Customer Reviews

Repentance

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I First learned of this film as an accidental find at the local video rental shop in the foriegn film section. Now it's a top ten favorite film of mine for several reasons.
Stealthily made for Georgian/Russian television under Soviet era rule, it was "shelved" until 1986 when glasnost allowed it's release, just a couple of years prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Anyway, here it's shown in Fullscreen presentation as it was made, hence there is no such thing as a Widescreen version.
Running time is complete (unedited) at about 154 minutes.

Repentance is a story within a story(three generations) which is also book-ended by a main charachter's brief musings leaving the viewer to wonder was this a momentary daydream or did all this actually happen? This does not give away the story or any suspense whatsoever.
Because of the multi-layered story, multiple charachters and involved plot most viewers including Georgian/Russian literates will be a bit lost on first viewing. So far I've watched it perhaps 9 or 10 times over the last decade and I'm still unraveling much of the story, charachters and dialogue. Now that I have it on DVD it will be viewed and disected over and over.

It's a complicated blend of social commentary, political nightmare, spiritual awareness, family disintegration, artistic/human freedom, surrealism, and even brief moments of (black)comedy.
The film's overall flow is like a dark drama and part Euro artfilm perhaps due to the surreal scenes and the unrushed filming/editing. This is not Hollywood product!
There's realy little or no "action" per se, and despite there being no blatant visual violence (or sex) I always leave this film as though I've lived through a mass of brutality and executions. Repentance carries some obvious political messages but it really asks the viewer to draw thier own conclusions and to think for thyself!

The RUSCICO DVD version is an excellent package. The colors and quality are as good as the origial film will allow. There are several excellent and revelant extras as well as subtitles for nearly any language known to man.
Unfortunatly it was never released in it's original Georgian soundtrack. All three languages here are dubbed. The Georgian soundtrack is actualy the original Russian dub with a Georgian translator reading over that.
I watch it with english subtitles while listening to the original release Russian dub.

For a dollar more than the domestic release I bought the "Pokaianie" version which is region-free and has the Russian printed cover. I suspect other that these two things it is identical to the "Repentance" region 1 version.
For the real diehard enthusists there is a companion book in the "Film Companion " series which is a study guide/scene disection but it's not really a revealing or behind the scenes reader.

A fantastic, dark and thoughtful film that is as relevant and timeless as the viewer allows or chooses it to be.

This movie came to be known as a masterpiece of perestroika, though Gorbachev was totally unaware of the director and his work. Many scenes and references do require some knowledge of the history of the Soviet Union and the execrable crimes of the Communist regime.The demolition of a church parallels the Bolshevik demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior,which was rebuilt after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The scene in which relatives of prisoners desperately seek for messages written on logs from the timber camps is truly amazing.The lead actor's role as a sort of Hitler-Beria combination is mesmeric in quality.One of the great features at the end is the old woman who asks the question, " What good is a road if it doesn't lead to a church?" The actress in question had played in many Stalin era films and her cameo is in itself a sort of repentance.
I cannot recommend it enough.

This was Georgian director Tenghiz Abuladze's last film, and it's a vision that is sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious, and always stunningly beautiful.
Completed it 1984, it was banned until '87, when it was released under Gorbachev's glasnost, and went on to win the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

The attractive cast is fabulous, and the art direction and cinematography outstanding. It's a bizarre story of 2 generations of small town despots, and the revenge of a woman who's parents were tortured and executed...guilt is a central theme, and I love what Abel says to himself when his shame finally overcomes him, "...may your blood turn to water, and your bread to dust".

The twist ending might give your brain a spin...was it all in her imagination ? was it an alternate reality ? it's up to you to decide...
I've seen this film countless times, and never tire of it. A cry for artistic and religious freedom, showing the ghastly absurdity of those who seek power through tyranny and censorship, it deserves to be re-released and find a wider audience.

