[2] A journalist (Gregory Patrick Karr) is in a town on the border of Greece where refugees await approval of their papers.

In The films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation, Andrew Horton writes that the images in Suspended Step "force us to meditate, in a clearer light, on the concept of borders and the territories-geographical, cultural, political, and personal-they lock in and out."

In Suspended Step, the journalist does not discover his "Rosebud", but rather gains an appreciation of the possibility of a new humanism in the process of border crossing.

The final shot of the reporter watching phone lines being built embodies this idea, "offering the healing touch of movement beyond boundaries.

"[3] New York Times critic Caryn James noted that although The Suspended Step of the Stork has "all the elements of a first-rate Angelopoulos film", it suffers from a "bland, banal" protagonist that "dissolves suspense wherever he turns."