Nationalism

Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance and the Georgian Nationalist CauseAuthor(s): Julie ChristensenSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 163-175Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2500608 .

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JULIE CHRISTENSEN

Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance and the Georgian Nationalist Cause

The film Repentance, one of the best-known symbols of glasnost, gained all-union appeal in the Soviet Union for its timeliness in raising an issue of grave concern to all "new Soviet men": the need of each survivor of the compromised past to ask for and receive forgiveness in order to move on into the future with a clear conscience.' At the same time, Repentance is one of the most national works to come out of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The story of Tengiz Abuladze's film tells much about relations between center and periphcty, between Russian and non-Russian interests in the Soviet Union. Repentance vividly illustrates the tendency of the center to base its conclusions about non-Russian art on a "common Soviet heritage" rather than unique historical and cultural traditions of the non-Russian peoples of the multinational Soviet state. This tendency can lead, ultimately, to a misreading of text and underestimation of the in- tensity of non-Russian national interests and is certainly a factor in the center's lack of readiness regarding nationalities issues. In this article I hope to elucidate this complex, synthetic, polyphonic work and, by doing so, to correct misreadings, particularly those anticipated and denied by the film itself.

Conceived in vague outline some twenty years ago, Repentance began to take on life in the early 1980s after a near-fatal automobile accident convinced Abuladze to shoot the film no mat- ter what the consequences. The director was subsequently encouraged by Eduard Shevardnadze, then Georgian party secretary, who offered Abuladze a special slot of television time exclusive to the Georgian republic and uncensored by Moscow. Nevertheless, Abuladze was clearly nervous. As a statement of commitment to the film, he cast his own family members in leading roles.2

Halfway through filming, Georgi (Gegi) Kobakhidze, Abuladze's young lead, was arrested for involvement in an airplane hijacking following a Georgian wedding. Together with his wife and friends (sons and daughters of prominent Tbilisi families), Kobakhidze was accused of "naziist" tactics and paraded on republic television next to a young Orthodox priest with an uncanny resemblance to Rasputin.3 Rezo Chkheidze, head of the Georgian Film Studio, Abuladze's long-time colleague, and the director with whom Abuladze shared his first prize at Cannes in 1956 for Magdana's Little Donkey, halted production.4 Several months later, with the fate of the young hijackers still unknown, filming resumed. Mirab Ninidze, a young Georgian theater actor, replaced Kobakhidze. When the film was finished, it was screened once and shelved.

Three years and a great change of political mood later, however, Repentance was again

1. Monanieba (Repentance), 1984- 1986: Original screenplay Nana Janelidze, Rezo Kvesalava, and Tengiz Abuladze; Special Jury Prize, Cannes, 1987; Gold Hugo Special Jury Prize and Silver Hugo, best actor, Chicago Film Festival, 1987; available in the United States on Cannon Video.

2. Abuladze's comments on making the film are consistent. See the following interviews: "Idti do kontsa, esli ty khudozhnik," Sovetskaia kul'tura n.d.; "Mysl', splavlennaia so strast'iu.' Zaria vostoka 31 January 1984, 3; "Nigde i vezde, nikogda i vsegda . . . ,' Vechernii Tbilisi 1 January 1987, 3-4; "0 prosh- lom dlia budshchego," Literaturnaia gazeta 25 February 1987, 8; "Utverdit' dobro!" Zaria vostoka 19 Au- gust 1981; "Zapretnykh tem net," Uchitel'skaia gazeta (Moscow) 26 May 1987. For an excellent introduction to Abuladze, see Goldie Blankoff-Scarr, "Tengiz Abulaje and the Flowering of Georgian Film Art," Central Asian Survey 8, no. 3 (1989): 61 -86.

3. This incident has not been forgotten. Consider Tamaz Gamakhrelidze (a member of the national legislature and director of Tbilisi's Oriental Institute), who was quoted in the Washington Post, 8 October 1990, A-26: "They [the hijackers] were finally shot, and people remember that with real regret. The political opposition is convinced that [Eduard] Shevardnadze had his hands in blood when he was here." Iron- ically, Abuladze calls Shevardnadze "a great man," and "the extra author of Repentance."

