The Color of Pomegranate video review

In the poet's dream, barding is the most poetic normal state. And "The Color of Pomegranate" is such a dream about bards. As Sergey Parajanov's masterpiece of poetry and film, this film is undoubtedly a beautiful sacrifice in the temple of light and shadow in the former Soviet Union. In his ignorant childhood dreams, Parajanov threw himself as a young man into the torrent of light and shadow again and again. At that moment, the young man put his head to his ears and listened to the poetry of the earth. After many years, he wonderfully connected the poet's time and space with his own dreams, and finally made this film "The Color of Pomegranate". In the film, with the help of the poet's words, Parajanov expresses the true meaning of art: a poet may die, but his muse never dies.

Two Bards

"The Color of Pomegranate" was born in 1968, during the "Prague Spring" incident that shocked the world. This year, Tarkovsky was in the period of rest after filming "Andrei Rublev", while Nikita Mikhalkov had just begun his film career. For Parajanov, these were the worst of times and the best of times. Political control over movies has gradually become taboo, but the creative mission of artists bursts out with an undertone of compassion. There is no doubt that Parajanov's uncharacteristically unique writing made "The Color of Pomegranates" famous at the beginning of its birth, and was once praised by critics as "the most outstanding film of the former Soviet Union during the Cold War."

In Parajanov's masterpiece, two bards were destined to be included. One of them is the protagonist of the film, Sayat Nova, one of the most famous poets in Armenia in the 18th century; the original name of the English translation of "The Color of Pomegranate" is "Sayat Nova". The other poet is Parajanov himself. His personal preferences and private philosophy are all cast into this eternal and distant historical dream. This ritual-like long journey is certainly a poetic inheritance of Saya Nova, but more spiritual energy probably belongs to Parajanov himself.

In "The Color of Pomegranate", Parajanov geniusly presents an institutional reality: in this seemingly free kingdom, everyone is in his own position, and each of them has his or her own position. Perform your duties diligently and conscientiously. They walked up and down their own wooden ladders, they picked out pieces of fabric next to their dye vats, they kept spinning next to their respective spinning machines, and even the horses under their crotches had a fixed path. . In Parazhanov's eyes, this seems to be the stability and peace of an era, but it is also the great sadness of an era. At this moment, the young man as a bard, half asleep and half awake, gradually moved towards his strange and distant self.

What is worth pondering is that every character in the film is expressionless and unsmiling, no matter what they are experiencing around them, whether it is work, reading, love, baptism, slaughter, war, prayer, or even death. , everyone seems to be a historical figure undergoing rituals, without any warmth. Perhaps, their body temperature has long been diluted by the gorgeous scenery, and the warm and cold tones of the image are their temperature. Coincidentally, Parajanov's treatment is undoubtedly a worldwide masterpiece; but for Hollywood, which only follows stars and performances, it will certainly not understand the beauty of it. Like Parajanov, French director Cartier-Bresson once refused actors to perform. In his films, all actors have the same expressionless faces. But the difference is that Bresson is more inclined to the authorship of the film, while Parajanov is more inclined to the still life ritual description of an era. In the ceremony, the characters have no joy, anger, sorrow, or joy; their expressions are shrouded in a sense of solemnity. And perhaps, as some people have speculated, the temperature of "The Color of Pomegranate" is more internal. It is not conveyed through the characters' expressions, but through the characters' hearts. As Parajanov himself said: I do not try to tell the life of a poet, but try to reproduce the inner world of a poet.

Looking at the paragraph structure of "The Color of Pomegranate", from "the poet's childhood" to "the poet's youth" to the "final funeral" after the poet was killed, the long journey of life may be It's not the same, but it seems to be different. In this dream of life that belongs exclusively to the poet, we seem to see our own shadows, imprinted inch by inch in the poems.

Armenian Witchcraft

What is fascinating about Parajanov is his certain similarity to the British director Derek Jarman. Jarman was accustomed to applying alchemy to his images, while Parazhanov infused the film with an aura of witchcraft.

