The Color of Pomegranates
Նռան գույնը The Color of Pomegranates | |
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Artkino Pictures (US)IFEX (US) | |
Release date |
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Running time | 78 minutes (Armenia) 73 minutes (USSR release) |
Country | Soviet Union |
Language | Armenian |
The Color of Pomegranates
Overview
The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of the
Parajanov, the director, said his inspiration was "the Armenian illuminated miniature," and that he "wanted to create that inner dynamic that comes from inside the picture, the forms and the dramaturgy of colour."[11] He also described this film as a series of Persian miniatures.[12]
His close friend
Some Russian versions of The Color of Pomegranates have Special Edition features.[15] The Memories of Sayat Nova, by Levon Grigoryan, is a 30-minute synopsis that explains what is happening in the tableaux and in each chapter of the poet's life. G. Smalley asserts that every carefully composed image in The Color of Pomegranates is coded to a meaning, but the key to interpreting them is missing. He agrees with Parajanov that "If someone sat down to watch The Color of Pomegranates with no background, they would have no idea what they were seeing."[16] The making of the film and its different versions are explored in the other special features: "Introduction" by writer and filmmaker Daniel Bird; The World Is A Window: Making The Colour of Pomegranates—a new documentary by Daniel Bird; and "Commentary" by Levon Abrahamyan, moderated by Daniel Bird.
Cast
- Sofiko Chiaureli – Poet as a Youth/Poet's Love/Poet's Muse/Mime/Angel of Resurrection
- Melkon Aleksanyan – Poet as a child (as Melkon Alekyan)
- Vilen Galstyan – Poet in the cloister
- Giorgi Gegechkori – Poet as an old man
- Spartak Bagashvili – Poet's father
- Medea Japaridze – Poet's mother
- Hovhannes Minasyan – Prince
- Onik Minasyan – Prince
Crew
- Mikael Arakelyan – Set decorator
- Stepan Andranikyan – Production designer
- Mikhail Vartanov – Behind-the-scenes documentarian
Locations
The film was shot at numerous historic sites in Armenia, including the Sanahin Monastery, the Haghpat Monastery, the St. John church at Ardvi, and the Akhtala Monastery. All are medieval churches in the northern province of Lori. Locations in Georgia included the Alaverdi Monastery, the countryside surrounding the David Gareja monastery complex, and the Dzveli Shuamta complex near Telavi. Azerbaijani locations included the Old City of Baku and Nardaran Fortress.[17]
Censorship and release
Soviet censors and Communist Party officials objected to Parajanov's stylized, poetic treatment of Sayat-Nova's life and complained that it failed to educate the public about the poet. As a result, the film's title was changed from Sayat-Nova to The Color of Pomegranates, and all references to Sayat-Nova's name were removed from the credits and chapter titles in the original Armenian release version. The Armenian writer Hrant Matevosyan wrote new, abstractly poetic Armenian-language chapter titles. Officials further objected to the film's abundance of religious imagery, although a great deal of religious imagery still remains in both surviving versions of the film. Initially the State Committee for Cinematography in Moscow refused to allow distribution of the film outside of Armenia. It premiered in Armenia in October 1969, with a running time of 77 minutes.[18]
The filmmaker Sergei Yutkevich, who had served as a reader for the script in the State Committee for Cinematography's Script Editorial board, recut the film slightly and created new Russian-language chapter titles in order to make the film easier to understand and more palatable to the authorities. In addition to cutting a few minutes' worth of footage—some of it clearly due to its religious content—he changed the order of some sequences. The film ultimately received only a limited release in the rest of the Soviet Union, in Yutkevich's 73-minute version.[19]
Reception and legacy
On
Filmmaker
French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard said, "In the temple of cinema there are images, light and reality. Sergei Paradjanov was the master of that temple."[24]
Film critic
Restoration
In 2014 the film was digitally restored and re-edited to be as close as possible to the director's original vision and world premiered at the 67th Cannes Film Festival.[27][28] The US premiere took place on 20 September 2014 at The academy at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and was introduced by Martiros Vartanov. The East Coast premiere took place at the 52nd New York Film Festival on 2 October 2014, and was introduced by Scorsese. The restoration was completed by Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation in conjunction with Cineteca di Bologna, and was, described by critic and Toronto festival programmer James Quandt as "a cinematic Holy Grail".[6] Martin Scorsese received the 2014 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award for the restoration of The Color of Pomegranates.[9]
A Blu-ray of the restoration was released in the UK on 19 February 2018,[29] and an American release by Criterion with Mikhail Vartanov's 1969 documentary The Color of Armenian Land on 17 April 2018.[30]
Storytelling and "Tableau Vivant"
Queerness in the film
The film is further characterized by queer and androgynous imagery. For example, the main actress Sofiko Chiaureli plays both the Poet and his lover; imagery like the conch shell and feather, symbols of the female and male respectively, are used in tandem by multiple characters; and the young poet’s sexual awakening comes when he sees nude male and female bodies in the bath house. This is in line with Parajanov’s own life, as he was convicted for homosexual acts multiple times in the Soviet Union, which discriminated against homosexual people due to demographic concerns and an ideological basis: it was seen as a social disease that threatened the collective Soviet ethos. Thus, this androgyny can be read as parallel to the film’s disruption of the traditional ethnic unity, permeated by state ideology, which it accomplishes by interweaving facets of Armenian, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Russian cultural traditions.[32]
Influence in popular culture
Madonna's 1995 music video Bedtime Story restages some content from the movie (such as the scene of a young child lying in a fetal position on a pentagram on the floor while an adult covers it with a blanket, and another where a naked foot crushes a bunch of grapes lying on an inscribed tablet), among other artistic inspiration depicting dreams and surrealist artwork in the video.[33][34]
Without permission, Nicolas Jaar released the album Pomegranates, described as an "alternative soundtrack" for the movie, in 2015.[35] A screening of the film with a live performance by Jaar was scheduled at Cinefamily in Los Angeles for February 22, 2017, but the performance was replaced with the original soundtrack due to objections from the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute and The Film Foundation that the live performance would not present the film as Parajanov intended it.[36]
Lady Gaga's "911" music video released in September 2020 is openly influenced by the movie.[37][38][33][39]
See also
Notes
References
- ISBN 978-0-8108-6072-8.
