Rita Azevedo Gomes's lyrical yet frustrating docu-essay about her travels in Greece carries a title that cuts both ways: is it expressing impatience with the classical ideals she hopes to discover, or, borrowed from street graffiti, critiquing modern society for betraying ancient standards of beauty and harmony? As Albert Camus is cited here, modern society "has fed its despair on ugliness and convulsions."
Nostalgia vs. Reality
Throughout the film, nostalgic aspirations and the sobering present vie for supremacy in texts recited by Gomes and others over travelogue images from Athens and the Cyclades. Echoing heroic voyagers of the past, Gomes adds a layer of fictionalisation to her exploits, reading a poem by João Miguel Fernandes Jorge based on a 2007 journey. It becomes the story of Irma, who romances a young man, Ion, on Delos, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. But the affair founders, and there are other reality checks, such as incongruous Chinese cargo ships traversing the 21st-century Aegean.
Visual Collage and Dense Texts
The tension between myth and modernity, expectation and reality, hangs over the film like red kites hovering above ancient ruins. Only two-thirds of the way in does Gomes reveal what originally made her seek refuge in Greece: an ominous medical diagnosis that has since receded. While her preoccupation with beachcombing for consolatory beauty and transcendence is clear, it feels only fleetingly present in a visual collage haphazardly aligned with dense texts. Gomes's crew reads many of them on camera, including excerpts from past Hellenic seekers like Byron and Keats, but this alienation device comes across as inert and uninspiring.
Perhaps these forlorn ramblings are part of the point: that our degraded modern sensibilities can no longer serve up classical concision. Belatedly, singer María Farantoúri—whom Gomes watched on her first visit—keeps the old flame burning in her lyrics: "The people always find new kings—but we are poets and we remain alone." Gomes is clearly glad to be part of her camp, far from the polis. But her sphinx-like film is a few shades too cryptic to fully enchant. Fuck the Polis is at the ICA, London from 4 June.