In "The Color of Pomegranate", Parazhanov does not have any passages that directly express witchcraft, but there is no doubt that his lens language is full of witchcraft, no matter from the perspective of photography The scenery, the scenery, and the actors' performances are all like witchcraft, wonderful and strange. At the same time, the film's long scroll description of the entire Middle Ages is also full of witchcraft. For example, in a battlefield scene where soldiers are fighting, a group of strangers perform non-stop in a huge open space, like a celestial perpetual motion machine each performing its own duties. Another example is the religious sacrificial scene, where the priest pens flocks of lambs into the church, which reminds people of the shepherd’s oracle and the black sheep in Calvino’s works. Perhaps, these are just my mediocre and deliberate speculations. Regarding the denotation of symbolic metaphors, there are different pros and cons. As for the balance between the solemn gesture of the image and the spirit of play, I can't say.

I only understand that at this moment, I seem to have become the third troubadour, looking for myself in the movie.

Recalling Parazhanov’s other masterpiece "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" carefully, it seems to have a more obvious witchcraft atmosphere. The magical writing about the nation exploring the path of survival seems to be traveling through time. Between fantasy and reality. I still remember that the exploration of the origin of "myth" in the literary world in the past was also inseparable from the word "witch", and the ancestors of the East and the West are the best mythical carriers to embody the nature of witchcraft. Fortunately, through the expression of Parajanov's images, this unique Armenian witchcraft will also shine through in future Russian films, such as the film directed by Alexander Rogozhkin. In 2002's "Cuckoo", there was a moment of witchcraft that summoned the soul.

Back to "The Color of Pomegranate", I have to mention that weird baptism. Borrowing the hands of his ancestors, Parajanov baptized a "mummy" with holy water, just like baptizing "death" rather than "new life". Perhaps, for the poet, death is not a terrible thing, but just a commonplace return to dust. At this moment, Parajanov's philosophical thoughts on life and death also quietly emerged. For him, the distance between death and rebirth is nothing more than a baptism, like a long nap between days and nights.

Reminiscences of Frontier Civilization

It goes without saying that the preciousness of "The Color of Pomegranate" is very important. Parajanov's delicate presentation of Armenia's ancient civilization gives us the honor to see the life and death of a border country. The longing for Armenia in the past may have been just a fleeting moment, but in Parajanov's images, these trivial moments are connected one by one, becoming an eternal sacrifice of life. At this moment, the movie has a vivid soul. Even though the image is filled with the confinement of freedom and the barriers of fate, there may never be a more beautiful dream.

In the film, Parajanov completely abandoned the moving shots and focused on each moving or still moment from a fixed camera position. As a director, his gaze on pomegranates and fruit knives is like a still life sketch. At this moment, the pomegranate bloomed on the white cloth with a bright red color like blood. Then there was an ancient dagger, which was also stained with blood-like red on the white cloth. As a result, the color of pomegranate began to take on the historical symbolism of violence and killing. As for the characters wandering around the screen, the director's shooting style is also like a still life. The people in the play are like puppets controlled by the stage. Their faces are expressionless and they are only focused on the work at hand. It seems that there is an ancient atmosphere gestating in it. One of the scenes of thorns covering a black background reminded me of the thorn ring in Tarkovsky's "Stalker".

When expressing Armenia’s unique rituals such as sacrifices and baptisms, the composition of the image is a flat partial panorama, presenting a wonderful sense of stage. Unlike other directors, Parajanov's stage has neither edges nor flips, but is more like the most primitive small stage built by wandering artists, with all life and death displayed in a fixed viewing frame. On this stage, actors can only advance and retreat horizontally, not up or downhill. Their movements only belong to the horizon.

Among the series of inner journeys of the poet, "The Poet's Childhood" is undoubtedly the most beautiful and colorful. Parazhanov shows the curiosity of the young man very charmingly. Whether it is the mothers who spin yarn, the fathers who dye cloth, or the chickens in the slaughterhouse, they all present a beautiful red color. In the eyes of young people, these reds are still pure, and there is no projection of the dark adult world. The poet's childhood seemed to have a wonderful rhythm. The ancestors worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, like an eternal cycle. The water-soaked books were squeezed out with stones and dried in rows on the roof. The boy lay in the sun, like an adventurer swimming in the sea of ??books. Regarding the book-pressing scene, it reminded me of Hrabal's "Too Loud Loneliness". In the novel, the old artist packed bundles of old books and artworks in a dark basement and put them into a book grinder.

At the end of the film, Parazhanov dropped an eternal "art" motif: a poet may die, but his muse does not. To a poet, his verses are immortal. As for Parazhanov, his images are immortal. Their muse is the eternal extension of the artistic carrier at the spiritual level.