AFTERLOV
THE NEW ERA
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, the audience is finally shown what happens when the ideas of timé and philotimo are done away with. In a striking change of pace, Afterlov takes a man who is in a masculine crisis but doesn’t allow him to win. He fights with all his might to assert himself over others and prove to be the superior, normative man that we have spent the course of this blog defining, but falls short of success time and time again.
To quickly summarize, Afterlov is a feature film directed by Stergios Paschos that follows a young musician named Nikos. Nikos has had his heart broken by his ex-lover, Sofia, but doesn’t know why she did it. He invites her for a week vacation at a friend’s house, locks all the doors, and demands to know why they broke up.
This is all the exposition that the audience needs to know. The following hour and fifteen minutes of the film cleverly observes the back and forth power relationship between Nikos and Sofia, never really letting one side form a formidable advantage over the other. Although Nikos holds the physical lead over Sofia by locking her in, for much of the film it feels like Sofia has every card of the deck in her hands. Nikos only gets what he wants if Sofia gives it to him, which proves to infuriate Nikos to no end. He is supposed to possess the eneryia to dominate Sofia like Zorba, Steph, and even Nikos from Forever Young, but yet this Nikos can’t seem to find it.
Every preexisting idea of masculinity seems to fail Nikos throughout the film. He can’t hold on to the machismo of Zorba or the dominance of Steph. Pulling from a different era, he can’t even hold on to the “new man” culture of the 1980s. Sure, he has the “dark white skin tone, strong features and a marked sensuality” (242) described in Nixon’s chapter of Hall’s Representations (published in 2013), but it only gets him so far. Instead, Nikos embodies the contemporary Greek man, unsure of what that word “man” means.
This is proven most beautifully in the scene where Sofia and Nikos have multiple conversations about what they are to do with their feelings. Nikos time and time again shares his feelings of confusion, often asking “what am I supposed to do?” He attempts to be the rough and suave lover, but it doesn’t validate him enough. He feels like he should break down and cry for the mistakes, but then that would be too forced. He is in a perpetual middle ground of emotion, and has nowhere to look. The past has failed him, leading him only to one place: the future.
Afterlov is the beginning of a new chapter in masculinity. In a Greece that is currently being dismantled by crisis, I believe Afterlov is a defiant man standing tall and saying we aren’t the unwavering men able to bed any woman or be superior to our peers. We aren’t the men that the rest of the world has assigned us to be. We are people trying to discover what it means to be a man in our society, and none of you can tell us what that is. Don’t count on us to be the strongest, unmovable objects in the world; we’re figuring out what we’re supposed to be on our terms. As an American man with no affiliation to Greece besides this blog, I won’t begin to speculate what the next chapter of the Greek man entails. But whatever it is, the rest of the world must sit back and let them figure it out.
Nikos spends the entire film going back and forth on his definition of masculinity, and he will decide what it means for him on his own. The last scene in Afterlov follows Nikos as he shuts the gate on his former love and walks back to his home, uncertain of what the future will entail. I believe that if we take a leaf out of Afterlov’s book, and let that gate shut between our expectation and truth, the Greek man will redefine himself, for himself.
To quickly summarize, Afterlov is a feature film directed by Stergios Paschos that follows a young musician named Nikos. Nikos has had his heart broken by his ex-lover, Sofia, but doesn’t know why she did it. He invites her for a week vacation at a friend’s house, locks all the doors, and demands to know why they broke up.
This is all the exposition that the audience needs to know. The following hour and fifteen minutes of the film cleverly observes the back and forth power relationship between Nikos and Sofia, never really letting one side form a formidable advantage over the other. Although Nikos holds the physical lead over Sofia by locking her in, for much of the film it feels like Sofia has every card of the deck in her hands. Nikos only gets what he wants if Sofia gives it to him, which proves to infuriate Nikos to no end. He is supposed to possess the eneryia to dominate Sofia like Zorba, Steph, and even Nikos from Forever Young, but yet this Nikos can’t seem to find it.
Every preexisting idea of masculinity seems to fail Nikos throughout the film. He can’t hold on to the machismo of Zorba or the dominance of Steph. Pulling from a different era, he can’t even hold on to the “new man” culture of the 1980s. Sure, he has the “dark white skin tone, strong features and a marked sensuality” (242) described in Nixon’s chapter of Hall’s Representations (published in 2013), but it only gets him so far. Instead, Nikos embodies the contemporary Greek man, unsure of what that word “man” means.
This is proven most beautifully in the scene where Sofia and Nikos have multiple conversations about what they are to do with their feelings. Nikos time and time again shares his feelings of confusion, often asking “what am I supposed to do?” He attempts to be the rough and suave lover, but it doesn’t validate him enough. He feels like he should break down and cry for the mistakes, but then that would be too forced. He is in a perpetual middle ground of emotion, and has nowhere to look. The past has failed him, leading him only to one place: the future.
Afterlov is the beginning of a new chapter in masculinity. In a Greece that is currently being dismantled by crisis, I believe Afterlov is a defiant man standing tall and saying we aren’t the unwavering men able to bed any woman or be superior to our peers. We aren’t the men that the rest of the world has assigned us to be. We are people trying to discover what it means to be a man in our society, and none of you can tell us what that is. Don’t count on us to be the strongest, unmovable objects in the world; we’re figuring out what we’re supposed to be on our terms. As an American man with no affiliation to Greece besides this blog, I won’t begin to speculate what the next chapter of the Greek man entails. But whatever it is, the rest of the world must sit back and let them figure it out.
Nikos spends the entire film going back and forth on his definition of masculinity, and he will decide what it means for him on his own. The last scene in Afterlov follows Nikos as he shuts the gate on his former love and walks back to his home, uncertain of what the future will entail. I believe that if we take a leaf out of Afterlov’s book, and let that gate shut between our expectation and truth, the Greek man will redefine himself, for himself.