Parky At the Pictures (12/6/2026)

(Reviews of Kapodistrias; Merrily We Roll Along; and Time and Water)

KAPODISTRIAS.

History is impossible to replicate on screen. The best a viewer can hope for is an honest presentation of the facts. But this rarely happens, as the re-creators of the past always have a point to make or an angle to exploit. Even the best historical biopics reflect the preconceptions and preoccupations of their writer, director, and/or producer. There will always be omissions, distortions, and anachronisms and picking one's way through the exaggerations, the falsehoods, the melodramatics, and the propagandisation becomes more difficult when the focus falls on a subject who is not immediately familiar.

A major figure in diplomatic circles in post-Napoleonic Europe, Ioannis Kapodistrias (1776-1831) is considered the founder of the modern Greek state. Shaped by complex political and philosophical ideas that are difficult to distil for movie audiences, Kapodistrias operated on a continent torn between revolutionary and reactionary forces. He navigated a course with consummate skill, but latterly cut a controversial figure. Not that one would necessarily glean this from Yannis Smaragdis's epic homage, Kapodistrias (aka The Governor).

1n 1813, with Europe in turmoil following Napoleon Bonaparte's retreat from Moscow, Count Ioannis Kapodistrias (Antonis Myriagos) is dispatched to Geneva on a mission to unify the Swiss cantons in an effort to fight off an invasion by the Austrian chancellor, Klemens von Metternich (Finbar Lynch). As he travels by coach, Nikodimos (Nikorestis Chaniotakis) hands him a letter from Roxandra Stourtza (Ilectra Fragkiadaki) that steels his resolved. Once a novice monk, Nikodimos explains to a fellow traveller that he had become devoted to Kapodistrias after witnessing him survive being thrown from his horse after experiencing a vision of the Virgin Mary (Natalia Kapodistria).

Having unified the 19 cantons and called Metternich's bluff, Kapodistrias attends the Congress of Vienna as the representative of Tsar Alexander (Dimitris Georgiadis) of Russia. He annoys the Austrian chancellor by founding the Philomuse Society to promote Greek culture and the notion of a nation state free from Ottoman oppression. But he earns his enmity by preventing the division of France by persuading Louis XVIII to abdicate so that there is no kingdom for Metternich to dissect. Tsar Alexander backs his man at the congress table and declares a Holy Alliance between Russia, Austria, and Prussia to keep the Turks in check, while also resisting secularism and revolution in Western Europe.

Metternich gets his revenge by forcing Roxandra into a loveless marriage by threatening to have chief of police Franz Hager von Allentsteig (Dirk Sikorski) destroy Kapodistrias's reputation if she refuses. She goes out into the rain, removes her cape and bonnet and crumples on the cobbles. On her wedding day, he kneels in the snow (after saying nothing to her at their last meeting, as she sobbed on his shoulder) and fights his emotions. Needing time off, he returns to Corfu having instructed General Alexandros Ypsilantis (Panos Kladis) to prepare for revolution. However, as the island is under British rule, a spy informs Metternich of his visit and he plots to undermine the Tsar's trust in his minister, as Alexander is reluctant to start another war.

However, he refuses to bow to Metternich's scheme, even after Ypsilantis enters Moldavia in 1821 in a bid to spark a revolution in Greece, and allows his minister to go to Geneva for a spell. Here, he supports the revolt from afar and meets with Roxandra, who is dismayed that Ypsilantis (who is her cousin) in languishing in an Austrian jail. Once again, he is greeted like a hero by the Swiss and receives a sash and diploma. But the war in Greece is going badly, with rival captains falling out with each other. Moreover, Tsar Alexander dies and Kapodistrias hastens back to St Petersburg to inform Tsar Nicholas (Ivan Svitailo) that he wishes to resign his foreign ministry post to take up the offer made by British agent, Mason (Sean James Sutton), to become the first governor of Greece.