I watched this extraordinary film in Moscow when it was premiered (as part of Gorbachev's glasnost)in the late 80s and I was one of the lucky guests at its opening night. Some time before, I had also attended the first public screening of Andrei Rublev, shown after years of being banned. I'll never forget the deathly silence that followed the end of both films. It is hard to imagine the shock of watching the poignant images of these films, which are so much part of the collective memory of the Russians. The scene where the wives of convicts desperately search for messages from their husbands in the logs carried by the river are forever etched in my memory. I can't understand how this movie has practically disappeared from the market. I certainly rate it very high in my personal best ever top hundred. The spiritual message it conveys (about sins, atonement and repentance) casts a far wider net than the actual historical circumstances it relates to and has a universal dimension which the present world should not ignore.

This is a fabulous movie made in Soviet-controlled Georgia. It was made in 1984, which given the subject is in itself an Orwellian overtone. The film shows the impact of atheism on a society, portrays how various people dealt with it and examines the conscience of unconscionable tyrants and their benefactors.

No matter how ruthless and senseless the tyrant, in the end none of them could escape their own conscience, let alone death. While in their paranoia they were able to get rid of class and personal enemies. But in the end, no matter how rich and powerful they could not get rid of the burden of their own guilt. It also delves into the conscience of the children and grandchildren of tyrants brought up in a sheltered and protected environment -- some of them eventually forced to confront the reality of their special status. This is some heavy stuff. Some of the allusions made in the movie may be difficult to understand for people who did not grow up behind the iron curtain. But the film's story line, artistic portrayal and visual effects have much to offer to anyone.

I first saw this movie in the late 80's in Czechoslovakia and was completely taken back by it. First of all, it was simply incredible that such a film was even allowed to be made in USSR. Second, it is such a profound condemnation of communism that it's hardly believable that it was being shown. This is a credit to Gorbachev and his Glasnost; being willing to let critical voices be heard. And this film is critical in no uncertain terms.

The film starts in post-Stalinist era, in a relatively "moderate" times in Georgia - which was then part of USSR. The occasion is a funeral of a town's mayor, a great man whole loss is greatly lamented. The late mayor's son is predictably a man of importance himself, a position gained through his father's influence. The son's family wakes up the day after the funeral and to their horror they find that someone has dug up the deceased mayor and placed the corpse in the family's garden. He is re-buried, but the whole scenario repeats for several nights until the perpetrator is caught and put on trial. To everyone's surprise, it's not a thug, but a lady who grew up with the mayor's son but whose childhood, life and family were destroyed by the mayor in the name of "protecting the people."

From that point, the movie goes back in time as the accused woman tells her life story in court in her defense. Not to be a plot spoiler I will stop right here and let you see the rest for yourself. It is truly one of the most remarkable films, most certainly worth seeing if you're interested in this topic.

Repentance is the only movie in the Trilogy that I've found available for purchase at least here in the USA. This movie has a very tragic story. There are many comedic moments in it, however. The family of a prominent town Mayor is mourning the Mayor's death, Varlem. Varlem is a thinly veiled Georgian (Russian) version of Mussolini. He dresses and acts like Mussolini. He is a dictator that comes up with impossible demands and swift, horrible punishments for those who disagree with him. He can be very kind to children, yet ruthless in causing said children to become orphans very quickly. He also can sing opera. He forces his entourage to sing also and act and he also makes them dress in suits of shining armor. It's really hard to explain this movie. The heroine of the story does get her revenge after many many years, but she has lost everything, her mother and father, her home, her freedom everything so all she can do is carry on in her business and laugh. There's quite a juxtaposition of 19th century technology and fashions even along with the more modern technology from the 1960's and the 1970's?

This hard to find film called 'Repentance' is one of the most mindboggling and brilliant films I have ever seen. Right now I cannot write an in depth review about it because I am busy with other things. But, if one can find this film, buy it because it is not that easy to find. You will get your money's worth. The main actor in this film gives one of the most awesome performances I have seen.

This is an extract from "Pilgrim to the Russian Church" by Jim Forest (New York: Crossroads, 1988)

Kiev, April 22, 1988: In the afternoon Fr. Boris, Lydia, Volodya and I went to the movies to see "Pokayaniye" ("Repentance"). Last February, in Moscow, I tried to get a ticket to see the film. It was showing in seventeen cinemas around the city but tickets were completely sold out. It was easier to see the Bolshoi Ballet. Tickets were unavailable in Leningrad as well -- Fr. Boris and I went to the opera. But here Fr. Boris finally succeeded in getting tickets. Even then there were only a few vacant seats in the theater despite the early hour and the fact that it was a weekday. "It's said that Gorbachev ordered enough copies of the film to be made so that everyone will see it," Volodya told me. If the rumor is true, Gorbachev must be pleased.

