This month the Gene Siskel Film Center is screening The Owl’s Legacy (1989), a 13-part documentary series directed by the late Chris Marker (Sans Soleil, A Grin Without a Cat), one of the pioneers of the essay film. The Film Center is dividing the series into four programs over the course of four weeks, with each program playing on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. I recommend checking out the whole thing, but don’t worry if you miss one of the parts. The series can be watched in any order, and no one episode is more illuminating than any other. The overarching theme of The Owl’s Legacy is the influence of ancient Greek culture on modern life, and each episode tackles a concept that comes to us from the Greeks (democracy, mythology, tragedy, etc.). Taken as a whole, it’s a heady and thought-provoking project that asks us to consider our connection to antiquity. Watching it is like sitting in on a superior college seminar.
Marker worked on The Owl’s Legacy for much of the 1980s and premiered it on British television at the end of the decade, around the time that contemporary philosophers were pondering whether humanity had reached the end of history. Given this context, the series suggests a summation of sorts; at the same time, several of the interviewees opine that civilization still has a long way to go toward reaching its ideal form. Marker, who held radical political beliefs and explored them in quite a few of his works, seems to side with these thinkers the most. Still, he engenders a sense of wonder at all humanity has accomplished so far. The world of ideas established by the ancient Greeks comes to seem like a trove so great that The Owl’s Legacy can only begin to scratch the surface of it. By the end of the series, you may wonder why Marker didn’t make it longer. v
Directed by Chris Marker. In English and subtitled French, Georgian, German, Greek, and Japanese. 340 min. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.
