Customer Reviews

Brigands - Chapter VII

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Otar Iosseliani is a fascinationg movie director. His earlier movies (made in Georgia) are simply amazing. Beatifully filmed in a mixture of a new wave and neo-realizm styles, unique and touching. Brigands - Chapter VII was filmed after Iosseliani left Georgia from France. It is a work of a mature master who agains draws his inspiration from his beloved Georgia. The only complaint I have is to the quality of the DVD recording. It looks as if the image was transferred from a roor VHS copy. What a shame! Iosseliani deserves better! Just look at how lovingly his earlier works (four movies) have been presented on DVD in both France and the US.

One of director Otar Iosseliani's stronger films. The movie takes place during several periods of time in his native country of Georgia: in the Middle Ages, in the early 1900s, during the Stalinist period (the bulk of the movie) and in the chaos of the early 1990s. The same actors often play different characters at the different periods of time (for example, the guy playing the medieval king also plays a Stalinist henchman and a contemporary smuggler). The movie works through vignettes full of deadpan humor, and a common thread of all the stories seems to be the absurdity of life, the arrogance of power and man's inhumanity to man. Iosseliani even plays a couple of roles here, as a Stalinist torturer, and as a present day bumbling projectionist, in one of the film's most elaborate gags. Overall, a great movie, with Iosseliani's caustic humor telling us, as the old Latin saying, that man is a wolf to man.