Fate and History are not presented as flesh and blood characters in this first part of Theodoros Angelopoulos' "Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow," but the presence of each is so tangible that they could be exactly that. The central characters, Alexis and Eleni first meet as children driven together by the destruction of the town of Odessa, Greece, during World War I. As they grow up, their lives take one fateful twist after another, beginning when a teen-aged Eleni gives birth to twin boys. Growing into a young woman, she marries a man old enough to be her grandfather but, at the wedding ceremony's conclusion, abandons him to run off with her elderly groom's son, Alexis, who has grown into a gifted musician.<br /><br />Eleni's hope is clearly to reclaim her adopted twins and live a life of domestic harmony and loving devotion but the abandoned groom will have none of that as he hounds their every step until he literally drops dead. History also proves an enemy to their happiness. With the coming and passing of the Second World War, the young lovers go through a series of transformations as social outcasts, struggling artists, desperate parents, and political refugees. This spellbinding odyssey takes its greatest toll on Eleni, who loses her husband, twin sons, and sanity to the ravages of twentieth century warfare. She becomes a kind of "Everywoman" of the first half of the twentieth century, an era when countries worldwide repeatedly called men to war while women became casualties of the grief, poverty, and physical destruction left behind.<br /><br />From its opening scene of Greek refugees from Odessa moving toward a river, to its conclusion, "The Weeping Meadow" floods the screen with some of the most eerily surrealistic images in cinematic history. Were it not for the progression of a precise time-line moving from one World War to another, and providing a solid structure for the overall drama, a viewer might easily get lost drifting along in such haunting images as dead sheep hanging from the branches of a tree, a funeral service conducted in row boats alongside rooftops, or a crowd of wailing women running toward a field of dead "husbands, sons, and brothers." The images take on even greater intensity framed by composer Eleni Karaindrou's brilliant soundtrack.<br /><br />That this first part of Theo Angelopoulos' Trilogy is an indisputable masterpiece is a fact that speaks for itself. The only question is whether the great director will be able to achieve in parts two and three the same sweeping grandeur and majesty that fills every frame of "The Weeping Meadow." by Author-Poet Aberjhani, author of "Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance"