Customer Reviews

The Color of Pomegranates [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sergei Paradjanov's THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES (1969) is easily among the most remarkable films produced in the former Soviet Union. Every conceivable aspect of filmmaking-mise-en-scene, color, editing, acting, music and sound effects, settings and costumes-is exploited to create a sensuous and dense film-poem. The film's tragic vision is balanced by the director's quirky sense of humor, which comes through in his editing (objects playfully appear and vanish as if by magic, reminding one of Méliès' trick films) and the childlike wonder through which the world is depicted.

The film is not a literal biography of its subject, Sayat-Nova (ca. 1712-1795), but an attempt to evoke the "inner world" of the poet and the environment in which he lived. Sayat-Nova was born in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia (which has traditionally contained a sizable Armenian population). The film evokes popularly accepted notions about his life, adding imaginative details of its own along the way. Born Harutiun Sayadian ("Sayat-Nova" is a pen-name supposedly meaning "King of Song"), he was raised by a family of Armenian carpet weavers in Tbilisi. As a young man, he made his mark as an "ashugh," a kind of troubadour poet peculiar to the Transcaucasus. He wrote in the three main languages of the region: Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani. Appointed court poet by King Irakli II, he was eventually banished, as legend has it, for falling in love with the Princess Anna. He then retired to the Haghpat monastery in northern Armenia before reputedly dying during the sack of Tbilisi in 1795.

The visual style of the film is influenced by Armenian medieval miniatures and the 19th-century Tbilisi folk painters Pirosmani (something of an artistic saint in Georgia) and Hakob Hovnatanian (a fellow Tbilisi Armenian, like Paradjanov and Sayat-Nova). In a drastic stylistic break with the director's previous film, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (1964), the camera rarely moves; rather, Paradjanov creates precisely composed tableaus in which his characters stand motionless or perform ritualized pantomimes. Paradjanov himself was a gifted artist, creating hundreds of collages and sketches, most of which are on display at the Sergei Paradjanov Museum in Yerevan .

Like Fellini, Paradjanov had a talent for finding remarkable faces to populate his films. Most notable among them is the popular Georgian actress Sophiko Chiaureli, who played several roles, including: both the young poet and his beloved the Princess Anna, the "Nun in White Lace," and the "Poet's Muse." She is ravishingly beautiful both as a male and female, mesmerizing in a wordless performance that relies entirely on stylized gestures and facial expressions.

Although the film is renowned for its unique imagery, the soundtrack is equally stunning. Fragments of poems and songs by Sayat-Nova are interwoven with Armenian and Georgian traditional music and sound effects to create a dense audio montage. Paradjanov, it should be noted, studied music before entering film school. Also significant is the rich display of material culture of the Transcaucasian region, including carpets and fabrics, metalwork, and religious relics. Ancient Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani works of architecture are used as settings, most notably the Haghpat monastery in the second half of the film

The film and its director have had a rocky history. Upon its release in Armenia, the film was refused distribution in the rest of the Soviet Union until it was trimmed of several minutes, re-edited and given new Russian intertitles. (The videotape, fortunately, contains the original "director's cut.") In 1973, as part of a political campaign against intellectuals in Ukraine-where the director had previously worked and where his wife and son still lived-Paradjanov was arrested and charged with various crimes. Convicted of homosexuality, he was sentenced to several years of prison in Dnipropetrovsk, a camp of "severe regime." A bootleg copy of the film was screened at various film festivals and a campaign was launched in the West to have him released from prison. Its supporters included film scholar Herbert Marshall, a group of French film directors and John Updike. After four years in prison, he was released thanks to international pressure. He was not able to make another feature until THE LEGEND OF SURAM FORTRESS (1984). He passed away due to lung cancer in 1990.

Kino's video transfer is identical to the version previously released by Connoisseur Video. The picture is "windowboxed," meaning that there are black edges around all four sides of the image to present as much of the original image as possible, since transferring films to video usually involves cropping a bit of the sides. The colors are somewhat faded-prints I've seen of the Russian version have richer color, as does the Japanese videotape. This may be due to the condition of the print used. However, it's acceptable for now and if anything, Kino's tape looks slightly sharper than the old Connoisseur tape due to better quality duplication.

