This film taught me that you have to do the craziest things,leave everything behind and travel when you have the change.Then Spyros(Marcelo Mastogianni) after his daughter's wedding he leaves his job as a teacher and goes on a road trip from north to south with the thing that he cared about the most in his life his bees.Spyros is the tragic hero who finds love but he has to leave it because he couldn't hold it and his lover couldn't respond to his love.In the middle of the film we see the outburst of Spyros he wins the girl and leaves with her.The girl understands his loneliness his silence and the feeling of caring he has for her.The bees are the reason he is traveling but when he meets the girl the travel gets a different cause.So after she has abandoned him he in a final dramatic scene lets the bees to kill him giving him the end he always wanted.Marcelo Mastogianni's performance is great.Although the dialog is little in the film.Nadia Mourouzi is great too and delivers the story the best way possible.Theo Angelopoulos once again with magnificent storytelling and landscape photography gives the viewer an unforgettable experience.Sometimes you might feel a little bored though,because of the little dialog.But the short dialog isn't a disadvantage because it is the film which needs silence since the film belongs to the Trilogy of Silence.Also I have a theory on the girl.I believe that the girl is an imagination of his wife and the things the live together are memories of her.He visits his old hometown they make love on the theater,I believe that all these images are memories of how he met his wife.The film itself has a nostalgic air,so by traveling he remembers his old love.Another clue is that people from the present like his old friend(Dinos Iliopoulos) or his daughter have no contact with the girl.With the end of the journey the memory leaves,the girl leaves and he dies.I think it is possible as Theo Angelopoulos uses shots in his films often drift back and forth in time.Of course it is just a theory.Highlight of the film for me it was Spyro's unique death and the brief view of my hometown Ioannina.

This is the second film I have seen by Theo Angelopoulos and it is slow paced and introverted where much is implied, little is said and the interior lives of the characters are depicted mostly through symbol and metaphor. The plot is straightforward: An elderly man, Spyros, makes his annual spring time trip through Greece in order to cultivate his hives. During the journey he meets a young woman who attaches herself to him and the film charts their fractured journey and relationship.Spyros comes from a long male line of bee keepers who made similar journeys to the one he undertakes and over the opening credits we hear narrated a story of the hives spoken by an adult male to a male child. The story tells of the virgin bees that are kept captive their entire lives as any one of them could be a queen. It is a sad story because the female bees can never escape their imprisonment much as a person cannot escape their fate. The tale tells also of the drones that perform a ritualised dance in the presence of the queen bee who selects one to fertilise her nest. The tale is beguiling and sad and we learn later that Spyros's wife, Anna, selected him from one of three suitors suggesting she was a queen bee and him a drone.The film begins on the first day of an unusually cold spring, with snow on the ground, at the wedding of one of Spyros's daughters. The wedding scenes are amongst the most beautiful in the film; long slow pans over people in a blue room with white light. These early scenes could be a series of paintings. After the wedding we learn that Spyros and Anna are separating about which both are sad and it is in this spirit that Spyros begins his annual voyage.At his first port he picks up a young girl who is hitchhiking. She tells him 'no one is looking for me'. As they journey we glimpse scenes of the two of them together, largely illustrating her antics, Spyros's bee keeping and his occasional visit to friends and places he has frequented on previous journeys. Spyros is intrigued and troubled by his companion who appears oblivious to him and his feelings. A song that she dances to and is repeated later in the soundtrack has the line 'all by myself I'll try to make it, I'll do it my way'. The song is striking and ugly, and discordant with the rest of the soundtrack. The irony is that neither Spyros or the girl is happy alone and neither is forging an individual existence: Spyros is repeating a family pattern and the girl, who never has a name, represents a type of rootless and needy young woman.Things do not end well for Spyros or his bees. This is foreshadowed in the song of the pepper tree that Spyros sings early on and then hears as a memory when he returns to what was his childhood home. The journey becomes a descent into sorrow with his meetings a series of goodbyes along the way, the most poignant of which is with his other daughter. I agree with others who suggest the film has the flavour of a Greek tragedy made modern.The film is beautifully shot and Greece looks simultaneously seedy and quaintly exquisite. It is a difficult film because of the feelings it evokes and the demands it makes on the viewer. The acting is particularly good and Marcello Mastroianni is amazing as Spyros. He inhabits his role so completely that it seemed I was watching Mastroianni the man and not the actor. I found myself drawn to his character and enjoy films that show older people and their lives. I don't understand the film entirely or the relationship depicted between Spyros and the girl and I fear such understanding might prove elusive on future viewings. Even so I felt the need to write something about it just as I felt the urge to play the opening scenes again when the film ended. Would I recommend it? Yes, if you are patient and have imagination.

