Les chevaux de feu

Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors is set in Western Ukraine (Carpathian mountains) circa the 1860's. It was banned in the USSR because it emphasized the unique Ukrainian culture and in fact the language throughout the film was Ukrainian and not Russian. Plus the references to the Church and religion could not have helped. The story is deceptively simple. As a child, Ivan falls in love with his neighbor and fathers killers daughter Marichka. The first half of the film deals with that love and the second with Ivan's downfall after she dies in an accident.

Shadows would probably not appeal to someone looking for great acting, strong characterizations and emotional pull. But, it more than makes up for these deficiencies in its visual brilliance and authenticity of periodic detail. This is one of the most beautiful looking films ever made. The elaborate costumes, the folk songs and simple village life all create a world that you know just had to have existed. Not exactly commercial fare, Shadows is a stunningly beautiful looking film and in fact a lesson in old Ukrainain culture. I highly recommend this for art-house film fans.

Ingmar Bergman once claimed that the childhood gift of a film projector inspired him to make movies. The feeling of magic in creating images in light upon the wall never left him; perhaps it revealed to him the perfect medium for living out dreams.

Watching "Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors" is like that moment of discovery: it makes us feel the same joy some have felt in discovering Bresson or Godard, the joy of finding out what film can do. It is understanding the director's joy in putting pictures together to tell a story (like a painter finding just the right colors to paint a myth). The movie, a sort of folk- Ukrainian "Romeo and Juliet," bursts with passion and physicality, chasing its protagonists through some of the most wild and beautiful landscapes ever caught on film. Yet the real romance here is between director Parajanov and the camera, which swoons and runs and bounds as ardently as any young lover, whether falling like a tree to the ground or spinning through a field or moping grief-stricken in a corner. Parajanov, like a honeymooning bridegroom, tries everything; he veers from silent-film subtitles to new-wave editing gimmicks to Russian iconography within seconds, and yet the tricks never feel anachronistic. From a torchlit search along a river to witchcraft in a lightning storm to the simple, painful clarity of the hero's eyes, the movie exudes a pagan wildness. (How he smuggled it past Soviet aesthetics is anybody's guess.)

This is a movie that makes you laugh not from comedy but from sheer pleasure; it is as warm, bold, tragic, profoundly silly, and above all human, as a Shakespeare romance. See it by any means necessary.

The first great film from the greatest director in post-war Soviet Union. The experience is almost like being strapped to a malfunctioning rollercoaster, as a relatively straightforward story - young man falls in love with neighbour; she dies; he mourns; remarries; still loves dead mate (Wuthering Heights anyone?) - is violently attacked by hurling camera movements that reveal the most vertiginous spaces, both exterior and interior; bizarre angles (eg from a falling tree); a restless mix of music from Kusturica-like horn blowers, shards of modernism and thrilling Romanticism; content that blends myth, dreams, legends, folk tales etc.; and editing that bewilders and disrupts rather than matches and connects. A brilliant recreation of a forgotten culture and times that was a dangerous two-fingers to totalitarianism.

This is a haunting film filled with deeply moving imagery and symbolism. It is a well known art-house and film student favorite and for many excellent reasons. It is beautifully filmed and accurately portrays Ukrainian-Hutsul society with all it's mythology, superstition and rich culture. Of interest is that it was released in it's native Ukrainian language during one of the Soviet Union's cultural thaws under Khruschev. Not many films were allowed to even be produced in Ukrainian during the Soviet regime. Definitely worth seeing.

I had no expectations going into SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS, mostly because I knew very little about it beforehand. What I can say now is that it was more interesting from an artistic point of view than the actual story it tells. The basic plot is about a boy, Ivanko, who falls in love with a girl, Marichko. However, fate conspires to keep them apart and a fateful turn of events sets Ivanko down a course that changes his life forever. The elements I liked about the film, and what makes it stand out, are the cinematography, use of color, costumes, and the occasionally poetic image. The camera-work was rather improvisatory and free-moving with lots of high-angle shots, often pointed at the sky. There was also a conscious choice in one sequence to film in black-and-white for narrative reasons, to visually depict the protagonist's emotional state. As for imagery, there were a few sequences which stood out. One early scene showed blood dripping over the lens as a way to show someone dying, transitioning respectively into red horses and some kind of red plant. There was also creative use of double exposure in a scene where the characters are overlaid onto religious iconography. All of this was engaging and unique in a way that the story wasn't. I have a feeling that more familiarity with Ukrainian culture and folklore would have made the story a little more accessible, but I don't really think that the story was entirely the point. In fact, the acting in the film really isn't that good, and the film often felt like a filmed stage play where the intended audience is already familiar with the character archetypes and tropes. It also doesn't help that the film is episodic, with awkward and occasionally jarring scene transitions. Overall, this film's value (to me, at least) lies in its images and music. I don't really see the average film-watcher taking the time to see this, but this could potentially be worth it for the more adventurous person.