Included on the tape is a delightful 10-minute short, "Hakob Hovnatanian" (circa 1967) based on the 19th century Tbilisi-Armenian portrait painter. Paradjanov made this short while working on POMEGRANATES. Through details in the paintings themselves as well as costumes, architcture, etc., Paradjanov evokes the colorful atmosphere of old Tbilisi.

To be sure, this film is not for everyone. Some will be completely baffled, others bored. However, there is no question that Paradjanov is a true original. Although some will prefer SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (1964), which has a stronger storyline and dazzling camera movements, I feel that THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES is his masterpiece. Along with Tarkovsky, Paradjanov was the greatest Soviet director of the post-WWII era.

I saw this film at a Russian film festival years ago and I have remembered the bueaty of the film for years. It is based on the work of an Armenian poet, but what has remained with me all these years is the slow deliberate poetry of the visual imagery.When I saw the Japanese film "Dreams" I was reminded of it. I don't remember the poet or his poetry or the social message of the film, but remember the film as an excercise in bueaty.

Viewers should not expect a movie that tells a story or portrays character interaction in any understandable way. The film consists of a series of almost interpretive dance-like scenes, tableaus of startling imagery, which convey mood or psychological states more than events or narrative. Some may find it tedious. Unlike any film you've ever seen.

The first images I saw in Pomegranates left me thinking, "there's no way the director can keep this up throughout the whole film!"

He can and he does.

The entire film is made up of nothing but poetic images. Acting is almost a non-issue; the only thing the actors in this movie have to worry about is keeping a straight face while staring straight ahead and not moving their heads. The images are often beautiful and striking in their artificiality, but this will no doubt prove to be overkill for many viewers... this is definitely not a film to buy blindly; I reccommend seeing it somewhere else first, like in a library. Personally, the images kept me interested. Each one seems to be an allegory for something real (the movie is, after all, designed to be an abstract representation of a poet's mind), but while some of the allegories are quite easy to figure out (ie. young Nova picking up a book in one scene, then in the next scene he's surrounded by hundreds of huge books, their pages flapping in the wind), others are very difficult. It would be very nice for me to have a special commentary feature on a dvd where somebody explains what each scene is supposed to represent.

The best way to see this movie is definetely on a big screen on the original 35mm film... the VHS version that I had (Director's Cut released by CONNOISSEUR VIDEO COLLECTION) simply SCREAMED to me for greater detail; Paradjanov doesn't always zoom in on important small details, and the picture quality on the VHS was like all VHSs a bit fuzzy. From what I heard, the Kino DVD isn't much better, so I don't really know what options there are.

(...).
I'd like to point out that for one thing, we don't SEE the lamb get slaughtered; the knife is brought to its neck and then we see the hanging dead body of a lamb. Also, this may come as a surprize to some people, but in the real world lambs actually DO GET slaughtered. Is it better to turn a blind eye to things we don't like, while hypocritically continuing to eat meat? As for the allegations of a homoerotic scene, I think that it's a bit of a stretch. All we see really is one man walking on top of another's back... certainly nothing even remotely pornographic.

The only "innaproproate" thing I noticed is one scene where a woman's breast is shown.

Anyway, I personally liked this film better than Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The music wasn't as annoying (bagpipe-like instruments do become annoying after a while), and it seemed to me that Parajanov's final forsaking of the story form was a step in the right direction; in "Shadows" I always felt like the story wasn't being told and I wasn't getting to know the characters. Here, since the film is purely symbolic, I didn't feel such a void.

One more thing: in the edition that I saw, almost half of the dialogue is not translated with subtitles! This seems to me to be a very poor effort, either that or there's STILL a conspiracy to censor some things in the film for non-Armenian viewers.

