The Color of Pomegranates
dir.: Sergei Paradjanov
(Kino Video, total time 155 min.)
No one else has made a film like Sergei Paradjanov’s The Color of Pomegranates, although its images have been quoted everywhere from Madonna videos to Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh. Even Paradjanov couldn’t match it again. A biography of 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, it’s one of those rare works that creates a world entirely its own. But in this case, that world already existed. Paradjanov (who was born in the Soviet state of Georgia to Armenian parents) brought a museum’s worth of Armenian culture onscreen and, in doing so, made something new from it. The uniqueness of The Color of Pomegranates stems from its borrowing from other art forms. This isn’t a matter of simply lifting techniques or ideas, but of rethinking cinema from ground zero to suit Nova’s life and work.
First of all, the 1968 movie draws on Nova’s poetry, using quotes as the equivalent of silent film intertitles. It never illustrates them directly, and only rarely does it do so metaphorically, as when the poet’s declaration that his life has been full of pain and torture is followed by images of crushed fruit and flailing fish. As a narrative, Paradjanov’s storytelling is oblique. Its only thread is the progression of Nova’s life: his childhood discovery of the power of literature, servitude as a court troubadour in Georgia, eventual retreat into a monastery and old age. Practically all these events are depicted in ritualistic tableaux inspired by Byzantine mosaics, veiled with symbolism, rather than presented as a straightforward chronicle of daily life.
Paradoxically, film may be the medium to which The Color of Pomegranates owes the least. In some respects, it’s minimalist: no camera movement, very little dialogue, no conventional character development. In a 1985 interview, Paradjanov himself said that “its object is asceticism.” However, in describing a man who backs away from the world, the movie engages with the whole of Armenian life, down to its animals. (The extras include half a bestiary.) Nova’s poetry sounds relentlessly downbeat, but Paradjanov rarely matches its depressed tone. Instead, he creates stunning images that still startle after multiple viewings: a peacock with its head in a man’s mouth, a church filling up with sheep, Nova’s body surrounded by chickens flapping and shedding their feathers. The equally unusual soundtrack juxtaposes lovely choral interludes with screeching horn riffs and pounding percussion that a free-jazz musician would be proud to have created.
Paradjanov cited Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini as his favorite, and The Color of Pomegranates bears some resemblance both to Pasolini’s and Fellini’s work. However, it’s lean and trim where films like Fellini Satyricon and Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales now feel bloated, self-indulgent, and dated. Each image has the impact of a still life. In its spirituality and sympathetic portrait of a man who “dropped out” of serving the state, the film coincided with the counterculture zeitgeist, but this undoubtedly stemmed from shared interests rather than conscious intent. Indeed, it’s hard to figure out what the target audience for this reverie, which bridges the gap between Armenian folk culture and the ritualistic fantasies of American avant-garde directors like Kenneth Anger, could possibly be.
Paradjanov’s fifth feature, the 1964 Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors—which he calls the first film “where I found my theme: the struggle of a people”—earned awards at 23 film festivals, but this success, along with his status as an outsider exploring Ukrainian culture, eventually worked against him. The implicit religiosity and nationalism (a recurring theme in Paradjanov’s work) of The Color of Pomegranates didn’t please the Soviet commissars. The director would be tried for surrealism and homosexuality, among other “crimes,” and wound up serving four years in jail from 1974 to 1978. In prison, he turned to drawing and painting, but he wasn’t able to make another film until 1984. (The Color of Pomegranates wasn’t distributed in the West until the early ’80s.) As a filmmaker, he never fully regained his voice. His two final films, The Legend of Suram Fortress and Ashik Kerib (also being released, grouped together on one DVD, by Kino), share the sensibility of The Color of Pomegranates without recapturing its magic, although they’re well worth seeing.
The Color of Pomegranates’ very eccentricity may have helped this fragile treasure survive censorship and neglect, eventually attracting a worldwide cult audience. It has appeared on video in multiple versions, and Kino’s DVD is the best-looking one yet. However, it still suffers from a few technical flaws. While faithfully reproducing the film’s careful mix of pastels and bright reds (better than VHS could), the disc looks rather chalky and washed-out.
For newcomers to Paradjanov, it’s probably worth first watching Ron Holloway’s 1994 documentary Paradjanov: A Requiem, included as a bonus on The Color of Pomegranates DVD. (The DVD also includes Paradjanov’s 1965 10-minute short Hagop Hovanatanian.) Holloway isn’t much of a filmmaker himself: His voiceover is so lackadaisical that it sounds like he delivered it after a few bong hits, and he does little except alternate a lengthy interview with Paradjanov with clips from his films. However, Paradjanov is a magnetic, impassioned presence, and seeing him speak about his mentors, the dreadful influence of Socialist realism on Soviet cinema, his love for Pasolini, and his conviction that young people need to take Faust to heart helps ground his work.
Paradjanov’s first four features remain unavailable on video, and the 15-year break between The Color of Pomegranates and The Legend of Suram Fortress led to a plethora of uncompleted projects. Paradjanov: A Requiem helps fill in the holes with clips from rarities and tantalizing discussion of unproduced screenplays. (The director claimed to have written six based on stories overheard while in prison.) The man Holloway interviewed looks vital and optimistic, energized by perestroika and his freedom to travel. Alas, he would die only two years later, before being able to shoot his prison scripts or the adaptation of Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha he planned to make in America. At least his work has outlasted the regimes that crippled his life and career.