Turning down a pension, Kapodistrias gets Nicholas to approve his border plans for a Greek democracy and warns him to expect a fight if he ever seeks a war. He also goes to see Roxandra, who pleads with him not to go because the situation is so dangerous. But he receives a hero's welcome from old ally Theodoros Kolokotronis (Maximos Moumouris) and boldly intervenese in a feud between rival captains, Grivas and Stratos. Kapodistrias also confronts robbers barons Petrobey Mavromichalis (Michalis Iatropoulos), Alexandros Mavrokordatos (Nikos Kardonis), and Georgios Kountouriotis (Pavlos Kontoyannidis), who refuse to pay taxes and demand reparation for what they spent on funding the war. Demanding that they put the poor first so that Greece can establish an economic basis, he makes them think of others rather than themselves. Not all agree. Meanwhile, Metternich and Mason scheme to impose a king on Greece so that Kapodistrias loses his power.

Seeking to bolster his position, he makes Manto Mavrogenous (Mary Vidali) his honorary Lieutenant General. He commissions a steam battleship, prints currency, and tries to get hold of books to educate the young. A shepherd sings his praises and a small boy hands him a letter thanking him for freeing his country. But Mavrokordatos remains unhappy, especially after Kapodistrias manoueuvres Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld out of a claim to the throne. What's more, Russia, France, and Britain are all adding demands to their offers of help to prevent him from making progress at the pace he desires.

Deciding to speak to the robber barons to explain what he is trying to do, Kapodistrias succeeds only in inflaming the fury of Mavrokordatos and Mavromichalis, who haven't been paid for funding the war and now refuse to pay for food and supplies because the British reneged on a loan. The latter feels patronised and they meet to plot how to remove the dictator, who has betrayed the cause for which they shed blood.

Shortly after Mavromichalis is arrested, the British ambassador comes to warn Kapodistrias that the barons plan to murder him. He accepts this as God's will and claims that He will forgive the Mavromichalis. But he wonders who will ever forgive the British for undermining the Greek state. Ignoring warnings to keep out of the public eye, he passes a school and listens to the children reciting a lesson with pride because they are the future. He also writes to Roxandra before Mavromichalis's sons stab him on his way to church in Nafplio on 9 October 1831, while he takes bullets in the head from the other robber barons. As he dies, Kapodistrias sees Mary looking down on him.

This is a fascinating period of history, but Yannis Smaragdis has sucked all the life and intrigue out of it in this dull and duplicitous trudge. Seemingly interested more in inspiriring modern Greeks to reconnect with the spirit of the founding father than with exploring the issues that threatened independence from outside and within, the writer-director offers no dates to guide viewers through the passage of time, while he simplifies every personality and problem by casting it as either black or white. He also bends the record to suit his dramatic theses. As both Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, George Canning recognised the appeal of philhellenism in London in the 1820s and actively supported Greek independence. Britain has plenty of imperial crimes on its conscience, but there's no need to fabricate extra ones, as there is currently no evidence that the country was involved in the assassination plot.

The depiction of Kapodistrias's role in the events of 1821, for example, is both heavily bowdlerised and highly misleading, as he advised caution so as not to alienate Alexander and refused several entreaties by the Filiki Eteria secret society to become the leader of the uprising. The reduction of Metternich to a pantomime villain is also regrettable, especially as Finbar Lynch plays him with a complete lack of nuance, particularly in his hammy conspiratorial conflabs with Sean James Sutton's comic-book agent. The robber barons are equally risible, while poor Ilectra Fragkiadaki spends most of her time clutching letters to her chest and gazing mistily-eyed into the distance.

Antonis Myriagos tries to invest Kapodistrias with dignity and determination. But his expression never changes once during the entire 140 minutes and he is more preoccupied with riding in carriages, striding up steps, or marching along corridors than he is with espousing nationalism or pursuing policies. Smaragdis makes such a poor job of setting the scene that even those familiar with the period will struggle to follow how a Greek with no backstory became the Russian foreign minister and upset everyone by solving a Swiss conundrum that nobody bothers to explain. All Smaragdis cares about is elevating his messianic hero and, as a consequence, this is hagiography rather than history.

Credit should go to cinematographer Aris Stavrou, production designers Michalis Sdougos and Katerina Zourari, and costumier Michalis Sdougos, while Minos Matsas's score avoids too much patriotic soul-stirring. But the decision to employ multiple language leaves the actors looking so stiff and unconvincing that this shoddily researched exercise in myth-making fails resoundingly as both cinema and history.

