The Dust of Time

Plot

In 1999, an American film director of Greek descent named A (Willem Dafoe) receives a phone call from his melancholic daughter at the Cinecitta studio. He rushes back to his apartment in Rome, where he finds a letter his mother, Eleni (Irene Jacob), wrote to his father, Spyros (Michel Piccoli), in 1956.

In 1953, Eleni and Jacob (Bruno Ganz), a Jew of German descent, watch the newsreel in Temirtau. Spyros gets there. Spyros and Eleni jump onto a tram, leaving Jacob alone. The tram arrives at the public square in front of the government office, where Stalins death is announced to the people. That night, immediately after Spyros and Eleni make love on the tram, the two are arrested and taken away separately.

In 1956, in Siberia, Eleni puts her three-year-old son on the train bound for Moscow, where Jacobs older sister will take care of him.

On New Years Eve in 1973, Eleni and Jacob cross the border from Hungary to Austria. After celebrating the New Year together, Eleni ends her relationship with Jacob, encouraging him to go on to Israel.

In summer 1974, Eleni finally finds Spyros in the suburbs of New York. However, she leaves without saying anything to him after she realized that he is already married to another woman.

In winter 1974, Eleni crosses the border from the United States to Canada. There, she and A meet again for the first time in many years. A drives Spyros over to a bar in Ontario, where Eleni works. Spyros enters the bar and makes an offer of marriage to Eleni. The two hug and kiss each other.

In 1999, Eleni and Spyros arrive in Berlin. Jacob visits the hotel they are staying at. The three go out in the rain and dance to the gypsy music at the station. There, Eleni feels dizzy. Spyros makes a phone call to A, and it is informed that their granddaughter has been found. Eleni and Spyros go to the old building where their granddaughter barricades herself along with drug addicts and vagabonds. Eleni enters the building and rescues her granddaughter. They go back to As apartment in Berlin, and Eleni lies down on the bed in her granddaughters room. After visiting Eleni, Jacob commits suicide by drowning himself in the Spree river.

On New Years Day in 2000, Eleni dies. Spyros and his granddaughter look out of the window. After a while, the two are seen smiling and running hand in hand under the Brandenburg Gate in the snow.

Cast

Production

The Dust of Time was shot over a four-month period, starting in 2007. Filming took place in Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Greece.

Release

The Dust of Time premiered at the 2008 Thessaloniki International Film Festival. It was shown at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival.

The score by Eleni Karaindrou was released on the ECM label in 2009.

Reception

The Dust of Time was well received by critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 67% based on 15 reviews.

Peter Brunette of The Hollywood Reporter gave The Dust of Time a mixed review, describing the film as "a curious mixture of the brilliant and the absurd." Dan Fainaru of Screen International felt that it is Theodoros Angelopoulos most affecting and personal film in years. Derek Elley of Variety criticized the film as "a tired-looking attempt to say something significant by a 73-year-old auteur who has neither anything significant left to say nor the cinematic smarts to say it with."

In a press conference for the Greek media, the director was asked about the critics for his film and replied that "the directors are not chosen by the critics or by the audience but by the time" and that for him all of his films are chapters of the same films, "Chapters, as he said, of a big book, about human destiny, about the times passed and about the times coming".