4. Chkheidze's brief "protokol" to this effect is held in the Georgia Films Library, Tbilisi.

Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (Spring 199 1)


164 Slavic Review

released, this time with fanfare, as the symbol of the new age. Special screenings were organized all over the USSR, with support from official party organizations. Reviews appeared every- where. Abuladze received the Order of Lenin and was invited to accompany Mikhail Gorbachev on his first visit to New York.

For its creator, Repentance had been a bold and dangerous act. As a finished work, it was just the thing the new Soviet leadership needed in 1986-an anti-Stalin film produced in a "brother republic" (and best of all, in Georgia, Stalin's homeland), a sure winner at foreign film festivals, and a good money-maker. Sold for the highest price of any film in the history of Soviet cinema, Repentaqnce filled state coffers with hard currency and gave new life and breath to the official de-Stalinization campaign.5

In its new role, Repentance began to take on the contours of a partiinyi zakaz production. Excerpts from a bulletin distributed by Soiuzinformkino illustrate this fact:

The film Repentance is not only an outstanding work of cinema art but an important event in our social life. Its political significance is so great that all ideological organizations should participate in the work on this film. It is desirable that the explanatory and advertising campaign be led by propagandists and instructors from the party obkom, gorkom, and Kom- somol in each city, by the most qualified lecturers in the field of social sciences, . . . that the first showing of the film be organized for active members of the party and Komsomol in each city, . . . preceded by introductory materials taken from this publication and other articles in the central press. . . . Following discussion by active party and Komsomol groups, there should be a press conference with the usual cast of guests. Before the film is shown, it would be apropos to request a propaganda expert from the party obkom or gorkom or a qualified lecturer from the Znanie society to give an introduction to the politics of glasnost, the present course as set by the Twenty-seventh Party Congress. V. I. Lenin taught that truth is the mandatory condition of party and government work with the masses. The film Repentance realizes, through artistic means, this teaching of Ilich.6

Critics, writers, and private individuals of all beliefs and persuasions, from all republics, began to publish personal thoughts and feelings about Repentance. For the majority, Abuladze's film was a personal catharsis.7 Professional film reviews concentrated on formal questions but, nevertheless, echoed amateurs in stressing the emotional effect of the film and its role in Soviet society as catharsis:

Even under the crushing forces of evil, "man's beautiful essence cannot die." These are words by Vazha Pshavela, poet and prophet, the epigraph to The Prayer, which could serve as the basic theme of the entire triptych. . . . And the light shines in the darkness. The marble features of a man tied on the snow, the brave khevsur, the suffering eyes of Marita, and then the bright faces [sic] of the victims of Varlam's mass terror are resurrected by the memory of the artist, his sympathy, tears, and love.'

Beauty, the beauty of the film itself, the various shots: Sandro and Nino at night as he plays the piano and she sleeps, the beauty of nature, the beauty which Varlam could not destroy. The spiritual and moral victory in this film, of the artist over the confusion and lies of the world maimed by Varlam. . . . Here we sense the catharsis provided so many by Abuladze's film: The feeling that man, despite all, is great and will not die, that art and the

5. Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov were quick to point out the financial questions of perestroika in the Soviet film industry. See their early article "Spring Cleaning in Moscow's House of Cinema," Cata- logue of the 41st Edinburgh Filmn Festival, August 1987, 6-9.

6. N. I. Venzher, V. E. Vernik, eds., "Pokanie," A-05323, Soiuzinformkino, 20 January 1987, passim.

7. See, for example, E. Paiazatian, "Doroga k ochishcheniiu (Zametki o kinotriptikhe Tengiza Abuladze)," Kommunist [Erevan] 11 June 1987; and Vladimir Lakshin, "Unforgiving Memory," Moscow News, 30 November 1986, 12.

8. Neia Zorkaia, "Dorogoi, kotoraia vedet k Khramu," Iskusstvo kino 5 (1987): 33-55.


Tenguz Abuladze's Repentence 165

memory of the good and the true and the beautiful can somehow bring retribution and forgiveness for the complicity of the past.9

Formal questions followed suit. The genire was elevated: "In Repentance the theme of the guilty without guilt, the sacrifice of the heroic and the beautiful in the name of 'the conmmonl good' takes on the sublime sound of a requiem, the optimistic meaning of high tragedy." 10 The heroes becarne "epic," that is, "living people":

The images of the heroes equipped with moral instincts have taken on a fullness, a round- ness of existence in Repentance which they did not have in the previous parts of the triptych, where they were either poetic abstractions or comic masks. Here they have become living people. The spiritual, morally conscious self no longer needs a romantic pose or comic ostranenie. It has enmerged as a life force, self-assured in its rightness. In that I see a great creative achievement by Abuladze and Soviet cinema in general. . . . Art, great art has pronounced its heavy, much carried and much suffered word. Now it depends on us to hear it, to take it into our soul and heart. It's now up to us."

