Sergei Parajanov's film is, according to the IMDb, a surrealistic biography of Sayat Nova.
A little research on the Internet tells me that Sayat Nova was an 18th century Armenian poet, monk, and troubador who played the ashugh, a long-necked lute. With that in mind, I approached this movie with the intention to discover the images of his life, with a particular thought to looking for purple-red images and pomegranates.
There are plenty of those in what is a long series of brief quotations from his poetry and tableaux vivantes. I came quickly to realize that what I was looking at was a movie in the antique illustrated text style, images drawn from contemporary artwork and surviving architecture of the era; much of it was shot in monasteries and towns in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. They seemed to me exotic and frequently beautiful, but I soon began to question what I was seeing. Was there much of a pattern to this, or was I suffering from apophenia, the tendency to see patterns when none exists? Worse, was I trying to see apophenic patterns imposed by Parajanov which I lacked the context to see?
Ultimately I concluded, like many before me, that this was an experimental work. Such works, at length, are exhausting. They may point the way towards technique for following workers to use in their movies, but which I find unsatisfying in pure form, like drinking 180% alcohol. If your intention is to get drunk quickly, it works just fine, but it draws the moisture from your mouth and gullet. I can and do admire the dedication of Parajanov and his co-creators, but it's exhausting and leaves me utterly confused about the work in its entirety, despite the beauty of many of the images.
A little research on the Internet tells me that Sayat Nova was an 18th century Armenian poet, monk, and troubador who played the ashugh, a long-necked lute. With that in mind, I approached this movie with the intention to discover the images of his life, with a particular thought to looking for purple-red images and pomegranates.
There are plenty of those in what is a long series of brief quotations from his poetry and tableaux vivantes. I came quickly to realize that what I was looking at was a movie in the antique illustrated text style, images drawn from contemporary artwork and surviving architecture of the era; much of it was shot in monasteries and towns in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. They seemed to me exotic and frequently beautiful, but I soon began to question what I was seeing. Was there much of a pattern to this, or was I suffering from apophenia, the tendency to see patterns when none exists? Worse, was I trying to see apophenic patterns imposed by Parajanov which I lacked the context to see?
Ultimately I concluded, like many before me, that this was an experimental work. Such works, at length, are exhausting. They may point the way towards technique for following workers to use in their movies, but which I find unsatisfying in pure form, like drinking 180% alcohol. If your intention is to get drunk quickly, it works just fine, but it draws the moisture from your mouth and gullet. I can and do admire the dedication of Parajanov and his co-creators, but it's exhausting and leaves me utterly confused about the work in its entirety, despite the beauty of many of the images.