Overall, this is reccommended for those who like Tarkovsky (who was a friend of Parajanov), poetry, or have an interest in Armenia... or for those who want to see something REALLY strange! (although the latter variety, while initially finding it very interesting, will probably not be able to sit through the whole film ;) )

Don't expect plot, character development, and all the rest. I first saw this movie in college and was captivated by the way Paradzhanov used the film medium to "convey" (not tell, really) a story through a series of tableaux vivants. In fact, I was so captivated that I fell asleep about half-way into the movie. We had a lecture _after_ the movie by an Armenian professor explaining the imagery and motifs, but it would have helped to know all that _before_ the movie started, to have some kind of mental framework to help guide me through the movie. Still, the movie stands up to multiple viewings, and gets better as you remember things and can anticipate the development that there is. It's a successful experiment, but not one that has been successfully reproduced, that I know of.

And incidentally Armenians are not Muslims. In fact, they were they first nation to accept Christianity, in 301.

This is a great film which portays beautifully the story of Sayat Nova and it illustrates the cinimatic gift of Sergei Paradjanov at his best. I highly recomend this film to anyone who appreciates film at a truly artistic level.

1 of the Greatest Films Ever Made, "COLOR OF POMEGRANATE - SAYAT NOVA", appears on endless lists of Top 100 most important films of all time -- and is considered a masterpiece by filmmakers, film professors, film critics, film students, film historians and film legends such as Fellini, Godard and Antonioni. Therefore, the comments by incompetent reviewers, matter not!

Issue of animal cruelty is nonsense and only demonstrates the reviewer's illiteracy. Comprehensive review of Parajanov's COLOR OF POMEGRANATE (not plural "pomegranates"), including the quality of DVD, VHS, various prints, alternative versions and the importance of this cinematic jewel, will be published at www.parajanov.com in 2004.

http://www.parajanov.com

For most of this movie, I had no idea what they were trying to say(Would it would help to be Armenian?). I wonder if it's possible to publish a guide to this movie which explains it image by image. I suppose that the challenge of this movie is the challenge of understanding the poetry of Nova Sayat, upon which this film was based.

There's no denying it, though. It is cool to look at.

There are films that seem bad at first but open up when seen a second or third time. This is not one of them. The first two times I saw this film, it seemed incredibly beautiful to me. My jaw probably fell open the first time I saw it. But the third time was too much. The film is so incredibly silly and pretentious I almost felt like laughing at some of the scenes. At times it almost seems like a Saturday-Night-Live parody of an art film, e.g. the scene of the monks noisily chomping on pomegranites. A talent for visual composition and an interesting sound track are just not enough to make a good film. Paradjanov had one idea in this film ("Hey, I'll tell a story with a series of ikons!") and repeated it five hundred times. Even imagistically, there are many many far more impressive films than this one -- take Orson Welles' "Othello" as one underrated example. So John Updike and Pierre Boulez like this film? Not everyone is perfect. Among art films, there are A films, B films, and then there is this film.

This is a very boring piece of 'art' which does nothing to a person living in the west. Unless you are muslim or wear a scarf around your face, then you won't be at all interested in this pretentious piece of poetry from the bloated and overrated director Sergei Parajanov. It deals with some Armenian poet who wrote under the influence of opium and the film is a testament to the visions he saw. In art direction, and sets, there are passable glimpses, but so what, if it bores us out of our minds or if there is no story involved, then why do we care if we see implacably designed sets?

I had a hard time sitting through it and had to forward it because it was just too much. I think Fellini had a better mood in "Satryican" because he emphasized not only set design but at least some method of story telling, however disfigured. But Parajanov, who hails from the mountain regions of the Caucasus, is so accustomed to Soviet film making, which is quite vapid and slow moving, that he does nothing to engage our senses. If I were at a play, then at least I'd attempt to be polite but I must say that this is horrible. An extra on the DVD is Parajanov being interviewed in which he states that, "a director is born", and shows his elitist self. Then there are clips of him from annoying art festivals from europe, hailing him as the next messiah of film, its all very insipid for non-Parajanov fans.