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My only complaint about Tengiz Abuladze's REPENTANCE (English title) is that I am uncertain what was real and what was fantasy. However, since this was undoubtedly his intention, I cannot properly call it a complaint. Outside of David Lynch films, I have never seen more perfectly executed dream imagery than that of REPENTANCE; the beauty of these sequences is accentuated by the surreal atmosphere of the various dreamers' waking lives. The cast is uniformly excellent, the premise unique, and much of the dialogue resonates with beauty, despair and universal truth, often mingled with humor. No character is utterly devoid of sympathy, nor is any character entirely sympathetic. All is ambiguous, just as it is in our own so-called "reality".

Joseph Stalin's purges were one of the most horrific chapters in Soviet history. A famous movie about this period is Nikita Mikhalkov's "Burnt by the Sun". An equally important one is Tengiz Abuladze's "Repentance". This one emphasizes not only the terror visited upon the population, but the efforts to expose the truth and prevent whitewashing of those who committed the genocide. The subject is a man who shares physical similarities with Hitler and Stalin, but is based on Lavrentiy Beria (one of Stalin's acolytes). As mayor of a town in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, he doesn't hesitate to persecute those whom he deems disloyal. Years later, a woman goes to unusual lengths to reveal the truth about his handiwork.

Not surprisingly, the movie couldn't get released immediately. It wasn't until after Gorbachev came to power that it got a release. I'd say that the ugly parts of history are more important to know about that the pleasant parts of history, to ensure that they don't get repeated. I understand that Beria was particularly vicious.

We don't get to see many movies from Georgia. I wish that I could see more of them. Part of it is that I like getting to see cultures that we don't often get to see, but I would also like to have more insight into their perspective on things. As the 2008 war made clear, Russo-Georgian tensions didn't end with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Anyway, it's an outstanding movie. While it is a bit long, the plot makes up for that. I recommend it.

This wonderful Georgian film emerged from the last years of the Soviet regime, but seems to have disappeared without trace. The final film of a trilogy by the veteran film-maker Tengiz Abuladze, it portrays a composite monster, Varlam (Hitler moustache, Mussolini shirt & braces, Stalin boots, Beria pince-nez) and his equally grotesque son Abel, both played by the same actor.

The film has a surrealist, dreamlike quality about it, framed by initial and final scenes in a cake-shop and with police almost comic in medieval armour. The main actions which initiate the plot are surrealist with the repeated exhumation of Varlam's corpse. The two monstrous central characters are no more than mayors of a small Georgian town - but there is nothing comic about their actions and the reign of terror they bring to the community. The elements of tyranny are revealed economically, with hints of atrocities and disappearances but only one brief torture scene. The overall message is that of personal responsibility. The tyrannical regime is not an anonymous bureaucracy but the deliberate creation of evil men. And the final repentance is a horrific recognition of those responsibilities. An unmissable film, beautifully made and superbly acted - if you can find it.

The movie starts with a newspaper obituary recording the death of Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a town in Georgia. We're then shown what has happened in the town in the past when Varlam was mayor. He's nominally a communist type, however it's made pretty clear that his stripes, and the stripes of all Stalinists, are feudal. This is shown, for example, by having the police of the town dressed as mediaeval knights. It's an idea explored in Iosseliani's Brigands too, that Russian rulers have been a succession of crazed autocratic knaves.

At one point in the film Varlam plaintively quotes from Shakespeare's sonnet 66:

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly doctor-like controlling skill, And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Which is a harangue against everything he stands for. He's a man who has knowingly chosen to do wrong, a comedian who has turned his fiefdom into a comedy of terror. At one point he arranges for his son to jump out of a second story window to shock his captive audience, but in fact the boy is caught below. He surrounds himself with illiterate sycophants whom he brings into and out of favour arbitrarily, arranges for people to be arrested and benevolently releases them when complaints are made. In the end however he's merely a snake playing with its live food before devouring.

Varlam arranges for people to be exiled, presumably to Siberia although we're not told. One day a shipment of logs arrives on the outskirts of town. They have been logged by the kidnapped men of the town. Each survivor has carved their name into the end of the timber. Women from the town trudge around the muddy lumberyard looking for their husbands' names, looking for proof of life for men denied the right of correspondence. This is the most powerful scene in my opinion.

