Fuck the Polis review – cryptic docu-essay is a sphinxlike study of Greek Greek and modernity | Video

Tthe subject of this musical but depressing story about the travels of director Rita Azevedo Gomes in Greece cuts both ways. Am I showing impatience with the old ideas they hope to find there; or, borrowed from street literature, is it actually criticizing a modern society that has given up old standards of beauty and harmony and, in the words of Albert Camus quoted here, “fed its despair on evil and shock”?

Nostalgic desires and the fascination of the here-and-now look for greatness in the texts mentioned by Gomes and others in the travelogue pictures from Athens and the Cyclades beyond. As if retracing ancient voyages, he adds fantasy to his actions, reading a poem written by João Miguel Fernandes Jorge based on a trip there in 2007; it becomes the story of Irma, who falls in love with a boy, Ion, on the island of Delos, where Apollo and Artemis were born. But the initiators of the affair – and there are also real facts, such as Chinese cargo ships that pass through the 21st Century Aegean.

The conflict between myth and modernity, expectation and reality hangs over the film like red kites hovering over ancient ruins. Only two-thirds of the way through does Gomes reveal what led him to flee to Greece: the terrible illness he left behind. Although it is clear that his interest was in the pursuit of the aesthetic and the transcendental, it seems to be present only for a short time in the vivid paintings that coincide randomly with these dense texts. Gomes’ staff read many of them on camera – including the writings of Hellenic archetypes including Byron and Keats – but this isolationist tool comes across as weak and uninspiring.

Perhaps these regrets are part of the point; that our present-day impure mind can no longer be of the old kind. Giving her late attention, singer María Farantoúri – whom Gomes saw on her first tour – keeps the old flame in her voice. “People always find new kings – but we are poets and we live alone.” Gomes is happy to be part of his camp, away from the police. But his sphinx-like film is shades too thin to be captivating.