Repentance (1984)

I had a rare opportunity to see a banned film by an outstanding Georgian director Tengiz Abuladze in a newly opened FOMO Cinema theater in the heart of Tbilisi that is showing rare, banned, and indie films.

I have never seen Repentance because it was made in 1984, a year before Gorbachev started perestroika, and was banned by the Soviet censorship. And then it was largely forgotten for many years, until Georgia became independent. Today it is considered to be one of the global masterpieces, a biting critique of the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.

Abuladze deliberately made it extremely metaphorical and out of time and space. It is clear that the town where the events are unfolding is in Georgia as people speak Georgian, with occasional Russian phrases creeping in. There are cultural references to the Georgian people "who produced The Knight in the Tiger Skin" epic poem as well as world-famous polyphonic Georgian singing, mixed for the effect with Italian and German opera.

But then you also see the state security guards (clear allusion to NKVD-KGB) wearing medieval body armor, regular people using traditional Georgian carts and horses for transportation while their leader rides in a luxury Rolls-Royce looking car, and the court judges wearing English white wigs and robes playing Rubik's Cube. The detail to what people wear and eat suggests the worst times of the Stalin's dictatorship, while the art and music - the best hope of the after-war and stagnation period. Juxtaposition is in almost everything.

The villain in the movie, Varlam Aravidze (captured in the embedded cover image for this story), brilliantly portrayed by Avtandil Makharadze, was created as a composite image of the brutal 20th century dictators:

Joseph Stalin: Varlam's slow and deliberate movements, deep evil penetrating gaze, and habits (pipe smoking) are reminiscent of Stalin's, while the general regime of terror creeping in at night and seeping through gray environment of the film is a clear allegory for the Stalinist purges.

Lavrentiy Beria: Varlam wears pince-nez glasses and has a "hedgehog" haircut similar to Beria, who was the brutal executor, chief of Stalin's secret police and a fellow Georgian. The character seems to be largely based on Beria in his cruelty, pursuit of women as trophies, and abuse of power.

Adolf Hitler: Varlam wears the distinct Hitler's mustache.

Benito Mussolini: Varlam's heavy-set figure and uniform, including a dark shirt and suspenders, as well as his spontaneous outbursts of patriotism are similar to Mussolini's fascist practices.

The dictator's antipode in the movie, played by David Giorgobiani, is a gorgeous Jesus-like humble artist and protector of churches, who (spoiler alert) dies by the dictator's hand because he refused to participate in the mass-scale ring to frame his fellow citizens for the crimes they didn't commit. This is also a direct allusion to the Stalin's times that the censors of the movie couldn't overlook.

Overall, the movie is extremely heavy. I don't want to give out the plot if you decide to watch it, but there's a death there that I thought was unnecessary and a little too much, akin to killing hope itself. As someone who lived through the tail end of the authoritarian Soviet regime, I felt uneasy and sad after I watched the movie. But on the other hand, it is a powerful reminder of how cruel and senseless dictatorships can be.

The movie is set in two different timelines, one closer to Stalin and WW2 and one closer to the stagnation period of the 1970s - early 1980s and I could almost feel with my skin Abuladze's suffocation and despair, like the movie was his last attempt (Repentance was his last feature film; Abuladze died in 1994) to metaphorically expose the inhumane Soviet system. While watching, I couldn't shake thinking about my grandparents' generation that miraculously managed to survive Stalin and of my mother's generation that was just scraping by in the endless pursuit of a "communism" dream.

Abuladze's film is like a guttural scream of protest and despair. To have it banned, even though entirely predictable, must have felt like a punch in the gut for him. I wonder if the film would have had a different fate had it been released in 1986-87, when perestroika was exposing Stalin's personality cult and authoritarian practices. But perhaps some of its power is derived from the fact it was banned as well.

I'd like to end with my favorite quote from the movie, "Why have a road that leads to no church?" It perfectly reflects how deeply Christianity is engraved in Georgian culture and national psyche. Even 70 years of the most brutal persecution of the church, accompanied by pillaging of precious icons and other priceless artifacts and converting churches into warehouses under the Soviet rule could not erase it. Georgians are resilient in their faith and resistance to authoritarianism, and Abuladze's film can be seen as an ode to this resiliency and love for his people.