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THE FILM WORLD SHOULD TAKE NOTE OF
SHENGELAIA”S GENIUS
BY PETER WILSON
PIROSMANI: DIRECTOR GEORGE SHENGELAIA
Two fi lms do not make a rebirth of cinema any more than one
swallow makes a summer.
But if they did, it would be quite possible to say that something
must be going on in Soviet Georgia and Armenia that is of the
utmost importance for the whole world of fi lm, something that
no one interested in the possibility of cinema as art can aff ord to
ignore.
Th e fi rst fi lm in this tiny category – known to me, that is – is
Parajanov’s “Color of Pomegranates”. Th e second is George
Shengelaia’s “Pirosmani”. I am told there are two or three others.
Both fi lms concern artists – in “Pomegranates” a musician, in
“Pirosmani” a painter. Both make the most exquisite use of color
since Melies handpainted “Voyage to the Moon”.
Th e really amazing point of resemblance, however, is that both
are highly religious works and among the small handful of fi lms I’ve
ever seen that express something genuine about mysticism. Th is is
even more true of “Pirosmani” than of pomegranates, since it manages
to be much less subjective, more restrained , simpler and perhaps
more orthodox.
Nicolas Pirosmani is a “naive” painter who makes his living decorating
cabarets and restaurants and shops in-turn-of the century
Tifl is (capital of Georgia). He is an eccentric character; he runs
away from his wedding, distributes everything he gets to the poor,
loves a cabaret singer from afar but never touches her, and paints
because “St. George tells me to paint”.
His work, like himself, is simple but in a sort of holy way. It deals
with traditional Georgian themes of farm life, celebration, animals
and religious subjects in a style that is half icon, half his own, pure
inner vision of the beauty and richness of all he sees. His character
is fantastically refi ned, within its own peculiar boundaries, by suff
ering, faith and purity – traits which neither his uneducated compatriots
nor the sophisticated artists who discover him and make a
temporary fashion of his work can possibly understand.
Shengelaya’s genius lies in the humility to let this character speak
for itself, and in using fi lm to recreate the “taste” of Pirosmanis’s own
vision. Like Parajanov he obviously designs each frame of the fi lm,
seeing the medium in a sense as painting in motion rather than
photographs in sequence. Th is individual “paintings” however, are
integrated into a harmonious, almost ritual rhythm, with a grasp of
the possibilities of montage which links Shengelaya directly to the
Eisenstein of “Ivan the terrible”.
One might almost dare to call this fi lm an improvement on
“Ivan” however, because of the much more highly advanced concept
of sound and music it demonstarates, but even more for its
use of color.
Just as composition is used to create for the viewer the world as
Pirosmani sees in so are the highly unusual colors, the most medieval
palette of earth green and browns touched like an icon with
high lights of gold and wine red, and the patterns of Caucasian
gelims and Persian carpets.
Th e “mysticism” then lies not so much in the dialogue of the fi lm
(though it lies there too) as in the fi lm’s success as fi lm is recreating
an inner vision which itself is mystical, more intense, more real
than “reality”. Th us we are engaged in a style that is not realistic,
nor surrealistic, no “naïve” in the sense that Pirosmani’s marvelous
paintings are naïve, but which almost be called “metarealistic”.
Symbolism here is used in such an exact way (the series of images
describing Pirosmani’s death on Easter morning for example) that
one is forced to wonder about the actual sources of Sengelaias’s
inspiration.
It is possible that the historical character of the artist himself,
and the presence and feeling of his paintings, have enabled the director
to compose a fi lm on these subjects that is in itself a religious
document? Or have the material and the meaning of the material
come together in a mind already made receptive by what we might
call –even if hesitantly – the presence of the spirit?
I don’t mean to suggest here either, that Shengelaia and Parajanov
are in fact actual Christian mystics. However, I cannot see
any way to get around suggesting that these forces – the Christian
“renaissance” and the materialistic society which gave it birth –
have in some way infl uenced the work of these directors. On one
hand there is the suggestive fact of the great diffi culty they have
experienced in making their fi lms and getting them released. On
the other hand, there is the evidence of the fi lms themselves.
You don’t get peacocks’ eggs from crows. Toy don’s get fi lms like
“Pirosmani” from ideologues delving into local “folk” culture for
proof of offi cial dogmas.
If fi lm is going to go anywhere at all it has got to go in the direction
of fi lms like “Pirosmani” Cinema must come to confront the
fact that is real and its only possibility as art is to deal with vision
precisely the way Shengelaia has done here – as inner vision given
concrete form. Th is is the logical development of what the earliest
and greatest fi lm makers were headed towards and from which we
have been almost fatally distracted by all the “isms” – surrealism
and realism alike - to the point of losing all sense of beauty and
correctness.
Intellectually too, the “isms” are a dead end – here one must
include political as well as artistic categories. Th e only thing that
holds any promise is a return to the origins, for such a return is
really the only “progress” man has ever been able to hope for.
Whether cinema can do this or not still, I think, remains an
open question. But “Pirosmani” gives one every hope that it can.
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