Landscape in the Mist
, directed by Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos in 1988, follows two children who run away from home to search for a father they’ve never met. Their mother had always told them their absent father lived in Germany, so that is where they try to go, sneaking aboard trains, catching rides with motorists, and walking endless miles. Along the way, they meet their uncle who tells them, “There is no father. There is no Germany. It’s all a lie.” But the children persist, and we hear the girl recite an imagined “letter” in voice-over: “Dear Father, we are writing to you because we are coming to find you. We have never seen you, but we miss you.”
Do we hear an echo of Epistle to the Hebrews?: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1).
The children’s journey is a mythic allegory of the human search for God, fraught with strange and mysterious moments. The runaways escape detention at a police station when all the adults are frozen in place by the wonder of a snowfall––as miraculous an exodus as the crossing of the Red Sea. They watch a giant stone hand, remnant of an ancient sculpture, pulled from the sea to hover over them like the blessing of a forgotten God. They find a blank strip of film on the ground, and a man tells them it is really a picture of a landscape in the mist. You can’t see the tree because of the fog. Is he telling them the truth, or simply inventing the significance of the celluloid “icon?” The journey ends in a misty meadow. The fog lifts to reveal a single tree in the distance: not a literal father, but in the eyes of faith it is the Tree of Life in Eden’s lost paradise.
In this video clip compiled by an artist named Ulysses, scenes from the film are accompanied by Bruce Springsteen’s “Paradise,” written in 1980 as a response to the separation of loved ones by the uncrossable “river” of death. The song, like the film conflates human love for the “other” with our ultimate longing for union with the divine. We are all looking for Paradise Lost.
In the crowded marketplace
I drift from face to face
I hold my breath and close my eyes
I hold my breath and close my eyes
And I wait for paradise
And I wait for paradise . . .
I search for you on the other side
Where the river runs clean and wide
Up to my heart the waters rise
Up to my heart the waters rise
I sink 'neath the water cool and clear
Drifting down, I disappear
I see you on the other side
I search for the peace in your eyes
But they're as empty as paradise
They're as empty as paradise
And just when the quest for paradise seems to fail, grace shines upon the seeker:
I break above the waves
I feel the sun upon my face
