man is Alexandre (Bruno Ganz). Alexandre does not want to die. As the song goes, he has a lot of livin' to do. He now reflects upon his past. Memories of his wife, his mother. He even visit's his daughter whom he has not seen in some time. He wants to rectify all the wrong that has happened in the past. And he gets a chance to when he meets this boy. Here I suppose Angelopoulos is playing with the elements of time. Past, present and future. The more time Alexandre spends with the boy, trying to get him back home, the more he is reminded of his past. Not to mention the fact that he is dying.
"Eternity and a Day" is a film that I'm sure not all will be pleased with. It's too subtle of a film. It takes it's time telling a story. It's moves slow, but it means to. I'm not saying these are faults, but, I know today's society has no time to watch these types of movies. American audiences like fast movies. Filmmakers like Angelopoulos may never find their audiences. But, despite everything, one could not hide the beauty the film has. The script written by Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petro Markaris, & Giorgio Silvagni has moments that are as tender as I've ever seen in any movie. The cinematograhy by Yorgos Arvanitis & Andreas Sinanos is wonderful as well.
"Eternity and a Day" won the Cannes Film Festival's Golden Palm, an award Angelopoulos is no stranger to. His "Suspended Step of the Stork" was nominated before as was "The Hunters". And "Ulysses' Gaze", if I remember right, won second place at the Cannes behind "Underground". "Day" is a movie all foreign film fans should see. You'll be impressed by the simple things the film has to offer. Also, will someone please release "The Suspended Step of the Stork" on video already! And the rest of Angelopoulos' films!
Bottom-line:"Eternity and a Day" is admittedly a slow moving film and does take some patience to watch, but the film has startling imagery. It's subtle charms carry you under it's spell.

This is a film I saw again and again. (Rating: 5.00)
Review : This film is about Alexandre, a renowned author, who spent his last years trying to finish a 19th-century poet's work. He unwittingly neglected his loved ones for his writing, to where he feels like an exile whether promoting his books or in his own room writing. Now he is dying. We first hear 8-year-old Alexandre and his friends, asking profound questions for their age: What's time? He sneaks out to join the boys at the beach, swimming out to sea, and his mother calls him back. This harkens him back to the present, aging, lying back in a chair in the same house, in pain, with the taste of salt in his mouth. He tells his housekeeper not to pack too much for where he's going. She begs him to let her go to hospital with him, he pats her hand and explains why not. He takes his beautiful but sad old dog to his daughter, who obviously married a wealthy man, the house is high-end, but cold and ultra-modern, with the bad taste of having a large working clock over the mantle to remind us time is running out. He says he's going away and can't take his dog; she reminds him Nikos doesn't like animals in the house. She reads an old letter from his wife. We now see Anna, vital, lovely yet needy, just after Katerina's birth and celebrating with the family by the sea. When the letter's finished he's brought rudely back to the present: Nikos, robed, appearing, announcing offhand he's sold the seaside house and the wreckers will arrive tomorrow. Shocked, Alexandre reacts: "you sold the house!" Nikos asks, jerking his head pointedly: "Is that your dog? I'm getting dressed," and vanishes. Dad talks of some irrelevant matter: a tennis match she'd lost and how devastated she was. She lamely explains the house was too big, unsafe etc. Alexandre touches her face and leads the dog out. Tomorrow he--and the beloved house as well--will be gone. Katerina doesn't know he's actually dying: but she's really like Nikos, which is redolent of the Buchanans in The Great Gatsby: the careless rich, tearing down things, letting others (here, the "wreckers") clean it up.

Between flashbacks and aiding an 8-year-old (same age as he is when he and his friends carved a date on a rock by his seaside home) Albanian refugee with a gift for expression, he visits his formerly vital mother, now senile, at her hospital window wailing, "Alexandre! Dinner..." When he leaves her, he asks: "Why, Mother, why must we rot?...Why didn't we know how to love?"

The doctor's ominous intonations, the boy's poetic street-bonfire tribute to a murdered friend, and finally, the joyful duo on a round-trip around the quay: all are journeys within journeys, poems within poems, finished in a most unusual way.

Earlier on, he'd interrupted the wedding party of Urania's son, the couple dancing down the streets, bride in stark white in contrast to everyone else in black. Here as throughout the film, Angelopoulos' gift of metaphoric expression is so mesmerizing. I've read that the movie is too long, but I wanted more. The groom and bride dancing in the wind down the stark gray street, she gliding like a flower ("korfoula"): only her hands moving sinuously and her full snowy gown bobbing gracefully to rapid concertina music. Again Urania asks to go with him to hospital tomorrow. He smiles and merely compliments the bride's beauty. As he turns away, she lovingly pats the head of her new canine charge, and watches Alexandre go. All of this is key to (perhaps only) me. She and his doctor know he's dying, no one else.

Both are exiles: the kid with no one accepts him, listens to his tale of the poet who bought words, and Alexander sharing his last day, making him rethink (I think). One's journey is just beginning and the other's is just ending. Alexandre now understands how long time is: an eternity and a day.