A small number of Russian critics used Repentance to stress the continuing need for vigi- lanice, self-evaluation, and honesty in the new age. Their basic points were that glasnost and perestroika were spinning their wheels, that the post-Stalinist psyche was not yet ready for preaching but had to go througlh a lonig period of confession, and that each individual should address the question of responsibility for the past to himnself, not to others.'2 Nevertheless, reviews of Repentance give the general impression that for the first time in many years the Soviet psyche felt itself moved, cleansed, and put back on the proper road again, "headed toward the cathedral." As one critic wrote,

And then suddenly, at the end of the film, a little old lady appears, heading up the hill, looking for the road to the church. The music is the heavenly chorale from the oratorio "Death and Life" by Gounod. And we move to the enlightened end of the picture, the beginning of repentance for many Soviets, repentance from the blood of the past, of history, of complicity, bequeathed to Veriko Anjaparidze-and along that last road the great Geor- gian actress walked into eternity. Veriko passed away during the Moscow premiere of Repentance. 3

Both Soiuzinformkino and the best reviews acknowledged the complex symbolic structure and difficulty of Abuladze's film and wisely recommended seeing Repentance with The Prayer and Tree of Desire, the first two films in Abuladze's trilogy.'4 The more, however, one studies Repentance within the context of the trilogy, the more one understands how simplistic the reac- tion to Abuladze's film has been and the more one is reminded of the overwhelming complexities and problems that the present generation in the Soviet Union has inherited. The naive belief that repentance comes easily, that the times will quickly change, and that the younger generation will soon '"be with us again and the land united in brotherhood" is anticipated and seriously ques- tioned, if not essentially denied, in Abuladze's cinema trilogy.

Repentance is the last leg of a journey that, beginning with The Prcayer (1967) and Tree of Desire (1975), takes the viewer deep into history, man, psychology, and nature, on a philosophical and moral quest for understanding the evil events of the twentieth century. ' The journey

9. Viktor Bozhovich, "Ispytanie sovesti," Vechernii 7bilisi, 28 November 1986. 10. Zorkaia, "Dorogoi," 51. 11. Viktor Bozhovich, "Ispytanie: 0 kinotrilogii T. Abuladze," Druzhba narodov 3 (1988): 213. 12. Aleksei Simonov, "Ne propoved', a ispoved'," Sovetskaia kul'ttra, 21 January 1988, 4. Lev An-

ninskii, "V kom delo?" Sovetskaia Estoniia, 14 April 1987, 4. 13. Zorkaia, "Dorogoi," 53. 14. See "Pokaianie,' passim, also Andrei Bitov, "The Courage of An Artist," Moscow News 7

(1987): 13. 15. Tengiz Abuladze, Vedreba [The Prayer], Georgia Films, 1963; Narvris xe [Tree of Desire],

Georgia Films, 1976.


166 Slavic Review

begins in ancient times in the cradle of civilization, the Caucasus Mountains (The Prayer), continues in that same region in the prerevolutionary period (Tree of Desire), and finally moves to the time of "modern" terror (Repentance). The three films, which draw upon classic works of Georgian literature, acknowledge the hold evil has upon man and the great courage it takes to stand up to it, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century.

Repentance reaches beyond the earlier films toward a general sense of terror in the face of evil, embodied by Varlam Aravidze, that is, "Varlam No Man" or, perhaps, "Varlam Every- man." Time and place are confused, references and citations from world'art and literature aim at an international language and universal set of symbols, yet the particular details of the film bring the viewer back to the first two films in the trilogy and, by extension, to specifically Georgian concerns, to questions of Georgian history, and to hopes for the Georgian future. Repentance is both universal and narrowly national, a combination for which Abuladze is well-known.

