The Beekeeper (Angelopoulos) DVD, 1986

David Parkinson appraises this exquisitely photographed tale of self-discovery from Theo Angelopoulos.

Having spent his entire career subversively commenting on the rule of the military junta, Theo Angelopoulos found himself confronted with democracy and the need to choose between the past and the present. Thus, in The Beekeeper, just as ageing teacher Marcello Mastroianni sets off to rediscover himself in taking up the ancestral pursuit of apiculture, so Angelopoulos sought to discern a new subject in the returning exiles who no longer recognise a land that is essentially the same and the young who stride optimistically towards the future without the fearful burden of memory.

Angelopoulos would remain fascinated by the clash of cultures and generations for the next two decades. But here Mastroianni, already troubled by his incestuous feelings towards his recently married daughter, is crushed by a sense of alienation and despair, which is deepened by his doomed attempt to connect with a rootless and promiscuous hitcher.

Exquisitely photographed by Giorgos Arvanitis, this is an intense Greek tragedy about the unbearable agony of change.

David Parkinson on 23rd April 2010
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