When the siblings ran out of the police station, the police and passersby all stood still and looked up to the sky amid the snowflakes flying in the sky. This magical moment seemed to say that even God can’t stand it anymore. Snow helps the siblings escape. It also makes people mistakenly think that there will be a similar small warm scene in the later story. But what is unexpected is that in the back camera, the sister and brother saw two states of joy and struggle and death at the same time.
In the 1980s, all the ugly phenomena of Greek society were displayed calmly and delicately through the lens of Angelopoulos. Interpersonal indifference, broken family, lack of love, loss of social morality and sense of responsibility. Two children who were supposed to enjoy the care of their parents had to venture into the adult world to face those ugly realities. The older sister was raped by the truck driver, and the younger brother almost went crazy. Under the cruel oppression, the two children grew up in an almost cruel way. See the world with a twisted three-view.
When the siblings met a kind-hearted troupe worker, they thought they had found a shoulder to rely on. But with the death of the worker's grandfather, the troupe suffered a change, and his life plummeted. And the girl developed a deformed love for the worker. But then that unrealistic fantasy was shattered when it was discovered that the man was gay.
In the film, Angelopoulos makes good use of the natural environment as a metaphor. Workers in yellow overalls, towering cement factory chimneys, giant sand excavators. And the palm sculpture in the sea.
During the whole journey, the only thing that kept the sister and brother persevering was the incomplete film. It can be said that the most worthy of their reliance in this cruel world, a belief. The film is also an indictment of the Greek society of that era by Angelopoulos. The shock from the perspective of a child is much more than that of an adult.
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