There are also a number of dream scenes and very surreal scenes that are very appealing in their artistry, which I leave the reader to discover for themselves.

Varlam is, as has been pointed out, a concoction of dictators (superficially containing elements of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin), but may well, in more concrete terms be based on a real life figure, Georgian-born Lavrentiy Beria, a man more unpleasant than the imaginations of most can conjure up. He was Stalin's chief murderer, a sexual sadist who performed unimaginable feats of depravity, he also briefly participated in the running of Russia as part of a "troika" after Stalin's death. The film does not dwell on the huge depths of his depravities, as the acts he performed are unspeakable and unfilmable. The film is a quiet but firm indictment however of Stalinist politics, of the manipulation and double-think and an ode to Georgian culture.

The purpose of the film is to not let Beria, or more generally the authoritarians of the time, rest in peace; to act as testament to the cruel depravities of the Stalinist era.

In my opinion it's absolutely unmissable.

For the first time I've seen this movie in 1988 under, rotting and toothless, but still red regime in little movie in Bytom, Poland. Without subtitles but only with man reading the dialogs from the book. Atmosphere was tensed and with the taste of conspiracy. This time Pokajanije was for me thrilling experience with breathtaking performance of Macharadze and Ninidze. Once again I watched it in TV few years later and I've found a little dated and emasculated in uncovering communist's crimes. But still it was great cinematic, beautifully filmed experience. Now, I've ordered DVD in dvdplanet (it's still unavailable in Poland) and I'm really curious for my nowadays impression.

25 dec 2004

Today I've watched the movie once again after the reading of Montefiore's book "Stalin - the court of the Red Tsar. In this book I've found the story of Kawtaradze family. Sergo Kawtaradze, old revolutionist and comrade of Stalin during the great purge, in 1936 was arrested with his wife Sofia. Both were cruelly tortured in Lubianka. Daughter Maya, 11 years old, wrote many letters to Stalin, begging for the parents' life. After 3 years of imprisonment Kawtaradzes were freed but still in danger of arresting again. Few weeks later suddenly at 6 AM Stalin & Beria came to Kawtaradzes. Stalin kindly spoke with daughter Maya. In her memories she wrote that he was charming and kind. He also sang a song with "pleasant tenor". They also ate dinner (Stalin ordered it in the best georgian restaurant in Moscow, Aragwi. I'm sure that episode in the movie when Warlam and Doxopulo visits Sandro's home is loosely based on this event

When in Soviet Georgia a woman named Keto is arrested for digging up the remains of Valam, the long time mayor of a small town, she defends herself recalling the terror created by the mayor when she was a child. Valam (played by Avtandil Makharadze) has a Hitler mustache but is clearly based on Lavrenti Beria, who before being head of the Soviet security services, was the top leader in Georgia, and under whose rule the worst part of the great purges happened (Beria was known for its particular cruelty). Keto's father was the painter Sandro Barateli (played by Edisher Giorgiobani, a redhead who looks like Vincent Van Gogh) who was arrested by Valam after he tried to protest the destruction of an ancient church (regarding the name, it might be worth noting that one notable victim of Beria was the theater director Sandro Akhmeteli).

This might be the most anti-communist film ever made in the Soviet Union, though its aesthetics are very much in the Soviet tradition of the Brezhnev era. I might be wrong, but I think this was the first time a Soviet film touched on the issue of the Stalinist "repressions". In a touching moment, Keto declares on the stand that such actions cannot be forgiven (this was filmed during a period in history where the repressions were hardly mentioned at the official press). It's amazing this film was even made. It was released in 1987 to wide acclaim after being shelved for several years. The movie goes beyond criticizing the "excesses" of Stalinism, but goes on to attack the heart of the Soviet system. On the minus side, the movie is sometimes overwrought and has a lot of surreal, bizarre touches, that are not always successful. And at around two hours and a half, the film is also too long, with parts that are a bit of a struggle.