The film, directed by Tengiz Abuladze, was made in 1984 in Georgia, the Soviet Republic where Stalin was born. It ended up on ice with all but a few prints destroyed. That even one print survived is credited mainly to Eduard Shevardnadze, who backed Abuladze in making the movie. At the time Shevardnadze was First Secretary of the Communist Party in Georgia. Now he is Foreign Minister of the USSR and one of those most identified with Gorbachev. Following Gorbachev's election and the subsequent overthrow of the Brezhnev-era old guard in the film-makers' union, Goskino, the film was finally released.

Ostensibly about the mayor of a Georgian city, "Repentance" is really about Stalin. The dictator is a parable-like figure named Varlam who not only resembles Stalin but Hitler, Mussolini and Napoleon. Varlam is one of those people who, even after death, have a continuing awful presence among the living, becoming objects of veneration to those who are dazzled by cruelty and raw power. Their death is a kind of nap. In one scene we see Varlam/Stalin waking up in a lidless coffin, grinning dangerously at the camera, then rolling over to make himself more comfortable.

After Varlam's burial his body, black boots and all, keeps re- appearing, propped up in the garden of the family villa. Death seems unable to contain this man responsible for the deaths of millions. The family, who thought they had seen the last of the Great Man, become increasingly distressed and call in the police to put an end to all these undesirable resurrections. A night watch in the cemetery reveals that there is nothing magical about Varlam's post-mortem mobility. The daughter of two of his victims has been digging up the corpse and is using it to haunt Varlam's slick, modern, high-living descendants.

The story centers on the parents of the grave-digger. We meet them earlier in their lives, when their daughter was eight or nine. They are a young couple, both artists. In our first glimpse of the couple their faces are lined with apprehension as they watch Varlam give a speech from a balcony facing their home. On a gallows in the background a vulture sits complacently on the cross beam. In the sky, Varlam's portrait is suspended from a balloon. (In fact there were similar pictures of Stalin decorating the Soviet sky fifty years ago.)

The man has a Christ-like face, the woman looks like Mary and wears a cross. In a prophetic dream suffered by the mother she sees herself and her husband buried in the earth. Only their faces are uncovered, their eyes open and alive. [photo]

The couple are trying to save a local church that has been turned into a scientific laboratory -- Fr. Boris guessed it was meant to represent the huge Savior Cathedral that once stood across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, now the site of an outdoor swimming pool. The camera slowly explores the peeling frescoes of biblical scenes before it discovers the shining apparatus of high technology that has taken the place of worshippers.

Varlam, flowers in hand, visits the artists' home and seeks to win their support with an excess of charisma. In fact Stalin occasionally sent flowers to those whom he had added to his death list. Varlam pretends sympathy with their desire to save old buildings, but after his departure, the church is burned and the two artists -- first the husband, then the wife -- are swallowed up in the gulag. We see the man again when he is dying under torture. As the camera closes in on his suffering face, one realizes that it is also the face of Christ dying on the cross.

There is a heart-rending scene of his wife, warned that she is about to be arrested, trying to escape with her daughter in the dead of night, but grabbed as she steps out the door of their dingy flat.

The couple's daughter survives. By the time of Varlam's death, she is devoted to baking cakes modeled as churches, each steeple crowned with a golden baptismal cross such as her mother wore. One of Varlam's admirers in the film is a curiously stunted man wearing an old soldiers' uniform who, paying more attention to the newspaper than what he is doing, takes the steeple from one of her edible churches and, cross and all, stuffs it in his mouth. His eyes are held by the headline announcing Varlam's death.

The film's images have the brilliant clarity of dreams. In one scene people are waiting in line at a prison gate to deliver letters to relatives. If a letter is accepted, relief floods the face of the person who brought it. But for many the voice behind the gate refuses the letter, saying only, "Left, no forwarding address." Those who wait know the awful meaning of the words. This is no film-maker's visualization of nightmares but simply how it was.

