Plot summary
Following the wedding of his daughter, stone-faced beekeeper Spyros makes an annual journey from the north of Greece to the south, traveling along with his hives. En route, he meets an erratic, young female drifter, with whom he strikes up an unusual, self-destructive relationship.
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Movie Reviews
When Loneliness is All You Have
Ο Μελισσοκόμος
This film taught me that you have to do the craziest things,leave everything behind and travel when you have the change.Then Spyros(Marcelo Mastogianni) after his daughter's wedding he leaves his job as a teacher and goes on a road trip from north to south with the thing that he cared about the most in his life his bees.
Spyros is the tragic hero who finds love but he has to leave it because he couldn't hold it and his lover couldn't respond to his love.In the middle of the film we see the outburst of Spyros he wins the girl and leaves with her.The girl understands his loneliness his silence and the feeling of caring he has for her.The bees are the reason he is traveling but when he meets the girl the travel gets a different cause.So after she has abandoned him he in a final dramatic scene lets the bees to kill him giving him the end he always wanted.
Marcelo Mastogianni's performance is great.Although the dialog is little in the film.Nadia Mourouzi is great too and delivers the story the best way possible.Theo Angelopoulos once again with magnificent storytelling and landscape photography gives the viewer an unforgettable experience.Sometimes you might feel a little bored though,because of the little dialog.But the short dialog isn't a disadvantage because it is the film which needs silence since the film belongs to the Trilogy of Silence.
Also I have a theory on the girl.I believe that the girl is an imagination of his wife and the things the live together are memories of her.He visits his old hometown they make love on the theater,I believe that all these images are memories of how he met his wife.The film itself has a nostalgic air,so by traveling he remembers his old love.Another clue is that people from the present like his old friend(Dinos Iliopoulos) or his daughter have no contact with the girl.With the end of the journey the memory leaves,the girl leaves and he dies.I think it is possible as Theo Angelopoulos uses shots in his films often drift back and forth in time.Of course it is just a theory.
Highlight of the film for me it was Spyro's unique death and the brief view of my hometown Ioannina.