The Color of Pomegranates

The Color of Pomegranates is a 1968 film by the Soviet Armenian director, Sergei Parajanov. It follows the life of the armenian ashug [something like a 'mystic troubadour'] Sayat Nova-King of Song. It is easier to talk about this movie through images for, the film bursts with colour.

Tarkovsky taks about his predilection for poetry in cinema by differentiating poetically linked cinema from the traditional narrative of images linked together. But, in a film that is thoroughly and truly picturesque, it redefines conventional narrative by linking images through images. Tarkovsky claims logical sequentiality is banal, and poetry in cinema participates the viewer. But what does Parajanov do through his images? It functions a similar role to iconography, where images serve to point and direct toward multiple layers of meaning.

The images in the film stand still for a second, enough to impress on the reader the colors; they are sometimes aided by sound as well, like when men mechanically grind grapes with their feet or with the songs used when mourning the death or Sayat Nova's poems used in the film. However all these serve to heighten the effect of the image or the picture, if that sounds independent and not the other way around. 

The film traces the poet's growth, from his childhood to his sexual awakening even registering his wife's death to a rapid change in color of lace from red to black, and eventually his death. 

 But saying that the movie is about Sayat Nova alone would be swatting it with a simplification. Armenian culture seeps through, in every image. The movie doesn't allow you much to think, for it is such a graphic movement in toto, so you are left gaping at beauty in the end, is all.

 I like the poet though. He is so curious and so awestruck by his life and the life around him that it is really nice and warm to watch him. Every phase in his life envelops his face with a dominant emotion, that it sets the tune to the story inside the story. 

The viewer watches this movie as a voyeur, of the highest order. The complete access to the images and thus life, imply an unawareness of the watcher. Thus it is like watching through a glass very clearly except that the images trapped inside cannot see us. But I won't take this voyeur-pass for granted; because the images does allow for subjective identification. In a traditional movie, the viewer identifies through the process of immersion, which you might think impossible in an image-movie. But Sayat Nova manages to filter, and selectively grant you access to the poet, the poet alone-for the poet is the object and the rest are after all the background. 

When I say the movie is full of images, I might have categorized it too roughly in the imagist file, but he took inspiration from Tarkovsky, Dear Parajanov, he created a poetry of his own.

This is Spinal Tap!

I cannot begin to write about this movie! I have this really bad habit of skimming through the film as soon as I get it, and invariably judging if the film is any good. That way, This is Spinal Tap, looked like a regular bore-what with it being a rockumentary [documentary, did you say?] and chronicling lives of fictitious rock stars. To the first, i generally hate documentaries-god help al gore-to the second, I distinctly remember being appalled by The Doors-the 1991 biopic on the rock band with its very own original lame attempts at impressions of a stoned mind. Ah, but what pleasure watching this one was. I think I'll watch Almost famous now, a previously rejected movie-which when skimmed looked like a loser's personal diary of little achievements.

TIST is a film of quirks, and while royally satirizing the rock stars' very own lives, it is a nice surprise that Spinal Tap manages to retain its idiosyncrasies and originality, and carve an abominably likable niche of its own- which is why they have released almost like an album with the Smell my glove cover-the sleek black mirror thing, and not the original greasy nude lady on leash. Some lyrics from probably the most popular song, Big Bottom :

Big bottom
Big bottom
Talk about bum cakes,
My gal's got 'em.
Big bottom,
Drive me out of my mind.
How can I leave this behind?

This film is racy and good. David St Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel played by Micheal Mckeen, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest respectively. St Hubbins is the patron saint of footwear. Nigel has a room full of guitars, of which one he has never played, and one at which you cannot look at or point at after some time. 

My favourite performance is of Nigel's, the lead guitarist of the group and childhood friend of David's. Apart from all the wacko lives, the rockstars live, C Guest manages to underplay emotions and swim in the right currents when necessary-thus bringing the essential plot to a regular story by leaving the band once and returning in the end capturing the essential denouement in a story about a rock band-through a reunion. The girlfriend who is too big a part of the band now, the manager who knows them through and through, weird people who cannot understand their music are all there. The answer when asked by Marty Dibergi played by Rob Reiner if they are losing popularity, is that they have just got a more selective appeal now. 

Reminiscences are an important part of the movie- the singers continuously remember their past lives for Marty thereby producing the viewer with the story but at the same time, as a tribute and pointer to the actual lives of the rock stars, so subtly captured when the Tap pays a visit to Elvis Presley, after realizing that their popularity that once soared, is now at 'where are they now' rocks.

 Before I wrap this baby up, I would like to state emphatically that if not tailored to meet any genre, it is definitely a very very funny movie- advantage of making a satire you might say, but clearly, no for every moment from the hideous anorexic fan, to the changing accents all through the movie, the stonehenge, the deaths of all the drummers in the band-one even of spontaneous combustion-and Derek keeping a cucumber in his underwear are heights of comedy; separate events that can crack you up any time.

What kept me up till 3:40 to write about the movie however, is how fast paced the movie actually is, jumping from character to character, entwining simple lines in a delicate way as Nigel says, to produce a compilation that shows you all the different emotions in the life of a band-even veering slightly to the sad private individual who is so lost in all the band shit and never gets to speak, and who perhaps realises that, he is just a fad and that everything will come to pass.

It is a beautiful movie, with the right colours and the right texture of the 1990s like with most other Rob Reiner movies. However this one lacks any agenda, one to motivate or make you cry. This is primarily a tribute to rock music and the unbiased handling of their quirky lives through the eyes of the interviewing Marty who only raises the film's credibility as an attempt to see through, to the lives of the reigning and falling gods in music.