Il colore del melograno

This film may be genius, it may be the best thing ever to be put to screen but I hang my head in shame and tell you. I don't get it. I was left utterly perplexed by this from start to finish and doubt I will ever fully understand what it was going for. I will give it credit for it's beautiful cinematography but in terms of acting and story I couldn't really give any meaningful analysis. I won't say anything more in fear of embarrassing myself but as I have no idea what I was watching I have decided to go down the middle and give this a 5/10, it deserves that at least for how good it looked. If you understand what even one scene here is supposed to represent then you're a cleverer person than me.

How do you go from rich cinematic intuition to stifled ceremonial posing? I don't get it. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is one of the most enthralling films I have seen, it's just an endlessly spinning dance between the camera and a mystical world of song and suffering, spun and diffused into air. It rested on a profound realization that life is both real and has the mechanism of dreams.

It was a multifaceted world of many allusions but all of it was deftly integrated into the experience, you didn't need separate keys. This on the other hand is a notoriously difficult work, for a simple reason; you need a bunch of keys, and most of those are outside the film (it suffered at the hands of Soviet censors, no doubt, my guess however is that Parajanov's authorial version would operate on the same principles).

It is everything that grates at me as outmoded and needless obfuscation in cinematic narrative. Allegory. Symbolism (the nagging notion that the pomegranates ought to 'stand for something'). Cryptic dealings.

Instead of opening up our gaze to a world, it reduces to a set of paintings, supposedly that you have to decode. It is very much a presentation of cultural history, but at the expense of all the distinctly cinematic advantages of the medium.

This mode survives in a way in Peter Greenaway. But Greenaway works from Hamlet as his main reference, so all you need to know about the play is usually inside the play-within. This has no framework. It isn't the stuff that life is made from - it's only the stuff that art is.

The film is, of course, filled with surreal and fantastical imagery. Clearly brimming with spiritual and cultural meaning and the film takes us through the life of the poet. The films music and sound also adds to this almost dreamlike atmosphere. You let the words and sounds wash over you whilst the images play out in front of you. However, even the most beautiful images lose their magic when viewed through glazed eyes.

Unfortunately there is no getting away from it, this film is hard to maintain concentration with. Now this is through design. It isn't intended as a biopic of the poets life, but more as an abstract biopic of the poets work. Every image on screen is great, usually vibrant and surreal. The issue is that as there isn't really a plot/story, there's nothing to keep you engaged, so you end up just looking at a series of images. Again, whilst all are fantastic, they lose their magic quickly and they aren't in service to anything, aside from the allegorical/metaphorical/symbolic meaning (although lots of the symbolic meaning isn't very difficult to grasp).

So whilst visually beautiful and defiantly unique, if you don't have patience or require some form of story you may be better off watching Jodorowsky films instead.

PS This is only my first viewing, so my opinion may change if I see it again. Issue is that it was too dull to warrant a second viewing, although short.

One of the great films in all cinema, virtually incomprehensible to anyone not familiar with Armenian or Georgian history and culture. Whatever the dubious politics in enjoying a subversive political work as an aesthetic spectacle, there is much to astonish. The nominal story concerns an 18th century Armenian poet/national hero/martyr, but Paradjanov rejects biographical narrative in favour of a montage stream of religious, political, cultural, sexual imagery, composition and allegory unparalelled in the history of the medium, although fans of Von Sternberg will not be bemused.

Unlike most modern films, Color of Pomegranates does not abandon the subtle, pensive quality of silent film; it is actually a stunning evolution of silent film.

Here Parajanov documents an almost mythical culture lost long ago to history. I believe it is ancient Armenia. It is methodically presented as a slow series of visual artifacts. Each artifact is a complete scene composed foremost of an authentic visual setting, to which is added the hypnotic effect of some simple motion and ambient sounds, the source of which are often not even in view. Together these hypnotic scenes slowly mesmerize and transport the viewer to the mood and feel of a lost culture.

Besides scenes of ordinary ancient existence, which are amazing enough to see, compelling rituals are presented and left as purely mysterious, earthy, and spiritual, which the viewer can only struggle to explain.

The film is also a treasure of authentic clothing and costumes you may otherwise never see.

Color of Pomegranates serves as a surprising unspoken testament to this lost, ancient culture.

I rented this as a movie on DVD, which thankfully seems easy to find in the USA. I highly recommend the DVD, as it also offered a commented version by Parajanov himself, and an incredible interview with Parajanov, before he sadly passed away, in which he describes some of his amazing, tragic life and his epic struggles to create and release his work, most of which, including Color of Pomegranates, was banned or censored in the former Soviet Union. His years WASTED in damn Soviet prison are a true black mark on humanity, and one can only wonder what other fantastic work he might have created had he been free. His own story appears to be worthy of one of his many great films, as it is biblically tragic yet unquestioningly triumphant.