Other than the acting, the rest of the technical aspects of the film were fine: the end scene, after Jacob and Eleni die, where Spyros and his granddaughter walk out into a snowy urban scene, is beautiful, but, again, bereft of real emotion (the voice-over, from Dafoe, even rips off the ending from James Joyce's The Dead), for these two characters have barely been on screen all film, and in the few scenes they are in, barely register concern or emotion. And none of the scenes in this film, as lovely as they are, achieve the power of similar scenes in earlier Angelopoulos films, partly due to the lack in other areas, but mostly due to the anomy this film inhabits and inflicts in its viewers. Cinematographer Andreas Sinanos does his usual good work, and the film is radiant, in its 1.85:1 aspect ration, but the best part of the film is the scoring by Eleni Karaindrou, which is unfortunately never put to the best possible use, due to the visuals that Angelopoulos and editors Yannis Tsitsopoulos and Giorgos Chelidonides pair it with. Also, this film has substantially more shorter takes than most of Angelopoulos's canon, and far fewer longer ones. The script, by Angelopoulos, with some help, apparently, from Tonino Guerra and Petros Markaris, is not up to the usual standards of these men. The DVD, by Artificial Eye, has no extra features, and is in a Region 2 format, so North American viewers will need a codeless DVD player. Languages used are English, Russian, German, and Greek, with subtitling, as necessary.
Overall, The Dust Of Time has glimpses of what made Theo Angelopoulos one of the all time greats of cinema, but not enough to make this merely solid, but frustrating, film, great. It is not a bad film, like the later films of other cinematic greats like Ingmar Bergman (Saraband) nor Federico Fellini (Intervista), but it definitely is an 'old master's film,' in the worst possible, and most self indulgent ways. Still, for its moments and its technical skills, it should be seen. More importantly, though, it should have been better. Much better.
Overall, The Dust Of Time has glimpses of what made Theo Angelopoulos one of the all time greats of cinema, but not enough to make this merely solid, but frustrating, film, great. It is not a bad film, like the later films of other cinematic greats like Ingmar Bergman (Saraband) nor Federico Fellini (Intervista), but it definitely is an 'old master's film,' in the worst possible, and most self indulgent ways. Still, for its moments and its technical skills, it should be seen. More importantly, though, it should have been better. Much better.