text: While the film has one redeeming feature, namely some striking shots e.g. the shot of the sheep hanging from the tree, the scene of the funeral procession on the raft, or the scene of the boats leaving the village (which seemed influenced by the scene when the warships approach in the fantastic "Fellini Satyricon"), these were more photographic than cinematographic, and would have been better appreciated hung on a wall in an art gallery than embedded in a painfully slow-paced film that comes in at a whopping 162 minutes and suffers from terrible dialogue, extremely poor character development, over-acting, uninspired symbolism and heavy stylisation. This is the first film I have seen by Angelopoulos, and his reputation having preceded him, I expected a lot better, but can honestly say that this is one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I won't go out of my way to watch any of the director's other work in the future. The four friends I went to see it with agree.