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.

While everyone waits patiently for Richard Linklater's 20-year adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, why not revel in the filmed version of the four-time Tony-winning revival that took Broadway by storm in 2023? Inspired by a 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, George Furth's book retains the original reverse chronology to chart the fall and rise of a songwriting partnership. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the show opened on Broadway in 1981 and closed after just 16 performances amidst a blizzard of negative reviews. It underwent an extensive rewrite in 1994 and it's this version that earned four Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival, when it took Broadway by surprise in 2023.

It's 1976 and Hollywood producer Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff) is hosting a party to boost the star of his new film, Meg Kincaid (Talia Simone Robinson). Drama critic Mary Flynn (Lindsay Mendez) can scarcely conceal her contempt, as the guests fawn over her old friend by singing `That Frank'. The mood sours, however, when someone mentions Frank's old songwriting partner, Charley Kringas (Daniel Radcliffe), and a drunken Mary storms out after letting everyone know what she thinks of them. As she leaves, Frank's wife, Gussie Carnegie (Krystal Joy Brown), gets home to chide him for giving a role she had coveted to his mistress and, as she causes a scene, the action rolls back (`First Transition') to 1973.

Charley and Mary are waiting for Frank at a television studio. The boys are about to do an interview, but Charley confides in Mary that he rarely sees Frank because he is too busy being a wheeler-dealer to sit down and write songs (`Old Friends - Like It Was'). As Mary defends him, Charley realises that she is still in love with him and can feel her pain when Frank turns up with his new wife, Gussie, who is distracted by the need to lend some money to her washed-up Broadway producing ex-husband, Joe Josephson (Reg Rogers).

Frank knows he has just signed to a new three-picture deal that is going to prevent him from working with Charley on a project they have been postponing for years. When the TV interviewer lets the news slip at the start of their spot, Charley gets mad and blurts out what he thinks of his friend in a tirade (`Franklin Shepard, Inc.') that so incenses Frank that he declares their friendship over.

`Second Transition' takes up back to 1968, where Mary and Charley turn up at Frank's Central Park West apartment with his young son, Frankie (Max Rackenberg). He has hardly seen the boy since divorcing Beth (Katie Rose Clarke) and he asks Charley if he will agree to selling their stage hit, Musical Husbands, to Hollywood to offset the cost of his divorce. He refuses because he knows that shows get bowdlerised in transferring to the screen and Mary wishes there was a way she could stop them bickering. Gussie and Joe show up with a bottle of champagne to celebrate another hit and Mary refuses because she's teetotal. She is disappointed that Frank reneges on a night out with her and Charley, but is crushed when she realises that he's having an affair with Gussie. He stays home to work on a song, but Gussie sneaks back to tell Frank that she is going to leave Joe and wants him to commit to their romance (`Growing Up').

In 1967 ("Third Transition"), Frank and his first wife Beth are fighting over custody of their son. She still loves him (`Not a Day Goes By'), but can't take the pain of betrayal. Charley and Mary try to support Frank (`Now You Know') and suggest that better things lie ahead. He is sceptical and we flashback to 1964 to see the reaction to the opening night of Musical Husbands. as `Gussie's Opening Number' goes down a storm and Joe and Mary celebrate backstage (It's a Hit!'). Charley's wife, Evelyn, is in labour and he rushes off to be with her and Ruth insists on coming with them, as she has nothing to fear from Frank and Gussie being left alone together.

However, things have been going on for a couple of years, as we see in 1962 (`Fourth Transition'), as Gussie spills wine over Beth at a swanky drinks party so she can get Frank to one side to ask him to write for a play Joe is about to produce. Mary and Charley are taking the mickey out of the pretentious guests (`The Blob'), when Gussie beckons Charley and Frank to sing their latest song for everyone. But, while `Good Thing Going' gets wild applause, everyone talks over it when Gussie urges then to sing a reprise and Charley stalks out because this isn't the crowd to which he wants to belong.

