Syncope and Fractal Liminality: Theo Angelopoulos' Voyage to Cythera and the Question of Borders

Abstract

To the Ancient Greek heroes, fate was rarely less than tragic—cruel mistresses spinning and cutting the thread of life at their own leisure. To the Modern Greek hero, destiny and providence must appear as equally unkind, yet perhaps also suffused with a touch of cosmic irony. On Tuesday, 24 January 2012 the acclaimed Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos, winner of countless prestigious awards, including the coveted Palme d’Or at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, died of his injuries after being accidentally hit by a motorcycle near the Greek port of Piraeus. At the time, Angelopoulos was shooting The Other Sea, which he intended to become the last installment of his latest film trilogy, on the trials and tribulations of modern Greece. Like Alexander (Bruno Ganz) in Eternity and a Day, the sudden arrival of the Angel of Death left him with an unfinished document, “words scattered here and there”, “before the Winter was over”, “with the ethereal silhouettes of the ships outlined against a sudden break in the clouds”. For the director whose filmic work had so often been given a new lease of life by the inspirational force of unexpected embodied encounters, such as those with the Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra and the Greek composer Eleni Karaïndrou, it was an unforeseen embodied encounter that also presided over his death. And to add insult to injury, it was in the midst of another filmic attempt at bringing closure to a personal and collective history, that the Greek master of incomplete, unfinished journeys remained forever barred from finding a narrative resolution.