Repentance opens with two very Georgian scenes. The first presents a handsome, sad-eyed woman decorating cakes with tiny cathedrals and selling them privately (witness to the Georgian formal table, the celebration of Georgian customs, the on-going respect for the church as a national symbol, and the initiative of the disenfranchised intelligentsia). The second presents Varlam's funeral, with mounds of fresh flowers, an open casket, and obligatory visits to the deceased's home and family to pay last respects. Every detail-from the faces at the funeral to the envelope of money passed to the son of the deceased, now head of the family, to the song "Samshoblo," the anthem of free Menshevik Georgia-is clearly and typically Georgian.

Varlam's funeral is something of a joke originally; it includes the recitation of a poem com- paring death with a somersault into eternity and praise for Varlam who could "turn any friend into an enemy and any enemy into a friend." No wonder such a creature turns up again, leaning casually against a tree to frighten his son and daughter-in-law, who had just as casually tossed the old man's portrait up onto a wardrobe with the "alley-oop" that marks Varlam's exit from the homes of his victims and his own somersault into eternity. Despite the farcical situation, however, Varlam's funeral and the trial that follows serve as the structural framework of the film and together support the Georgian text, which picks up and develops themes from The Prayer and Tree of Desire. Death and the grave, the "Great Father," blood of the past and hope for the future, beauty (the beloved), Satan, and the Last Judgment are the central figures in what might be called an ahistorical morality play.

In Repentance, the reappearance of the corpse of Varlam Aravidze is eventually attributed to Keti Barateli, the daughter of one of Aravidze's victims. Keti's continued attempts to exhume Varlam, and the trial, in which she explains her reasons for denying the corpse a proper Christian burial, lead to the final and passionate moment when Abel Aravidze, son of Varlam, tosses his father's body over a cliff to the carrion, breaking one of the strongest taboos of his people and nation. Veneration and remembrance of the dead lie at the core of basic Georgian traditions and values, the cornerstone of their historic survival. 6

Furthermore, respect for the dead and the grave are central themes in Abuladze's trilogy. The Prayer (which Abuladze calls the philosophical introduction and conclusion of the trilogy) opens with a recitation of the title poem, Vazha Pshavela's "Cemi vedreba." The poem acknowledges the symbolic importance of the grave for Georgian sense of self and national memory:

Oh, Lord, hear my prayer, ... If I bring forth no fruit Let my sons never damn My grave."7

Recent articles in the new Georgian press return to this poem as inspiration and underline the same theme:

16. See Tengiz Buachidze, "Martovskaia tragediia 1956 goda v Tbilisi," Literaturnaia Gruziia 7 (1988): 114.

17. Vazha Pshavela [Luka Razikashvili], Tkhzylebanii [Works] (Tbilisi: Sabchota mtserali, 1960): 72-73.



How to live in this world built on force, falsehood and hypocrisy, . . . how to resist, in a moment of weakness, the temptation to join the "lions" in the hope of sitting at their preda- tor's feast. . . . How to live that our heirs will not be ashamed of our name and will not abandon our graves?'8

Abuladze's Prayer continues with cinematic illustrations of two epic poems by Vazha Pshavela which circle around the theme of death and the grave, "Aluda Ketelauri" and "The Host and the Guest." In the first epic, the hero Aluda, a Christian, refuses to cut off the right hand of an enemy he has slain in battle and even offers a blood sacrifice for the eternal peace of his spirit. In the second epic, the Muslim hero, Joqola, refuses to break an age-old tradition of defending a guest in his home even after learning that his guest, Zviadauri, is a renowned Chris- tian warrior. Defended by Joqola but overpowered by the other Muslims, Zviadauri is sacrificed on the graves of his victims. But his heroism, which never fails, evet with knife at his throat, wins him respect in the eyes of the heroine, Agaza, Joqola's wife. She faces tribal judgment, terrifying spirits at the graveyard, and her own husband's possible jealous wrath to protect the corpse of Zviadauri from predators, an action which is acknowledged as proper treatment of the heroic dead, which is woman's role.'9

Burying and respect for the dead play a pivotal role in Tree of Desire, the second film in Abuladze's trilogy. In the literary source of the film, Georgii Leonidze's memoirs in poetic prose titled In the Shade of Forgotten Ancestors, the theme is incarnated and expounded by Chorekhi, "lover of Georgian history":