I came via this film by way of leading man Marcello Mastroianni, in many of Fellini's greats, though I actually preferred his performance alongside Guilietta Masina in Ginger and Fred, actually made/released the same year as this, 1986 than in my comparative example, 8.5I bought the DVD of The Beekeeper cold, not knowing of, or having seen this Greek director's work before. I don't think I was under the illusion that it was going to be all holiday sun and gaiety - indeed, it is not. We, in the U.K are not used to seeing Greece in the winter, with remnants of snow and greying landscapes that hint at times passing, of buildings in slight dilapidation and overtones of regret and slight bitterness. One scene in spring IS in full colourful sunshine, the remainder at night or on grey, rather oppressive days.Spyro (Mastroianni) leaves work for the last time and disillusioned, wants to finally devote all his time, love and energies to his faithful friends, his bees. With them in their hides, on the back of his truck, he drives off, in search of pollen for them and a new meaning for himself. After a chance pickup of the beautiful hitch-hiker (referred to in the IMDb credits simply as 'The Girl'), left behind after her previous lift (or boyfriend?) holds up a shop and drives off sharpish, without her, Spyro seems to be too polite/worn down/shy, or whatever, to pick up on her lead. In fact, it is not for an hour and half until he finally - and abruptly, succumbs, clumsily and badly. She had already picked up a young soldier, just discharged. Spyro has rescued her from him. Now, will she revive his spirit, his bittersweet, nonchalant view on the human world, or will she wither with him? The last scene but one, outside the old run-down movie theatre where they have been sleeping, a speeding trains hurtles, as if like moving film itself, very fast, transient, timeless, golden, against a Hollywood backdrop of romance, from the '30s or 40's. I found this a sober, absorbing and never boring film that gave space and time to allow one to think outside of what was happening. The life-cycle, struck me as being (maybe) that of that of the queen bee and her workers. The beautiful, unnamed stranger who mates with the worker (Spyro) and then moves on, ready for the next one. The final scene, spine-tingling in its portrayal (I'm NOT going to spoil it!) re- emphasises that, for me. There is a little humour and gentle light relief in amongst all this, as Spyro meets up with old friends and his daughter along the way. If you want a frilly popcorn film, forget this one, but for adult, thought- provoking and unpretentious - and mostly, a different, experience, as well as for Marciello's masterful and understated performance, this is most satisfying world cinema.

A middle aged teacher retires from his career, dedicates himself to his hobby, and embarks on a journey through Greece with his colony of bees in his lorry. Along the way he picks up a young woman hitch hiker, and a relationship develops between them that explores the depths of personal loneliness and and alienation.Both Spiros and his young passenger have lost their perspective of the future - he is living in nostalgic reminiscence of the past, while the young girl's life is one of instant gratification, she seems to be aware of neither past nor future. Their inherent inner isolation expresses itself in a series of futile, almost savagely physical attempts at forming real contact with each other, that leaves the viewer with a harrowing picture of disturbed, painful existence.This is a slow, carefully composed film, a sequence of memorable images, some visually beautiful, others showing the gritty harshness of life. There is a constant shifting between dreams and realities that leaves what actually happens shrouded in doubt, and a moody atmosphere of nostalgia that pervades the whole film.An exceptional film that should not be missed by patient and observant people interested in the exploration of human feelings.