Europe Without Borders？

With a helicopter circling over two abandoned boats in the ocean, the floating corpses at the beginning bring about a total recall of the migrant/refugee crisis in the 2010s. Also coming by boat and ending their lives in the ocean, the Asian refugees disappeared into the void zone amidst the world of boundaries. In the Suspended Step of the Stork, Angelopoulos gives the most poetic depiction of the most powerful socio-political force since the twentieth century: the border. The “stork” is a metaphor for human beings, the very moving agents, and the “suspended step” shows none but the modern plight of human beings in the face of their own creation – “One more step, one will be somewhere else. Or die.” Hence the title of the film, in its most frightening and saddest meaning.

The film revolves around two central characters, a former Greek politician who now lives in despair and incognito and a documentary director who wishes to capture the condition of refugees. Their storylines intersect in a town near the border that separates Albania from Greece, named by its locals as “The Waiting Room” as thousands of illegal emigrants wait here until the Greek government allows them to leave. Although the name of the town suggests its temporary nature, it is indeed the temporary home, if not a permanent one, to the refugees. Here, the uncertainty about how long these illegal temporary residents would actually stay in “The Waiting Room” hints at the ambiguous distinction between “home” and “elsewhere”. Although they have successfully crossed the borders, they are still left in a self-contained “elsewhere” made by borders. How many borders do they need to cross before they reach “home”? It is with this ambiguity that Angelopoulos is able to raise his central question in the words of the documentary director. “When does one decide to leave? How? And where to?”

Among those stories in “The Waiting Room”, the most impressive comes from the wedding between a Greek bride and an Albanian groom, taking place on both sides of the river which divides not only the two countries but also thousands of families. The wedding is gently shot with a silent long-take yet with an extremely powerful tension. It shows a figurative dimension of the separation created by the borders, for they are not only dividing people physically (by setting geographical boundaries crossing which one will die) and politically (by providing new meanings and aspects of one’s identity) but also separating one’s present from his or her past. The bride says on the eve of her wedding that, “My husband and I grew up in the same village. One night he’ll cross the river and come take me.” This is largely a shared story among those thousands of refugees in the town. By leaving their “home” and crossing the border, they also leave their past behind. Here, the border is both a deadly frontier that divides wives from husbands and a ruthless boundary drawn within one’s personal experiences. With this assumed dimension, the audience sees how the means of life are made possible in an extreme condition where the ends of life no longer exist.

It is only in light of this dimension can one fully understand the other half of the film, the Greek politician’s disappearing by crossing the border. While all the majority keep their steps suspended in the air, waiting to be accepted to stay or be allowed to leave, he takes a step forward to the “home” at the cost of his past and identity. A believer of the universal ideal of brotherhood, he presents a more despairing yet hopeful interpretation of the “Storks” by embracing the collective dream and taking actions accordingly. And this action, risky and idealized as it is, might also be the answer that Angelopoulos will offer to his earlier question(s), and with this assumed attitude, one may find Suspended Step a work with stirring idealism, intense seriousness, and great courage.