Our ancestors, Georgians, saw the yoke of many conquerors-Egyptian, Macedonian, Ro- man, Greek, Persian, Turk, Chingiz and Timur, but no one could conquer their spirit or their love for their land. Plagued by misfortune, they overcame all; hounded by enemies, they threw them off and forged eternal glory forever and ever. "If I forget you, Jerusalem, forget me, my right hand!"-that was our first pledge to our country. "Kiss your native land! And we kissed it.-"Bow down to the remains of the past!" And we sank to our knees and worshipped the mossy boulders of an ancient cathedral or fortress. 20

In Leonidze's memoirs, the beautiful heroine Marita is humiliated and exiled from her village for seeing her girlhood love.2' Her burial years later is marked by "darkened heavens," "moving mountains," and "no rain for a whole year afterward...." To assuage their guilt in Marita's sad fate, the villagers turn her into a local legend, a "star in the sky, beloved of Christ." 22 In Abuladze's film version, Marita is hung and left dead in the mud, mourned only by her grandmother (played by Veriko Anjaparidze). The shot of Marita's abandoned corpse is a clear statement by the film director about changing times and changing values.

In traditional Georgian culture, life does not end with a slit throat or a broken neck. The dead are protected, remembered, and avenged. The past and its remains are holy. In Repentance, Keti Barateli, a Georgian woman, denies Varlam proper treatment of a dead hero and violates his grave. To prove that her actions have not violated this proscription, Keti Barateli must prove Varlam worthy of treatment which only Satan or a great villain could deserve. Keti Barateli's trial, a stylized montage of anachronisms, clich6d symbols, metaphor and allegory, is a cinematic pre-enactment of the Last Judgment, in which Keti's defense depends upon a guilty ver- dict for her victim-Varlam, father to Abel, grandfather to Tornike, and "great father" to his nation.

18. Zaza Abzianidze, "Kommentarii k 'Moei mol'be' Vazha Pshavela," Kavkasioni 4 (1986): 343-345.

19. Vazha Pshavela [Luka Razikashvili], Three Poems, trans. Donald Rayfield (Tbilisi: Ganatleba, 1981).

20. Georgii Leonidze, V teni rodnykh derev'ev, trans. Elisbar Ananiashvili (Tbilisi: Literatura da khelovneba, 1965), 225-226.

21. Ibid., 222-223. 22. Ibid., 225-226.


168 Slavic Review

Abuladze and Georgian critics are careful to emphasize the general nature of the portrait of Varlam Aravidze, which contains elements of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Stalin, Lavrentii Beria, and even Charlie Chaplin's "great dictator." 23 While it cannot be denied that Abuladze truly intended to make sweeping generalizations about evil in the modern world, clues within the film argue for a close, but subtle portrayal of Stalin or of the Stalin problem in Georgia. Never- theless, to cotnfront this question, Abuladze had to proceed with great care. First, he had to avoid alienating his Georgian audience before he had a chance to drive his message home. Second, he had to discourage the tendency (especially visible in the Russian Republic during the glasnost period) to equate all crimes of the past with Stalin and Stalin with Georgians.24 That is, Abuladze had to make a film which would speak specifically about Stalin to the Georgians and generally about the evil of totalitarianism to the rest of the nation and the world.

The balance struck between deliberate generalization and stubtle specific evocation of Stalin as a Georgian in the character of Varlam Aravidze is both a tactical move and a thematic element. In Repentanice Abuladze performs a balancing act, seducing his Georgian viewers with simi- larities, pacifying them with differences, giving him time and space to answer for himself to what extent Stalin was a Georgian and to what extent Stalin was good to and for Georgia. What was Stalin's role in Georgian history?

Particular qualities that link Varlam with Stalin are megalomania (Varlam challenging the sun) and paranoia (the light reflecting in Varlam's pince-nez; his tendency to see enemies every- where; and his admission that four out of three individuals are class enemies). Another central link between Varlam and Stalin, as the Georgians understand him, is the changing face of the evil dictator: concerned patriot, enlightened ruler, schemning maniac, and sadistic pervert. Stalin was well-known for his ability to don masks and change his identity, and the performaince of the famous Georgian theatrical actor, Avtandil Maxaradze, centers around that motif. The masks donned by Maxaradze's Varlam have fascinated critics and cinema experts alike, and have brought Maxaradze numerous national and international awards.25

Inspiration for Maxaradze's portrayal of the dictator may have come from a Georgian literary source. Grigol Robakidze, a Georgian writer in emigration, publislhed the following descrip- tion of Stalin in his novel Perished Soul (Berlin, 1933):

