metalluk's Full Review: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
You've never seen a film like this film unless you've seen the film itself. The look and sounds of Sergei Paradjanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors feel so fresh and original that there is really nothing with which to compare it. It is simultaneously quaint and revolutionary, delving deep into the folklore of the Carpathian mountains but creating its mythic quality through an almost hallucinogenic phantasmagoria.
Historical Background: Sergei Paradjanov (1924-1990) was born Sarkis Paradjanian in Tiflis, Georgia in the U.S.S.R. His ancestry was Armenian. Paradjanov was a versatile artist, with talents for painting, music, and filmmaking. He initially thought to prepare himself for a career as a singer, attending the Kiev Conservatory of Music for three years in the early forties. He transferred, however, to the Moscow film institute, studying directing with Igor Savchenko and Lev Kuleshov. From the beginning, he displayed an affinity for folk tales. His graduation exercise was entitled Moldavian Fairy Tale (1951). He then took a job with the Kiev studios in the Ukraine and directed five films in a dozen years that conformed to the Soviet emphasis on social realism: Andriesh (1954), The First Lad (1958), Ukrainian Rhapsody (1961), The Stone Flower (1963), and Dumka (1964).
Nothing about Paradjanov's career to that point had prepared either the Soviet authorities or the world for what would come thereafter. For his next film, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965), Paradjanov thoroughly broke not only with the implicit restrictions of Soviet censorship but with virtually all of the antecedents of cinema. Shadows is such a visionary work of nonconformity that it seems as if created by a man with no prior exposure to film history. The Soviet authorities were dumbfounded by the stunning surrealism and visual experimentation but were horrified by the film's implied endorsement of Ukrainian regional nationalism. Soviet authorities denounced the film as decadent and subversive. Paradjanov was accused of formalism (the same charge that was levied decades earlier against Eisenstein). Seemingly in the blink of a film frame, Paradjanov was out of favor and out of work. He then compounded the official sanctions by taking up the causes of other political dissidents.
After that, Paradjanov had seldom a moment of peace from official harassment. He was repeatedly arrested and, sometimes, jailed on trumped up charges, that included homosexuality, spreading venereal diseases, fraud, inciting to suicide, and black marketeering. Exiled to Armenia, he managed to direct only one other film, The Color of Pomegranate (made in 1969 but withheld until 1972), before being convicted and sentenced to five years hard labor in 1974. International pressure gained his release from prison in 1978, but he was still denied an exit visa or access to foreigners. He made just two more full-length films (The Legend of the Suram Fortress (1985) and Ashik Kerib (1988)), one short (Return to Life (1978)) and a documentary (Arabesques on Themes from Pirsomani (1986)) before his death in 1990. He also wrote the story for the film Swan Lake – The Zone (1990), based on his prison experience, directed by his cameraman Yuri Ilyenko.
The Story: Ivan (I. Dzyura as a child; Ivan Mikolajchuk as an adult) is born into a Carpathian peasant family in the mountains of the Ukraine near the middle of the 19th century. His family has a blood feud going with a wealthier family. Nevertheless, Ivan cherishes the company of the rival family's daughter, Marichka (V. Glyanko as a child; Larisa Kadochnikova as an adult), even though her father killed his own. The pair spend their childhoods together and the relationship ultimately blossoms into a Romeo and Juliet kind of love. As the only surviving son in his family, Ivan has to leave the village to find work as a hired hand, but he and Marichka vow to wait for one another and to gaze on the same star in the evenings.
One day, during Ivan's absence, Marichka tumbles into a rushing stream while trying to rescue a lamb that has strayed. Ivan returns in time to join the search for his beloved. When the others have despaired of finding her, he travels downstream by raft, ultimately encountering her body, washed up on a sandbar, with local women wailing nearby. All Ivan can do is bury his soul mate and mark the grave with a cross. As he sets off toward home, he turns for one last look at her gravesite and spots a deer at her grave.
Back home, Ivan succumbs to despair, trudging through just enough of daily requirements to stay alive. His dwelling deteriorates and he is constantly wistful and lethargic. Ultimately, he meets Palagna (Tatyana Bestayeva), a sensual woman, and marries her in a traditional ceremony, overseen by the village women. They fail to produce children, however, to the despair of both Ivan and Palagna. She ultimately betrays him with another man. Ivan is mortally wounded, fighting with the man, following the fate of his father. He finds ecstasy in his final moments, however, embracing in death the hoary ghost of his beloved Marichka.
Themes:Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is basically an homage to romantic devotion and the human struggle. It resembles the Romeo and Juliette kind of story except that one of the two lovers has to persist and endure after the other is lost, which makes this story all the more relevant to the reality of human existence.
Production Values: The great strength of this film is its style, from the folkloric tale, to the evocation of 19th-century village life in the Ukraine, to the almost psychedelic visual imagery, to the indelible soundtrack. The characters are vivid and mythic in their proportions. Although the story is tragic, it is far from downbeat. The star-crossed lovers possess such an elementary innocence that the suspension of their union until death seems the storybook fulfillment. To some extent, the story is only the vehicle for the real substance on the film, which is the detailed observation of the everyday life of these people. Shadows is a beautiful ethnographic depiction of life in rural Ukraine, from the shoeing of horses, to the scything of the hay, to Sunday church, drinking at the taverns, and the wedding and holiday rituals. Palagna and Ivan, during their wedding ceremony, are separately bathed by the village women, before being yoked together like a pair of oxen. Religious symbols recur throughout, which is part of what disturbed the Soviet authorities.
The script is superb, but the cinematography, provided by Viktor Bestayev and Yuri Ilyenko, is better. Set in the austere mountains of the Ukraine ("forgotten by God and men," we are told), the natural backdrops alone provide great beauty, but it's a beauty that Paradzhanov supplements with dizzying surreal images. There are a rich variety of esoteric shots that I've never seen used in any other films. In one shot, an underwater camera observes Ivan sipping water from a mountain brook. In another shot, the camera spins around in a thicket. There's an intriguing shot in which Marichka's ghost appears at a cabin window.
The color scheme for the film is highly evolved. During the opening segment that establishes the romance between Ivan and Marichka, the colors almost jump off the celluloid. Later, as Ivan sinks into despair, the colors become pale and subdued. In the cuts between shots, the film typically fades to blood red, not black. Some frames have been painted with splashes of reds or yellows creating hallucinatory afterimages. It is obvious, throughout, that this is the film of a painter, not a realist. The film editing is brilliant as well.
The soundtrack is every bit as meaningful to the film as the images. Paradzhanov's training as a musician is abundantly in evidence. The soundtrack is built out of hunting horns, church bells, lively rustic folk songs, and villagers laughing and chanting. We become fully immersed in the atmosphere of the time and place.
The performance by Ivan Mikolajchuk as Ivan is larger-than-life and persuasive. Larisa Kadochnikova is vulnerable and enchanting as Marichka and Tatyana Bestayeva suitably alluring as Palagna.
Bottom-Line: If you're looking for something distinctive, you'll discover, as others have, that Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is both revolutionary and beautiful. It is rife with visual surprises that leap from the screen, transporting viewers to a lost, now mythic world. Shadows is in Ukrainian with English subtitles and has a running time of 97 minutes.
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