In another scene several women are in a muddy timber yard searching the ends of the logs. One fortunate woman finds her husband's name and, weeping, caresses the rough wood as if it were her husband's face. Over supper I asked Fr. Boris if this was a dream scene. "It was no dream," Fr. Boris said. "It was common for people to search among logs for names. Prisoners working in the forests carved their names and dates as a sign that, at least until the date on the log, they were still alive. What you saw happened many times."

"Repentance" spans three generations. So little of the terrible truth has reached the third generation that Varlam's privileged grandson has no idea of the horrors that are buried in the family past. His discovery of them leads him to accuse his father, a powerful man living elegantly in his mansion. "You don't understand," the father angrily tells the son, "you don't know how it was! We did our best!" The boy barricades himself in his room and shoots himself.

His death drives the father to repentance. He goes into the cellar of the house where paintings that had belonged to the murdered young artists are stored. The room is now a kind of chapel illumined by vigil candles. In this setting the paintings resemble icons. Varlam's son gazes at himself in a cracked mirror and watches his own image dissolve into the face of Varlam leering at him, laughing satanically. The image fades. In the darkness near the mirror a half-visible figure silently raises a fish to his shadowed face -- the face of Christ -- and eats it. In the darkness, in repentance, there is eucharist and forgiveness.

More than anything else, this is a religious film. In the final scene we see an old lady asking the woman who makes church- like cakes, "Does this street go to the church?" "No, it is Varlam Street -- a street named after Varlam can't lead to a church."

"What good," asks the old lady, "is a street that doesn't lead you to a church?"

The film ends as we watch this babushka hobbling down the barren street.

"What good," asks the old lady, "is a street that doesn't lead you to a church?"

The film ends as we watch this babushka hobbling down the barren street.

As impressive as the film were the stunned faces of the audience as the theater emptied and we returned to a world marked in so many ways by the era of Varlam.

* * *

A striking (and politically astonishing for it's day) act of self-examination, self-criticism and ultimately self-laceration of a film made in the Soviet Union.

This is a darkly funny, playfully surrealistic, scathing satire of the Stalinist era's turning the entire population of an empire into suspects to be jailed, exiled and eliminated at whim. Full of striking images and strong performances.

Told in flashback, it starts from the death of a seemingly beloved small town mayor who we come to learn played the role of a local Stalin. Likable and even playful on the surface, the more we see his ever growing darkness the more disturbing the film becomes, as he ever more readily destroys those who might be enemies, or are simply inconvenient.

This flashback tale is framed by watching his family, after his death, trying to deal with their own feelings of and denials of guilt, as a local woman, her life ruined by the mayor, stands trial for repeatedly digging up his corpse again and again.

Far from a perfect film, some of the surrealistic imagery works better than others, and some twists seem a bit like 'easy' explanations of complex behavior, but this is still a fascinating, challenging and unique film about one of the great horrors of the last century. And an effective cautionary tale about the power of a paranoid state.

A striking (and politically astonishing for it's day) act of self-examination, self-criticism and ultimately self-laceration of a film made in the Soviet Union.

This is a darkly funny, playfully surrealistic, scathing satire of the Stalinist era's turning the entire population of an empire into suspects to be jailed, exiled and eliminated at whim. Full of striking images and strong performances.

Told in flashback, it starts from the death of a seemingly beloved small town mayor who we come to learn played the role of a local Stalin. Likable and even playful on the surface, the more we see his ever growing darkness the more disturbing the film becomes, as he ever more readily destroys those who might be enemies, or are simply inconvenient.

This flashback tale is framed by watching his family, after his death, trying to deal with their own feelings of and denials of guilt, as a local woman, her life ruined by the mayor, stands trial for repeatedly digging up his corpse again and again.

Far from a perfect film, some of the surrealistic imagery works better than others, and some twists seem a bit like 'easy' explanations of complex behavior, but this is still a fascinating, challenging and unique film about one of the great horrors of the last century. And an effective cautionary tale about the power of a paranoid state.