The Beekeeper (1986)
Directed by Theodoros Angelopoulos

Film Review

Often overlooked, The Beekeeper is one of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos' most profound works and features a harrowingly poignant performance from Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni.  With its long takes and unhurried pace, the film is likely to be unbearably slow for most cinema audiences, but for those who have the patience it is an eye-opening and profoundly humanist work.  The expressive cinematography makes what little dialogue there is in the film virtually superfluous: it is too easy to read the sense of suffering and regret simply from the actors' portrayals and their bleak post-industrial surroundings.

The film's central theme is how two diametrically opposed spirits - a world-weary retired teacher and a pleasure-seeking adolescent - can make contact as a result of a natural animalistic attraction and a shared sense of isolation.  The two characters have very little in common, yet they are drawn together by a force which neither can control or rationalise, a fundamental unconscious desire to be loved.   Ironically, there is little passion in the film - all emotions are tightly suppressed and it is the lack of emotion which makes the film so intensely poignant and bitterly realistic.

Film Synopsis

After giving up his job as a schoolteacher 60-year-old Spiros needs a hobby to occupy him, so he decides to take up beekeeping.  He has separated from his wife, so after attending his daughter's wedding, Spiros is free to do what he pleases, and it pleases him to travel around Greece in his truck with his collection of beehives.  It is in the course of this aimless wandering that Spiros comes into contact with a teenage girl.  They have little in common and are separated in age by more than forty years, and yet these two rudderless individuals are somehow drawn to one another.  Spiros resumes his journey in the company of the girl, occasionally stopping to call on his old friends and his wife.  Finally, Spiros overcomes his restraint and his relationship with the girl becomes physical...