All repressed societies tend look back at the horrors of the past with a twinkle in the eye. Tengiz Abuladdze's Monanieba (Repentance) uses black comedy, satire, allegory, magical realism, and surrealistic dream sequences, as the stones to tread on, offering the movies' viewers disturbing images to recall historical events of their own lifetime.

In a small town in Georgia, a mayor by the name of Varlam Aravidze dies. Eulogies are mouthed by very important and least important denizens of how great an individual he was. But his corpse keeps surfacing in his house, exhumed by unknown forces. Eventually, a woman baker who bakes the best cakes in town (with delicious church steeples as icing) is found to be the one who keeps exhuming the body each time it is buried and reburied. Three-fourths of the film revolves around on her motives for repeatedly exhuming the body. This is the section of the film that re-evaluates the tyrannical life of the dead man. The dead man's son Abel is reluctant to admit his father's evil acts but the dead man's grandson is ashamed of his grandfather's acts. The baker who had exhumed the body was directly affected by Varlam's tyranny and says she will not let the dead man be buried and is ready to accept the consequences. Her strange actions and what motivates them are allegorical of what Georgians endured during Stalin's rule in Soviet Russia. The three generations of Varlam's family depict the changing values within Soviet Russia, with winds of Perestroika and Glasnost blowing on the faces of the younger generations.

Repentance is the last film of the Georgian filmmaker Tengiz Abuladze, who died soon after the film was released. Repentance, like Klimov's Agoniya represents the Soviet movies that were released within Russia as Gorbachev unveiled Perestroika and Glasnost, allowing audiences to reflect on issues that they never dared to discuss in the open earlier.

The lead evil character Varlam Aravidze (translated as Varlam "nobody", a name chosen to escape the censors) is an amalgam of Hitler (moustache), Mussolini (black shirt), Stalin (haircut) and Lavrenti Beria (pince-nez spectacles). It is a political parable on the evils of dictators, when small-town bureaucrats use cunning and deceit to crush cultural values of art, and ethical values of religion, law and marriage. Historically, Stalin and Beria crushed the national spirit of Georgians targeting the intelligentsia and the Church. Abuladze was among the few that survived.

Repentance is a critique of Soviet history and assumes greater importance because it was made by a Soviet director and released in Soviet Union. The finest sequences of the film that would not be lost on East European audiences, in my opinion, were of a mother and child search for names of loved ones etched on logs that have been recently brought from Siberia, because political prisoners communicated with their families using this unusual method, and the final sequence of an old woman searching for the church (which has obviously been destroyed) in the empty town, a simple sequence that signifies hope for the future.

Death and consequent burial often indicates forgiveness. Didn't Mark Antony imply this when he said the dead is "oft interred with their bones" over Caesar's corpse? Abuladze's heroine Ketavan keeps exhuming the dead and buried corpse to expose the misdeeds of a despotic Stalinist hero (recalling Alea's bureaucrat in the annals of Cuban cinema) while baking cakes with symbolic church steeples on the icing (reference to the deep loss of theism and orthodox religion in Stalinist attempts to replace religion with science). Ketavan's father is an artist with features that resemble Western images of Christ. The evil figures relish hogging the church steeples on cake icing and cooked fish (a typical Christian symbol).

Abuladze's film approaches "repentance" by looking at evil squarely in the eye and not by sweeping it under the carpet. Interestingly this is the very approach that Hans-Jurgen Syberberg took while analyzing the rise of Hitler in his superb yet controversial 10-hour long documentary Hitler-A film from Germany. Abuladze's cinema like most Soviet filmmakers (Klimov, Tarkovsky, Kozintsev, Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, Zvyagintsev, etc.) is built on values that Soviet citizens imbibed through the Russian Orthodox Church.

In Repentance, the new generation seems to accept the misdeeds of their tyrannical family members and seek repentance, while the older generation prefers to go to jail by exhuming tyrannical "heroes" and exposing their misdeeds. Both types of repentance make the film an interesting tool to study history of Soviet Russia. What is remarkable is that just as a parallel to the contents of the film, the directors and writers of Georgian cinema exhume the misdeeds of the past, and the new generation of film studio authorities and censors "repent" somewhat by releasing these films in theaters in Soviet Russia (including Georgia) and other nearby countries.