Stalin walked slowly, softly, like a cat. . . . As though he wanted to hide from someone or jump on something. His secret magic, the power to make himself invisible, was not an idle

23. Abuladze stresses the general nature of the portrait in all his interviews and Georgian articles do the same. Georgian critics' acknowledgement of the "Georgianness" of Repentance is very subtle. See Latavra Dularidze, "Tengiz Abuladze: Tvorcheskii portret," Moskovskoe obozrenie kino [Soiuzinformkino] January 1987, 1: "Durirng the more than thirty years of life in film a sufficiently solid and clear relationship has been established between Abuladze and his viewing audience. This feeling for his audience, a lucky one for an artist, has helped the director expose his internal world with greater and greater boldness. From that his films become more profound, more probing. His films are always a part of the spiritual life of the people, an eternally live process of national culture. That makes the nationality of his films uncontestable."

24. Particularly relevant is Abuladze's comment in an interview with Valentina Ivanova for Sovetskaia kul'tura, "Idti do kontsa": "Evil, just like good, is an extranational category. Hitler, fascism, yes, but can you call all Germans fascists? No. Andrei Belyi said, 'There are pigs and there are angels. I'his is a distinc- tion between individuals, not between nations.' The problem of Stalin for glasnost Georgians deserves an entire book. Stalin and his fate and reputation in Georgia have been the central theme of countless articles and it is certainly the question of Stalin that explains the turn of events of April 1989 when special Soviet troops were turned loose on a peaceful Georgian crowd whom they beat and gassed as they shouted "this one's for Georgia, this one's for Stalin." For a discussion of these events, see Eduard Gudava, "The Tragedy of Georgia," Glasnost, May-July 1989: 4.

25. Silver Hugo, best actor, Chicago Film Festival, 1987; best male performance, First Soviet Oscars, 1988. Repentanice won two-thirds of the first-place prizes for 1987 at the Union of Cinematographers Gala in December 1988, including best art film, director, scenario, camera, art, and male lead. Gia Kancheli, who wrote the music for Repenztanice, took best sound for his work in Danelia's Kin-dze-dze. See Iskusstvo kino 5 (1989): 3.



fantasy. In Tibet, for example, that power is real. The Tibetan yoga who doesn't want to be noticed becomes invisible. With superhuman will power he vanishes into his shell, dimin- ishing the influence of visual elements. By the time he was running from the tsarist secret police, Stalin had perfected that art. He moved about the streets like a true lunatic, eluding his pursuer, melting into the air. Whenever he was caught, it wasn't the pursuer who frightened the lunatic, but the lunatic who frightened the pursuer, who could sense that this was not a real person in front of him, but a ghost with a mask instead of a face. . . Stalin changed his name continually. . He was exiled more than once, but he always re- appeared in a new place under a new name with a new personality. He left no tracks. Sud- denly he was gone, nameless journeyman, like Golem who, according to ancient Jewish legend, visits the universe every 30 years. Meeting him, you quiver. When you come to your senses, he's gone26

While connections between Varlarn and Stalin as an international figure are fairly obvious, those between Varlam and a native son of Georgia are subtle. The two most important links are language and family ties. For Georgians, nothing is more holy than their language (witness to the survival of the Georgian nation) and the use of that language is the first sign of a "native son." 27 While "the real Stalin" "considered Russian his native language and dedicated all his energy, intellect and organizational talents to the international and Russian proletarian movement, "28 Abuladze's Varlam uses Russian only twice, and both times in a cliched, provincial manner with a heavy Georgian accent [a razve eto nortnal'no and rezhim est' rezhim]. Varlam's language, his turn of phrase, and his manner of speaking are strongly rooted in Georgian tradition. Varlam uses language to disarm his Georgian flock with such comments as "Doksopolo, deda ara hqavs?" ["Doksopolo, don't you have a mother?"] or "Sandro cemi natesavia" ["But Sandro is my relative," that is, "I can't have anything but the best intentions for Sandro as we are blood relations"].

Varlam's Georgianness is further established for his Georgian viewers in the character structure of the film. Initially presented in his casket in his family home guarded over by his survi- vors, Varlam is most importantly a father.29 His similarity to his only son and heir is underlined by the casting of Maxaradze as both father and son. In life and death, Varlam's major relationship is with his heirs, his son and grandson. They are his judges at the trial that will establish finally and forever his last judgment.

