Montanhas Azuis

Yay for a baiting title. The Blue Mountains, or Unbelievable Story. Refers to one of the slightly chuckles inducing gag with the protagonist trying to get his script read that is never read. Another one is the Greenland painting that is surrounded by bureaucracy to get removed. Other thing is the irksome motoball league that is somehow always playing outside, supposedly the cause of the building falling apart from the vibrations.

When it comes to humor, am I difficult to impress or is this not my type of humor? You tell me. I chuckled in my head maybe a few times, but other than that it was nothing impressive to warrant the ridiculously high ratings, currently 8.7 & 4.0, IMDB & LetterBoxd, respectively. Used repetition, running gags, in a proficient manner that made for an entertaining enough couple hours, but nothing to write home about!

The director, Eldar Shengelaia, remembers newspapers praising "Blue Mountains", writing that "this is Kafka!" after it premiered on Cannes film festival in 1985. And just as Kafka's "Process" (which this movie was most likely compared to) is often narrowed to a "criticism of authoritarian rule", so is this movie commonly interpreted as (merely) a comedy that satirizes bureaucracy. This is, I think, a misapprehension. Kafka - and here I'll stop using him because I don't think it's all that similar - wrote about life in general, or life as a process where you're declared guilty and sentenced (to death) for reasons unknown to you. "Blue Mountains" is also about life in general.

A young author is trying to get his novel published, walking around the publishing house and delivering copies of his manuscript to different employees, who, despite the protagonist's persistence, eventually don't read it. This is the leitmotif. The reason his novel is not read by anyone is not bureaucracy - they just don't want to. These people are neither too busy, nor hostile or stupid communists who can't appreciate a talented young voice - we don't even know if the novel is any good; They don't want to do what they are currently destined to do, they are indifferent, so they procrastinate, follow other commitments, and sometimes blame bureaucracy (if no one reads the review at least I've learned how to spell this word). I'm not completely denying the portrayal of some problems caused by too much bureaucracy in this movie - especially the part about "removing Greenland", a kitsch painting barely hanging above a desk of an employee who's afraid it will eventually fall on him but can't remove it without a permission, which is not granted to him. However, it would be naive to assume that the enduring fame and appeal for this movie is a result of general audience's disdain of soviet bureaucracy.

Another thing some critics say is that the publishing house, walls of which crack and, ultimately, it collapses, is an allegory of Soviet Union. Allegedly, when Gorbachev saw this movie he told Shevardnadze that unless they do something about it, USSR is going to collapse as this building did. Today it seems like an obvious comparison as we know that USSR has in fact collapsed similarly to the building and this movie predicted it's fall. However, this is not how the movie ends. In the last scene, as we are shown the new building from the outside (new republic after the collapse, if we follow this allegory), where the publishing has moved, we hear the familiar angry voice shouting "remove it (meaning "Greenland")!". Back to the first point, I see this movie as a portrayal of attitudes of different people towards life and work and generally, the will of a man to be doing "something else".

Let's not forget what an amazing collaboration this movie is: film director Eldar Shengelaia working with one of the best XX century Georgian writers - Rezo Chkheidze on the script and soundtrack being written by Giya Kancheli - a composer known abroad chiefly as a contributor to modern classical music and in post-soviet countries as an author of unforgettable scores for movies. The cast consists of both award-winning actors and non-actors. "Blue Mountains" is very lovely. Sometimes I find myself looking for a single scene or a single line and then end up watching the whole movie.

Twenty-two years after I saw it in cinema, Shengelaya's "Blue Mountains" still makes me laugh my ass off every time when I remember virtually ANY of its scenes. I can't forget the obsessive fight off the Honorable Vaso about the Groenland landscape threatening to crash upon his head, the eggs of the Venerable Irodion, or the perpetual answer of Shuqri Gomelauri: "No, I won't read - and YOU KNOW why I don't read!" :( The automatic idiosyncrasies of Zaza Zazaevitch ("Look at them! Playing football with motorcycles! I'm surprised they don't play it with buses!"), and the dementially absurd experiment with the bike's engine gunned inside the offices by Comrade Artem Tschatschanidze - the gorilla-like president of the moto-ball federation who, incidentally, also wrote a poetry manuscript - of love lyrics! The messy fables author who for no reason at all turns into a mining engineer, and his hysteric relationship with the dizzy Aunt Tamara. The daily ritual of the Beautiful Bella's husband and daughter coming to the office, after school, only to see her again courted by Soso... And, most of all, the irresistible absentee characters: Murmanidze, the one who never applied his signature, Kuparadze, the one who always gave a friendly call, and the elusive Guivi, always hidden and silent behind the locked door of his office where the two thugs knock every day: "Guivi, it's us!" - to no avail... Definitely, "The Blue Mountains" remains a masterpiece of the most absurd humor possibly. Imaginative and fresh, fast paced and precise - in a full contrast with the bureaucratic world it's depicting: dumb and stale, sluggish and chaotic. Worth sitting on the same shelf with Beckett's "En attendant Godot", Ionescu's "Rhinocéros" and "La Cantatrice Chauve", and Kafka's "Trial". I still pray to find it one day on the torrents or P2P!

L.E.: I got it! :D I have it on DVD! Wowwwidze!

absurd humor, memorable characters, a manuscript and a fight with shadows. a film about a death soul society, gallery of masks and hypocrisy, prisoners of waste of time and victims of need to be only insignificant shadows of existence. a film from East who present not only a deep crisis who can be considered version of Ionesco or Beckett theater but , in fact, it is only cruel-precise image of Soviet Union fall. nothing new because this form of satire is present, as instrument against politic regime, in many films from Communist camp but in this mixture of Ilf and Petrov, Bruno Schultz and Daniil Harms is something different. the secret ingredient - poor manuscript who can broke the large - fragile circle of fake certitudes.

BLUE MOUNTAINS, OR AN IMPROBABLE STORY ("Why two titles?") is an absurdist tale in which a novelist takes his latest manuscript to his familiar publishing house, only to have it pushed aside, lost, damaged, stolen, or simply ignored again and again as the employees go about their meaningless, repetitive work. Things start out fairly normal and get gradually stranger as the story continues. As film satires go it's not quite as cunning as Bunuel's best work (which it seems it could have been influenced by) but it's still a funny, sharp and brutally honest jab at the crumbling Soviet government and bureaucratic ineptness in all its forms. Ramaz Giorgobiani's expressionless lead performance is an interesting and eventually necessary realist counterpoint to the often wild and intentionally bloated performances of the bureaucrats. The aforementioned Bunuel is an obvious cinematic connection, as is Fellini's ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL, but as I was watching it I kept thinking this is what might happen if Preston Sturges filmed a Kafka story. Well worth a look.