Simindis kundzuli

As a review, I wouldn't go much into detail since the movie itself is minimal in most of the sense but if you are nature loving slow paced artistic movie fan, You will surely love this movie.

Although movie present post-war conflict between two nations, there's hardly any dynamics in visually or audibly.Simple story narration, An old man and his grand daughter find themselves in a small island temporarily formed by river and cultivate corn.

Director portray entire procedure in growing a corn plants which might feel a bit slow but the breezy tone of the cinematography makes the movie intellectually engaging This is a thought provoking beautifully executed art piece.

About cinema it is said that sometimes images convey perfectly what words fail to express. When words are uttered they make sense only when they merely suit the situations for which they were spoken. This effect is shown in Georgian film "Corn Island" with utmost austerity as an old man and his young grand-daughter set foot on a small island in the middle of a river. Their sudden arrival sets off a climate of distrust in the minds of other people. This is the start of a difficult life for them as there are also others who would like to see them defeated in their mission. There are some films which develop at their own pace. It is likely that laymen would call them slow whereas true admirers of cinema would label them as poetic works of art. Corn Island is one such film which would immensely appeal anybody who appreciates cinema as a poetic art. One can see how the entire process of planting a seed until the final stages of agriculture is carried out. The origin of this poetic film can be traced back to a day in August 1992 when an Abkhazian person ordered Georgian director George Ovashvili to leave Abkhazian black sea coast. According to him the war had started.

Every year, the level of the Enguri River drops to uncover islands with fertile river-bottom soil. Locals can temporarily claim these islands for a season to grow a subsistence crop. An old man with one oar in an old wooden boat slowly makes his way to just such an island. He paces it off, digs the earth, tastes the soil, decides it will do, and marks his claim with a scrap of cloth on a stick. He leaves and then returns again and again, bringing supplies including scrap lumber to build a cabin with a thatched roof and then to plant corn with the help of his granddaughter who's in her early adolescence. Almost no words are spoken.

A big part of this film is thus man versus nature. Will nature allow the old man and his granddaughter to scratch a living from this transient plot of land? This part of the film might as well be prehistoric because it's so primitive. Intentionally so.

There's another part of the film caused by the island's location: in no-man's land between the warring country of Georgia and Abkhazia, a breakaway territory. This off-screen conflict brings soldiers from both sides into the film and we have man versus man versus man.

The film takes its time in all things. It's slaved to nature's pace and the growing corn. Things unfold slowly. Some of them aren't explained. That's the way it is in real life.

If you like artistic films with beautiful cinematography, this is a film for you. If you're looking for complex ideas and twisted plots, look elsewhere. This is a primal film about conflicts in nature, conflicts between men.

Every spring the Inguri River, which forms the boundary between Georgia and Abkhazia, washes down rocks and soil creating tiny islands. Local peasants leave the riverbanks for the firm, fertile island soil to grow corn through the summer before they are eroded away by winter. Georgia's submission for Best Foreign Language Film Corn Islanddirected by George Ovashvili follows a nondescript ageing farmer and his naive granddaughter as they migrate to an island and cultivate a year's crop. During such time, border patrols from both Georgia and Abkhaz pass by, causing tensions to rise between each other while the protagonists are caught in the middle.

Corn Island provokes an idea most memorable in the finale of Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion – this illusion being the definitions of land ownership. Through nature's creation of a temporary island and then the Old Man's claim of his own little country, the film poetically points out the irrationality of conflict over differences from being born on different pieces of land. It's thoroughly profound, but one only teased in the otherwise sparse film. Ovashvili's approach is very reminiscent of the work of Ki-duk Kim, especially Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring, with the tranquil relationship with nature, meditative pace and limited dynamics, but equal in their beauty.

The narrative is procedural, simply watching the characters build a hut, plant the seeds and farm the crop. It's lethargic, but engaging. For the most part, the characters are blank slates, but it's about what they represent. It's all about the elements, and they're always fragile and unbalanced, as the film works on the natural tension of impending and inevitable expiration. Tensions do rise when the soldiers pass by in the boats, and there is character development with the granddaughter, who's in the throes of puberty. As she catches their eye and they to her, her internal conflict about her desires for outsiders illustrates the fateful and fatal sparks between nations.

The film's elegance is owed to the precise and impressive aesthetics. Veteran Hungarian cinematographer Elemer Ragalyi's serene gliding photography captures the world on a grand but desolate scale. In essence, the film is a soundscape, with no dialogue and hardly any score until near the end. The sharp sound work creates a palpable atmosphere like last year's All is Lost. The film does suffer in its rare moments of dialogue as Ovashvili is more confident in the naturalistic poetry of man against man and man against nature but those scenes don't drag the film down. Corn Island is a slow-burning but well-executed thought- provoking film that's worth watching, especially for fans of art cinema on the lookout for fresh faces.

8/10

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I actually stumbled upon this film by accident. In my search for all things horror, I came across "Corn Island" somewhere. Maybe there is another "Corn Island" movie lurking about, but this definitely wasn't it. About 15 or 20 minutes in, when I realized that this wasn't horror, I kept it playing anyway because it did seem interesting.

Really, it was almost a silent feature as the characters didn't speak much. What intrigued me was the Georgian setting, the picturesque cinematography, the backdrop of war, and the whole idea about planting corn on an island year after year. Acting all around was good, too.

When I was younger I spent a lot of time watching foreign language dramas from France, Russia, Turkey, Japan, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and other places. I think it's time to give films from Georgia my full attention, too, since they seem to rate so high right here on IMDb.