“The stupidest question anyone on Earth could ask: where the hell has everybody gone?”
All the woman (Michele Valley) says she has is a coat and a knife. The world has fallen into dystopia and no-one can remember why. The countryside is littered with abandoned vehicles and detritus. Scavengers ride around in motorcycles. In the city, there is the Morning Patrol, an armed unit that maintains the empty streets and each member has a quota of one body per day to kill and report. The woman’s narration recalls memories of Manderlay, childhood holidays, and her journey forward is towards the sea in the west. While as a dystopian narrative, this has aspects in common with more sci-fi genre fare like all of the Mad Max knock-offs filmed across Europe, for Greek director Nikos Nikolaidis, the approach is more restrained and poetic. The recurring image is of dripping water in an abandoned urban site. The music by Giorgos Hatzinasios is a melancholic ambient score and it sets the tone this mood-piece. Reminiscent of Blade Runner, hearing echoing piano in Deckard’s apartment, or the ambience of J.F. Sebastian’s abandoned apartment home.
Comparisons to Tarkovsky’s Stalker was what made me seek out Morning Patrol (1987), a decent copy uploaded to YouTube by a clear Nikos Nikolaidis fan, an overlooked auteur in Greek cinema best known for the cult movie Singapore Sling. Much like Stalker, the tone of Morning Patrol is a dilapidated ambience, and despite the danger that is always around the corner for the woman, it isn’t a completely bleak experience. There are moments of warmth, often the warm glow of a television left on in an abandoned house, playing a classic Hollywood noir, and there is a neat running gag when characters pick up a telephone. As we follow the woman – wonderfully played by Valley – as she moves through the city, hiding from the Morning Patrol, and picking up/discarding items in her travels, the narration is a patch-work of different writers that Nikolaidis has taken from and credited: Daphne du Maurier, Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and Herman Raucher. Eventually the woman meets a weary guard (Takis Spiridakis) who is part of the Morning Patrol but has been following her for several days. He warns her that she has three days to leave – otherwise he will have to kill her. And yet, there is something more as he eventually helps her, despite their mutual mistrust. I was really into the slow cinema arthouse vibes of Morning Patrol, and its grey-green aesthetic of disappearing civilisation, and what humanity can be held onto amongst the ruins. Recommended.
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