The theme of the father constitutes the structural foundation of character relations and plot within the film and is also raised in the artistic subtext and sound track. As the cathedral is blown up and Sandro Barateli, religious artist and spokesman for Georgian national history and culture, is crucified, the sound track reaches a crescendo in Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the last stanza of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy," which cements the theme:

Oh, ye millions, I embrace ye! Here's a joyful kiss for all! Brothers, o'er yon starry sphere. Sure there dwells a loving father. O ye millions kneel before Him, World, dost feel thy Maker near.... O'er the stars enthron'd, adore Him.30

26. Grigol Robakidze, "Stalin's Horoscope," from the novel Die gemordete Seele, trans. Aleksandra Kartozia (Jena: Oigen Diderich, 1933). The English quotation is translated by the author from a Russian manuscript translation by Sergei Okropiridze.

27. See Manana Gigineishvili, "Sviataia sviatykh," Literaturn2aia Grltziia 8 (1988): 148-153. 28. Buachidze, "Martovskaia tragediia 1 956," 111. 29. Note that the first statement about Abuladze's film in the Soviet press was "Abuladze is completing

a film about three generations of a Georgian family." 30. Quoted from Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, Thle Chloral Symphony (Last Movemenit),

chorus score (Belwin Mills, n.d.): passim.


170 Slavic Review

It is precisely Varlam's role as the loving father that explains his hold on his people.3' Only when that role has been exposed can he be ripped from the hearts and minds of his heirs. Repen- tance works alone and in context with the first two films in the trilogy to establish Varlam's identity for the Georgians as a Georgian and to determine his place in the history of the Georgian nation. Only in the context of the entire trilogy, which is itself a minihistory of Georgia, can the particular plot and outcome of Repentance be understood. The Prayer (the Old Testament of Abuladze's trilogy) presents within an allegorical frame of Man, the Devil, and Man's Soul (the Beloved) the poetic introduction to the theme of blood that courses through the tragic history of the Caucasus. Abuladze's film (stark cinematic visuals to a literal recitation of the epics of Vazha Pshavela) moves slowly through the bloody narratives, as Aluda Ketelauri, in a dream, is forced to drink the blood of his enemy, or as blood spurts from the throat of Zviadauri, from "The Host and the Guest." Indeed, the major theme of both the film and the literary sources is blood, captured in the haunting lines from "Aluda Ketelauri":

Whoever thirsts for enmity, Let his house door open wide, Let his heart be a dam of blood, Let his feet stand in the pool, Let him drink not wine but blood, Let him have it for his bread, Let the sign of the cross be made, As though he stood in the house of God. Let him have a wedding in blood Let his vows be made in blood, Let him invite the wedding guests Let him gather round a crowd, Let his bed be made in blood, Let him lay his wife by his side, May he have children in plenty, Many boys and many girls, Here, too, let him dig a grave, Let him bury the corpses here. You who have killed will be killed in turn, The kinfolk will not spare the killer.32

Tree of Desire, the second and pivotal film in the trilogy, carries the theme of the blood of the past into the prerevolutionary period of the turn of the century. From the opening scene (the death of a white horse in a field of red poppies) through the final shot (a vision of red pomegra- nate blossoms, symbol of the beautiful sacrificed heroine), the film uses the color red to evoke blood. As Cicikore, the elder, cuts the horse's throat (recalling The Prayer, and Joqola's tribes- men slitting the throat of Zviadauri), the color red fills the shot, washing over the very lens of the camera. Cicikore explains the death of the hero's white horse in historical terms: "That field was the scene of many bloody battles. Thousands were cut down . . ., Their blood is still boiling- It's drenched the earth with poison, . . . If we ate grass, it would kill us too." 33

Within the character structure of the film, the theme is personified by Chorekhi, the lover of Georgian history, whose understanding of the past and the future struggle serves as the fulcrum for the entire film trilogy, and for the national cause it realizes in artistic form:

31. See Buachidze, "Martovskaia tragediia 1956," 113 for Stalin's titles: "vdokhnovitel' i organizator vsekh nashikh pobed," "genii vsekh vremen i narodov," "otets i uchitel' narodov." See also an interview of Guram Gegeshidze, Literaturuli sakartvelo: "When the whole country called Stalin their own father and teacher and leader of the proletariat of the world, genius of all ages and God knows what else-if anyone had said that Stalin belonged to us, to the Georgians, his tongue would have been ripped out by the roots. What do you mean, yours? This genius belongs to the whole world."