He was happier two years earlier (`Fifth Transition'), when he was performing political satire with Frank and Mary (`Bobby and Jackie and Jack') in a small Manhattan nightclub. Joe had caught the act with new fiancée (and former secretary) Gussie and he gives them his card. But Frank is more concerned with proposing to the pregnant Beth, as her parents disapprove of him. They decide to marry on the spot and a heartbroken Mary (`Not a Day Goes By' Reprise) thinks back to 1959, when she, Frank, and Charley were just starting out. She has just written a novel and Frank and Charley are hammering out tunes. They play one for Joe, who tells them to leave their names with his secretary, Gussie. Unimpressed, the trio decide to put on the show themselves and they raise enough cash to offer a part to Beth in their new cabaret show (`Opening Doors').

Just two years earlier, Mary had met Frank and Charley for the first time (`Sixth Transition'). They were still students and had gone on to the roof to catch sight of Sputnik, as it orbits the earth. The boys had just agreed to write together and Mary makes a good impression when she tells Frank she thinks his music is wonderful. She introduces Charley to her roommate, Evelyn (Jamila Sabares-Klemm), and as the satellite appears overhead, they all sing `Our Time' because they are young and fancy free and everything seems possible.

Director Maria Friedman knows the musical well, having once played Mary in a West End version prior to overseeing the 2013 London production that was reportedly Sondheim's favourite staging and which had become the first Digital Theatre film to be screened in the United States. She had hoped to open out her Tony-winning update and work on location, but it made sense to keep the cast in the stage setting they had known for two years and it's evident that their characters had become second nature to Radcliffe, Mendez, and Groff.

Shooting with up to five cameras and largely operating in close-up, Friedman wrapped in just three days, while the cast was still performing the show at night. The leading trio are splendid, with Radcliffe cutting a frustrated figure as Groff keeps getting away with errors of judgement in his personal and professional lives, while he has to grin and bear it, along with the lovesick Mary, who sees her literary ambitions hit a dead end around the time she takes to drink. They sock over the songs (superbly arranged by Jonathan Tunick) with the aid of some fine supporting players, who double as scene shifters for Soutra Gilmour's cleverly effective sets. She also designed the costumes and deserves an award solely for Charley's specs and hooped tank top.

Reflecting on the notion that we often fail to see the big picture until it's too late, this is a show that keeps making demands after the curtain falls, as it's only possible to appreciate the motives, missteps, and misdemeanours of the various characters after the event. Moreover, it offers insights into the creation of art and entertainment and whether they are mutually exclusive. Given how the conglomerates that now control the studios prefer safe properties that are more likely to recoup their costs and rack up profits, it's more important that items like Merrily We Roll Along remind us that great art doesn't come easily and that we should cherish it when it does.

TIME AND WATER.

Sara Dosa has made some fine films in her short career. She debuted with The Last Season (2014), which follows two war veterans, from the United States and Cambodia, on a mushroom-picking expedition into the Oregon woods. She earned an Academy Award nomination for Fire of Love (2022), which chronicled the careers of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. In between, Dosa profiled environmental activist and elf communicator Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir in The Seer and the Unseen (2019) and she returns to Iceland to join poet Andri Snær Magnason in a poignant and timely study of melting glaciers in Time and Water.

Narrating a time capsule missive, Andri Snær Magnason recalls the mythical cow, Auðumbla, wo was born from the meeting of fire and ice and whose body carved the Icelandic landscape. He explains how his love of his homeland came from his grandparents, Jón and Dísa Magnason and Árni and Hulda Kjartansson, with the latter pair being pioneering glaciologists. They married in 1953 and spent their honeymoon on Iceland's biggest glacier, Vatnajökull. We see footage of their three-week sojourn and Hulda recalls (at granddaughter Hulda's 11th birthday in 2019) how they were never cold because they were newlyweds. They were founder members of the Icelandic Glaciological Society and Magnason shares their fascination. He plays us the sound of a creaking, moving entity and laments that he had always thought the glaciers would be there. But winter snow is no longer exceeding summer thaw and this is bad for both local wildlife and the wider world's eco systems.

Following news coverage of the 2014 death of the 700 year-old Okjökull glacier, we see family movies of Magnason's four children growing up, as well as images from Jón's final summer. He jokes that he had the most fun making mistakes and warns against saving money. We also see into Árni's archive and a rapid montage reveals that the glaciers form the backdrop to so many cherished memories. Magnason comes to understand the peace his grandfather derived from a landscape that nobody dreamed would one day cease to exist.

