To meteoro vima tou pelargou

Theo Angelopoulos' The Suspended Step of the Stork is heavy in symbolism and could probably have been an even better film than it is by eschewing some of it: yet, the film is moving poetry already, treating one to an aching examination of longing. In this story, the longing is often created by borders, by society's conventions that have made humankind a stork with a suspended step, not a man with both feet on the ground. Even the scenes replete with symbolism are full of a pathos, created by how the camera remains still, frames the scene tightly, while fog and cloudiness, a kind of radioactive cloud hovering over mankind, permeates the atmosphere. The only time when there is some brightness is at the spectacular and symbolic end of the film: Angelopoulos expresses a persistent optimism in a world which had seemed hopeless till now. Maybe, it is the insistence of the border-crossers which eventually gives rise to that hope, or maybe it is an acknowledgement that man can reinvent his past and hence also his present, his future. The boy has not heard the rest of the story of the kite, for he is yet to play out, live out the story: it is he who must take it forward. Stones are whetted in the heart, when life's passion is unable to be frittered into a dozen innocent happinesses of safety and assurance; the girl prefers waiting, loving, hoping, and race. For border accentutates identity: she knows herself all the better for the border. So much so that, in the most marvellous wooing scene I have ever seen on film, she makes the journalist fall in love, and fall from cynicism into a despairing hope, with only a never-flinching gaze. A steadfast gaze of knowledge and determination, unheeding the time as it tears by, a gaze that could make the kite soar into the sky, helping all humanity.

A special word for Dora Hrisikou as the girl on her film debut: without her, the film could not have made it.