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| Images courtesy of Cannon Films and Ruscico DVD |
The Cannon Films empire managed by Israeli cousins Menahem
Golan and Yoram Globus is largely remembered for their ongoing rollout of cheaply
produced action-adventure or otherwise exploitation trash films replete with
sex, nudity, violence and a wealth of weirdness. However, midway into their tenure the Go-Go
Boys tried to clean up their act and image by both financing artier indie
projects like Barfly, Othello and Runaway Train by Russian
director Andrei Konchalovsky. During
this period they also began importing film productions from other countries and
doing their best to release them into a marketplace unsure of how to receive
such a product, among them today’s 1984 Soviet Georgian-Russian masterpiece Repentance.
Written and directed by Tengiz Abuladze, the film was banned outright in the Soviet Union before Mikhail Gorbachev loosened restrictions on the film around 1987 when it became a Cannes Film Festival top prize winner and Cannon Films picked it up for domestic release where it further garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Though the film was subsequently banned in Russia again as well as drawing the ire of Eastern German authorities who disliked the film’s anti-authoritarian tone, it nevertheless was a critically acclaimed artistic breakthrough which won its leading actor Avtandil Makharadze the Best Actor awards in both the Chicago International Film Festival as well as Russia’s Nika Awards ceremony. So powerful was the film’s plea for change that Gorbachev included the film’s director Abuladze with him on his trip to New York in 1988 and in 2021 the Georgian National Film Center unveiled a new digital restoration of the film recently on tour at Cannes.
Based on a real incident in Georgia, Repentance begins in a small Georgian town involving the death of local town mayor Varlam Aravidze (Avtandil Makharadze). After an opulent funeral procession with lots of flowers and music followed by the burial, the body inexplicably is exhumed and placed out in the garden of the deceased’s son Abel (Makharadze again). The corpse is promptly reburied only to be exhumed again, prompting a police investigation leading to the arrest of a middle-aged woman, Ketevan Barateli (Zeinab Botsvadze), who vows in the courtroom to continue to exhume the mayor’s body for as long as she lives.
Put on the stand in trial, Barateli proceeds to recount her tale in flashback, cutting back to several years earlier when she was just a nine-year-old living with her artist father and mother. We learn during her childhood, the beloved oversized Teddy Bear mayor Varlam was in fact a domineering monster who would proceed to terrorize her family including but not limited to making both of her parents and friends vanish without a trace and presumably executed.
Initially stemming from a dispute over some electronic
experiments being conducted in a local church before the Stalinist mayor all
but completely bulldozes any and all who stand in his way, the character of
Varlam appears in and out of the characters lives almost like a phantom coming
and going as he pleases in a mixture of magical realism and dreamlike fleeting
asides. All the while, as the court does
its best to disparage Barateli and sweep under the rug Varlam’s transgressions,
his grandson Tomike (Merab Ninidze) takes the terrible news to heart and his
shame will define his father Abel’s stance on Varlam’s devilish legacy.
Felliniesque, surreal, absurdist, satirical and ultimately a phantasmagorical work of political cinema, Tengiz Abuladze’s 153-minute yet riveting Repentance is perhaps one of the best 1980s Soviet dramedies since Karen Shakhnazarov’s Zerograd or The Assassin of the Tsar with the ferocious deep seated angry protest of Sergei Solovyov’s Assa. Brilliantly photographed by Mikhail Agranovich in 1.33:1 and edited with a whip by Guliko Omadze, the film’s blocking and staging as well as use of intercutting is all technically proficient stuff being doled out here. The somber orchestral soundtrack by Nana Dzanelidze interspersed with some subtle electronic rumblings and a bevy of preexisting classical music by Khachaturian, Debussy, Beethoven, Boney and Gounod helps to musically draw shades over our eyes and heart as it becomes clearer the actions of Varlam aren’t so easy to hide anymore.
Felliniesque, surreal, absurdist, satirical and ultimately a phantasmagorical work of political cinema, Tengiz Abuladze’s 153-minute yet riveting Repentance is perhaps one of the best 1980s Soviet dramedies since Karen Shakhnazarov’s Zerograd or The Assassin of the Tsar with the ferocious deep seated angry protest of Sergei Solovyov’s Assa. Brilliantly photographed by Mikhail Agranovich in 1.33:1 and edited with a whip by Guliko Omadze, the film’s blocking and staging as well as use of intercutting is all technically proficient stuff being doled out here. The somber orchestral soundtrack by Nana Dzanelidze interspersed with some subtle electronic rumblings and a bevy of preexisting classical music by Khachaturian, Debussy, Beethoven, Boney and Gounod helps to musically draw shades over our eyes and heart as it becomes clearer the actions of Varlam aren’t so easy to hide anymore.
The performances across the board are spectacular with Avtandil Makharadze playing both father and son in this sordid saga. With his little Hitler moustache and tiny rimmed glasses, the oversized heavy mayor Varlam is a frightening presence to be around as all of his subtle efforts to dominate and control are all preceded by jovial social niceties. Take for instance a scene near the beginning in which the mayor and two associates appear at the heroine’s doorstep dressed in a bird costume. The feel of these scenes are oddly playful and childlike, echoing some of the earlier vistas of Russian folklore master Aleksandr Ptushko, and its for that very reason the character feels threatening, how he ingratiates himself on the family with social niceties while deploying underhanded threats. To make matters worse, he sings to them in a strong, imposing tenor voice. Equally powerful are Zeinab Botsvadze as the angry woman who will not let her aggressor’s body and soul rest in peace and her parents played by Ketevan Abuladze and Edisher Giorgobiani who sense encroaching danger and are simply trying to survive together.
Banned outright shorting after being screened for three years before 1987 when Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the film to be screened all over the Soviet Union and internationally, the film is regarded today as one of the most important cinematic expressions of Georgia and an exemplar piece of surrealist political filmmaking that also has shades of Karen Shakhnazarov and Terry Gilliam. A hard uncompromising yet playfully weird downer firing on every creative cylinder, Repentance though decidedly anti-Soviet in tone was perhaps among the best films to emerge from the Soviet Union at the time.
Like Assa released roughly around the same time, it spoke to
quiet protest while also functioning as a character study of what happens when
a carefully maintained political legacy is pierced if not destroyed by an
average person who saw through the Emperor’s clothes and is ready to expose him
to the world for what he really was. Once
again, proof positive the Soviets knew a lot more about masterful cinematic
provocation than the rest of the world was aware of.
--Andrew Kotwicki