In Abuladze's film, surrealistic and satirical dream images of men putting flowers in a grand piano combine with images of a blindfolded woman with scales (symbolizing justice) playing the piano before being led way by a man in black, with white gloves. There is black comedy as tortured prisoners "name names" so that no one will be left without being a suspect and the jails will be full of suspects.

Abuladze has much to convey and at times seems to go over the top in his efforts to poke fun at tyranny. This is perhaps why Abuladze loses out to the more subtle works of Paradjanov (the most talented Georgian filmmaker), Tarkovsky, Kozintsev and Klimov, while driving home a similar message to the viewers. The cinema of Abuladze is more direct, while Tarkovsky and Kozintsev more circumspect and open-ended. But Abuladze's cinema is, without doubt, film making that will unsettle a viewer to think about life after the film ends. The question each viewer should ask is: Where are the Varlams that we encounter in life and can we rest by burying them?

It's almost impossible to appreciate the extraordinary conditions which inspired this Soviet political allegory, and which (after four years in limbo) allowed it to finally be released. But is it worth the necessary mental arithmetic required to understand it as a native Russian might? Certainly the film is a worthwhile barometer of (then) current Soviet attitudes, but most of the dramatic potential in the scenario is wasted on transparent symbolism and too many ponderous soliloquies into the nature of sin and guilt. It wants to be a satire of Josef Stalin's bloody dictatorship, but the story is little more than a simple political fantasy, set in a nameless city where the corpse of the recently deceased mayor keeps reappearing in public, prompting several flashbacks to the tyranny and oppression of his life in power. The daring comparison of Stalin to Hitler must have been heady stuff for sheltered Soviet filmgoers, just then coming to grips with glasnost, but for the rest of us the most memorable aspect of the film might be its striking poster art.

This is a very good film. It works on several levels. I don't know whether this was intended by it's authors or no, but the general outline of the film has obvious Alice in the Wonderland (or Through the Looking-Glass) allusion. The confectioner woman imagines (or dreams about) a story of revenge and justice (a real cruel fairy tale adventure full of evil and good characters, colorful and strange images) and as in `Alice' right when the story gets kind of `out of control' (grandson kills himself with grandfathers riffle, son digs out the corpse of his father.) we get back to the cosy room of confectioner, from where our adventures to the past and future have begun.

It was really interesting to see the story of Totalitarian regime through this `fairy tale' angle. They make a lot of films that are meant to be much more historically precise than `Repentance', but most of them are flat and look more like TV dramatizations of some definite actual events than the works of art. And `Repentance' is an art-film in a very good sense of this word.

The closing sequence of Old Woman walking up the street (looking for the Temple - justice, freedom, happiness?) accompanied by heavenly classic music is one of the most beautiful film episodes I've ever seen.

for me, as viewer from East, in 1990 , it was an revelation. not as cold portrait of totalitarian regime. not as page from the indictment against the Communism.but as reflection of its essence. a film who reflects and reminds the history of Europe. using a memorable character who has the gift to seduce and horrify. Varlaam is the image of a system. and not it is the subject in fact but the testimony who defines the others. a film about redemption and about memory. about the change and about the rules of dictatorship. extraordinaries images. and the hill of the Abuladze's fight for his art. it is easy to discover it as a beautiful, profound, philosophical film. but, in fact, it is only a testimony about a world's survive. not a parable. not sketch of a cruel regime. but a form of remember of people, values, sacrifices and the empty body of a dictatorship. for me, in 1990, it was a revelation. and, today, it has the same status. because, more than a story about evil, it is a warning about the importance of decision.

A witty, offbeat, surreal, and dark satire from Georgian director Tengiz Abuladze which is the final in his Trilogy. The film opens with newspaper obituary recording of the passing of the dictator Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a town in Georgia with a Hitler moustache, Mussolini shirt & braces, Stalin boots, Beria pince-nez). The film shifts from a courtroom drama with multiple flashbacks and surreal imageries supported with nightmarish allusion to Stalin's terror and a highlight of perestroika. It captures Varlam's rise to power and we are introduced to a surreal world where all logic takes place through the 'conscious' of this man and the deteriorating political circumstances around him. A bold film, a critique of Stalinism in Soviet history appreciating cultural values and my favourite film by T. Abuladze. Must been seen by all cinema lovers.

