Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors - Sergei Parajanov (1964)

This story of a Romeo lost without his Juliet told through the screen of the forest begins with a Ukranian man dying under a falling tree in the forest. Shown fesrom the perspective of the tree! And then goes on to visually match jumping horses with flowing blood. Later a mustached man tells tales while caressing a basket-ball-sized cheese curd and the camera makes length inventories of forest lichen and bark. The audio track mirrors the swirling camera work and cacophony of colored costumes with mish-mash of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds: bells, whistles, crackling fires, horses hooves. But the most surpising sound is a mute who communicates using only the number 1. Cinematography switches from color to B&W in the last part of the film to indicate the depths of despair.

Great fun. A visual and auditory treat.

Screened at the Brattle Theater

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