- ^ Tsui, Curtis. "10 Things I Learned: The Color of Pomegranates". The Criterion Collection.
- ^ "A Feast for the Eyes in Los Angeles". The Criterion Collection.
- ^ "Critics' top 100 | BFI". www2.bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on February 7, 2016.
- ^ "Parajanov and the Greatest Films of All Time". January 2, 2017.
- ^ a b c d Paley, Tony (7 October 2014). "The Colour of Pomegranates: a chance to savour a poetic masterpiece". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "Parajanov-Vartanov Institute". Parajanov-Vartanov Institute.
- ^ Galstanian, Nairi (16 January 2014). "A Conversation with Tigran Mansurian". Music & Literature. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ a b "The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat Nova)". Parajanov.com. Parajanov-Vartanov Institute. 9 February 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ISBN 978-0824207632.
- ^ Matossian, Nouritza (1999). "Armenian Rhapsody". The Independent. Financial Times. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ Hamid, Rahul. "The Colour of Pomegranates – Senses of Cinema".
- ^ Golubock, D. Garrison (28 February 2014). "Parajanov's Influence Still Spreading on 90th Anniversary". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
- ^ "Parajanov: The Last Spring". Parajanov.com. Parajanov-Vartanov Institute. 28 December 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ Steffen, James (15 October 2010). "The Color of Pomegranates: four DVD editions compared". Dreams and Pomp. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ Smalley, Gregory J. (11 May 2016). "238. THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES (1969)". 366 Weird Movies. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
- OCLC 830992797.
- ^ Steffen, 131-132.
- ^ Steffen, 133.
- ^ "The Color of Pomegranates (1980)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 18 March 2023.
- ^ Maslin, Janet (6 October 1980). "SOVIET POMEGRANTES". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 March 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- ^ Johnson, Eric C. "Cahiers du Cinema: 1951-2011". Mist Driven Enterprises. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "Main". Parajanov.com. Parajanov-Vartanov Institute. 9 February 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "The Cinema of Sergei Parajanov". The University of Wisconsin Press. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
- ^ "Votes for The Colour of Pomegranates (1968)". The Greatest Films of All Time 2012. British Film Institute. Archived from the original on March 20, 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- Filmsite.org. AMC Networks. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "The Color of Pomegranates". Parajanov.com. Parajanov-Vartanov Institute. 28 December 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "Sayat Nova". Cannes Film Festival. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "The Color of Pomegranates Blu-ray". Blu-ray.com. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "The Color of Pomegranates". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ISSN 1932-8656.
- ^ Feldman, 74.
- ^ a b "Influences". January 2, 2017.
- ISBN 9780299296537.
- ^ "Nicolas Jaar Releases Free Album Pomegranates" - Pitchfork Media, 24 June 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
- ^ "News". February 9, 2017.
- ^ "Lady Gaga's "911" Video Inspiration, Explained". W Magazine | Women's Fashion & Celebrity News. Retrieved 2020-09-26.
- ^ "Lady Gaga + Parajanov's Pomegranates". November 12, 2020.
- ^ Golubock, D. Garrison (February 27, 2014). "Parajanov's Influence Still Spreading on 90th Anniversary". The Moscow Times.
External links
- The Color of Pomegranates at IMDb
- The Color of Pomegranates at AllMovie
- The Color of Pomegranates at the TCM Movie Database
- The Color of Pomegranates is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive (English subtitles)
- The Color of Pomegranates at Reverse Shot Online
- Excerpt from Criterion Collection's official YouTube channel
- The Color of Pomegranates: Parajanov Unbound – an essay by Ian Christie at The Criterion Collection