Árni had lost his father at the age of 12, when he had drowned at sea. Magnason thinks this sent him upwards into the ice, which also beckoned to Hulda after the father of her twins deserted her in America and she took solace in flying and climbing. They had been part of the first ice coring expedition, which yielded information about Iceland dating back to the 1500s. Magnason explains how the glaciers hold information in the ice relating to everything from temperature to volcanic activity and pollen and pollution. They are a living record of history and this is being lost, as the glaciers melt.

One day, Árni told his grandson that he felt a crack in his head and he started to find it difficult to remember. Magnason realises that he has missed out on thousands of memories and this coincides with a hot summer that saw a volcanic eruption cause a flood with melted glacier water. He plays audio of both sets of grandparents describing encounters with the Unseen People of the hills and he confirms that each hillock and stream has its own legend. One concerns the discovery of logs in the ice on a near treeless island. But Magnason reveals that the first settlers around 900 had found a forest was swallowed by the ice and is now known as Breiðamerkurjökull, or the Wide Forest Glacier.

Having lost Árni, Magnason is now having to cope with pieces of glacier sheering off and taking with its information that no one has been able to tap. We also learn that the puffin population has declined by 70% since 1995 and it saddens Magnason that `fuglabjarg' - the word that Jón had used for both a `bird cliff' and a `noisy gathering' - no longer has the same meaning, as the sea cliffs are not overrun by cackling birds. Soon, even calling the country Iceland will make no sense. He also recalls how the Midgard serpent pollutes the seas and floods the land after Thor tries to kill it with his hammer in Norse mythology.

Magnason is asked to write four lines for a plaque to mark where Okjökull had used to be. This bothers him, as when he wrote his grandather's obituary, he had been celebrating his long life. But there's no reason to feel thankful about the loss of a glacier that everyone on earth has done their bit to kill. He thinks about the `rímur' songs that were used to pass on stories down the generations and finds a connection to the future by calculating that daughter Hulda will be the same age as her great-grandmother (96) in 2104. Their link means Hulda will be remembered as long as her namesake is alive (and beyond if she passes information on to her kids).

Concluding that time and water connect him to his ancestors and descendants, Magnason mourns the loss of Hulda, as his family undergoes a generational shift. But his kids have now started wielding the camera and he understands when Hulda meant when she says time passes so quickly. He unveils his plaque and looks across to the glacier on the neighbouring hill and hopes that it can survive and humanity with it. Ending his narration, he says only time will tell if his message gets found in the future. As he wrote on his plaque: `This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.'

With Andri Snær Magnason being responsible for the archive footage and the voiceover, as well as being co-author of the commentary that is based on his book, On Time and Water, it would seem as though Sara Dosa is as much the architect of this touchingly engrossing documentary as she is its director. Whatever the suitable terminology, the collaboration is highly effective, as Magnason makes salient points about global culpability for localised climate change crises, while also personalising the particular situation facing Iceland by showing how his grandparents had done so much to highlight the unique privilege the country risks losing of being covered in time-preserving ice. It's bad enough experiencing dramatic shifts in temperature or fluctuating levels of rainfall, but to watch the irrevocable physical transformation of the landscape that has shaped a country's identity and culture must be heartbreaking.

Pablo Álvarez-Mesa's views of the terrain work deftly in conjunction with the home-movie material. By using so much footage of Magnason's family, however, Dosa runs the risk of sentimentality seeping in. But the chosen clips are suitably contextualised by a commentary that embraces affection and nostalgia because they are such relatable emotions and help make Magnason's arguments more accessible. The intricacy of the editing by Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput (who also share the writing credit) also reinforces the intimacy of the recollections and the urgency of the clarion call. There are also some delightful stop-motion illustrations by Lucy Munger. Even more impactful, however, is the soundscape created by designer Björn Viktorsson and audio researcher Konstantine Vlasis which captures the sentient noises made by the melting and shifting ice as a form of mournful alarm that humankind simply has to heed that the glaciers are no longer moving on geological time, but on human life time - and that, as we are all too aware, disappears far too quickly for any of us.