This film was absolute genius and, in my opinion, one of the best films produced in the 20th century. It is on par with films like the Seventh Seal and Schindler's List in terms of symbolism and philosophy. The only way one can not like this film is if one does not understand it- which is quite possible, if one is only haphazardly watching it and is not fully engaged, or is expecting the film to chew up the messages for you and give you something simple you can quickly take away without actually appreciating the movie- then this is the wrong film for you. In order to properly appreciate this film you have to engage in higher philosophical thought and reflect both on the lives of individuals of the Stalinist era as well as your own era, since this movie is timeless. It explores human nature at its basest level, and what causes humans to act in the ways they do.

When this film was passed by the Soviet censors, it was the most striking evidence yet that Gorbachev's glasnost was going to change profoundly the artistic climate in the Soviet Union. Supposedly, then-Soviet foreign minister (and current president of Georgia) Shevardnadze got it passed by Moscow as a favour to the director. For an account of this, read David Remnick's "Lenin's Tomb". The film was a blatant attack on two of Georgia's most famous historical villains - Stalin and Beria - and on dictatorship in general. Its moral force is indisputable. But its historical significance outweighs its artistic merit. Its grotesque and heavy symbolism pays tribute to Fellini but the film lacks its own artistic voice.

A very philosophical movie with easily traceable references to Stalin and Beria but still a general study in tyranny and victimization, beautifully filmed and masterly acted.

After the death of Stalin, folks in the Soviet Union were allowed to express their feelings towards his reign of terror...at least to a point. However, the government also was concerned that these complaints might lead to complaints about the current system--and this is probably why "Repentance" was banned for several years after it was filmed. It does attack the Stalinist era and mentality--but apparently those in power at the time weren't willing to allow such a film to be released.

"Repentance" is a very surreal sort of film--one which has many story elements that seem dreamy and unreal while the rest of it is quite literal. While there were purges, seeing the 20th century purges carried out by knights in armor, a living statue of Justice and many other story elements are dream-like and strange. This is not really a complaint--just an observation. The film looks almost like Dalí or Buñuel added a few touches here and there...just a few.

The story begins in the present day. The beloved mayor of a Georgian town, Varlem, has died and folks come to his funeral to pay their respects. However, several times after the funeral, the body of this man has been taken from the crypt and placed in his yard! After the third time, they catch the woman responsible and she is taken into custody. At the hearing, she openly admits having done it and tells a story of long ago--when Varlem first became mayor. At that time, he made a name for himself persecuting the innocent--and the story is about how this impacted the woman personally.

Following her long tale, the story goes to the present day. The hypocrisy and evil of Valem's friends are examined as well--including one case about a man who struggles between Atheism and Christianity. Under Christianity, he SHOULD feel guilt--and he ultimately gets to meet the Devil (this is pretty weird...and clever). Other folks all begin to confront their own part in Varlem's reign of terror.

Instead of this film directly attacking Stalinism, it clearly attacks these tactics on a smaller scale. And, I am sure it was not unintentional that Varlem looked much like a bloated Hitler! A very strange but daring film. While today it might be seen as very tame, back in the mid-1980s it must have caused the filmmakers a lot of problems--and potentially prison. Quite clever but quite slow and strange. Well worth seeing--especially if you lived through this era.

At first sight it is movie of one actor. Axis of grotesque world, master of hideous mask, puppeteer of essence of every dictator, Avtandil Makharidze is great in this parable-satire about power and pure cruelty. At first sight it is movie of its director, result of need to confess events of dark years, to cry - king is naked ! - after a deep and large silence. At first sight it is a gray fairy -tale in which monster is killed by delivery of truth. A woman for who past is blood of present. A cake, an artist, ruins of existences, look of nephew, a trial. At first sight it is tale about Varlaam. In fact it is only a masterpiece.