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Stavros Tornes
Obscure Greek art-house director and actor who made a series of challenging but whimsical films often involving a protagonist in a free-form fugue involving an existential search. Everyday life, often anarchical or comical, portrayed in short vignettes and banal conversations merge with low-budget, gritty fantasy and surrealism, sometimes to oneiric effect. His films lack structural cohesive themes and plots, but it's all about the unanchored poetic and personal experience hovering over everyday life. Died in 1988. A man wants to buy a horse for unknown reasons, his motivations becoming increasingly existential as the film progresses and the horse gradually transforms into a metaphor. His search initially takes him to horse dealers, then deep into gypsy camps and his endless search and attempts at purchasing encounters puzzling social behavior and even esoteric rituals. A sleep while under these circumstances brings on a dream, oneiric in its wandering fantasy between different historical periods. He is a medieval slave, where children are sold as property and killed by unseen monsters. He meets an oracle in the ground, a disciple who met Jesus, and he turns into a Vlach prince who is attempting a diplomatic agreement with Greece and who may or may not be a vampire that drinks from animals. All this is filmed in slow oneiric atmosphere. Finally, an elusive woman becomes his new goal, but horses block his way. Mostly an incoherent art-house free-form existential fantasy with some interesting dreamlike qualities. Greek minimalist surrealism that tackles the journey of life as it leads to inevitable death. As with Godard's Alphaville, this makes use of natural and simple settings and situations to explore its theme, life portrayed simply by a man taking a taxi counting the miles on its meter while carrying a coffin, and the movie often changes its location symbolically to mirror the emotional state of the current stage in the man's life. An old man oversees a past life like a passive god of destiny, observing a young man fall in love, work hard and raise a family. The settings change to an intimate home or a pastoral scene when things are rosy, then changes to an empty wilderness, an industrial factory, or to Sisyphean work at a rock quarry, etc. Throughout the story, a woman appears at various ages in erotic fashion to represent desire and family. The final trip involves a broken-down old truck. It's an obvious art-house movie, it doesn't have much to say and is minimally interesting, but it is effective in its atmosphere and in evoking the journey. Bizarre Greek fantasy that could be taken as a metaphor for any number of things. A variety of strange characters roam the landscape under the shadow of a mythical "Danilo Treles". Some search for him, especially an English musician, after being seduced into the quest by a wily Fox-Man character who can manipulate or elude people in magical ways. Two peasants, and their friend a Rooster-Man try to trap the Fox-Man. There is an African musician who has supernatural powers, who meditates on an egg for a long time and raises a mummy from the dead. A witch dressed like a Raven weaves her own magic and manipulations, guiding or dissuading men in their quests. And finally, there is also a biologist/scientist taunted by the Fox and the Witch. There are no effects, just simple masks as if this is a play that takes place in the countryside. Perhaps a metaphor for modern quests for meaning, but the whimsical fantasy, quirk, and mythological atmosphere override any elusive meaning. Free-form Greek comedy about an eccentric poetry publisher and his slightly mad poet assistant who is in love with a girl, but who is prone to flights of fancy concerning the German occupation of Greece. A stuffed Heron and a business deal with a strange German ornithologist fuel his poetic fantasies further until he can't tell real from fantasy anymore, and the movie sometimes takes off briefly into fugues involving German soldiers, live Herons, girls and poetry, with our protagonist inserted into the sequences trying to blend in as a child. Most of the film is unstructured and random, lacking a thematic cohesiveness, making it impossible to latch on. Publishing woes, random conversations, interactions with groups of poets, banal conversations about social issues in Greece, business deals, the organizing of an event with a pony for children that goes bad, etc. Amidst all of this lightly comical and anarchical everyday life, the lightly surreal fantasies almost blend in unnoticed. |
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