32. "Aluda Ketelauri" in Vazha Pshavela, Three Poems, 66-67. 33. Leonidze, V teni rodnykh derev'ev, 176.


Ten guz Abuladze's Repentence 171

An orphan grieves no more for his mother than Chorekhi grieved for the past glory of Georgia. "Meskheti struggled for a long time, blood flowed in battle, but she couldn't hang on, the current splashed, flooded her. . . . There has been so much, so much blood spilled through these centuries! When will the dragon's spine be broken, his ribs crushed? Oh my poor land, much suffering, washed in blood, destroyed, defiled, burned, abandoned! Robbed, pilfered, divided!" Georgia's wounds were visible and tangible for Chorekhi-as though he could place his fingers in the openings and take out an unquenching fire of love, eternal power for struggle. Then he would lose hope. "Georgia will perish, the island of Christ will be wiped from the face of the earth. We are a small people. Our chest is covered with blood, our arms are exhausted from warring. Our land is sown with red rain. Look down on the strawberry, do you know what it is? A little drop of the blood of our ancestors!" He lit candles before Rustaveli as before an icon. Rustaveli dedicated his poem to Queen Tamar, the symbol of Georgia.34

Chorekhi was lost to the future, but his dream for national liberation, based on the blood, heroism and wars of the past, and national symbols for inspiration-St. George, Queen Tamnar, Rus- taveli, Il'ya Chavchavadze, and Georgia as "the island of Christ"-was passed on to the children in his village. In Abuladze's film Chorekhi is represented cinematically by cathedrals, ruins, and the Georgian folk songs of the sound track. His dream is overpowered, however, by that of his philosophical rival, loram.

loram, the anarchist "expelled from the seminary in the fifth grade for slapping the rector," is the voice of the revolution.35 Played by Kakha Kavsadze, loram makes a dramatic entrance into the film: limping madly into the "pasture poisoned with blood," tearing down fences, and eating the grass in an attempt to demonstrate to the village elder and the people that they are being hoodwinked by old legends and prejudices of the past. loram challenges the old order, represented by the priest and the village elder, and warns of the coming victory over the forces of superstition. He teaches the children to put their ears to the ground to listen for the revolution and to shout "down with the tsar, down with the gentry, the priests, and the militia." He molds the children into an imaginary train of the future that will bring doctors to the village and take the children to the city to study.

The voices of conservatism answer him in prophetic wisdom. The priest responds iron- ically, "may you live to find your land of milk and honey, Judas Iscariot," and the elder states, "the train will pollute our fields and poison our cattle" and "do you think the tsars will be the only ones buried by your storm? Don't you know what destruction, blood, and unhappiness it will bring? Everything will be turned to ashes, everything, including our land and the labor and sweat of the people."

For Leonidze, loram is an elemental and tragic figure, linked with "the spring torrents of the river, flooding, raging, tearing at the banks, carrying away debris and logs." His dream is directed against what has stagnated in society and in his village: "fog, autumn rain, incessant, monotonous, muddy puddles, wet dogs, huts sunk to their roofs in clay, pitiful sheds with crum- bling walls, corrupt priests, naive dreamers, pitiful, talentless reality. Ahead, nothing joyful, no dreams for renewal. All around, standing water, a sleepy existence, rotten swamp, stale air." In the end, loram begins to drink with the priest: "He would rant and rave, but he knew his verbal battles were meaningless. He wanted to run down the hill and scream." 36

Abuladze's treatment of loram acknowledges the positive and negative elements of his character but concentrates primarily on the destructive force of loram's dream. In both the literary source and the film, the mountain stream is compared with that elemental force that killed his beautiful heroine. For Abuladze, this passage was central to the film:

Along the street like an angry, surging river rushed a crowd of townspeople. The crowd rushed and heaved, moaned, groaned, swayed one way and another like the muddy current in its riverbed, moaned, as though vomiting all the bile which had bubbled up in its soul,

34. Ibid., 226-228. 35. Stalin was also suspended from a Georgian seminary for slapping the rector. 36. Leonidze, V teni rodnykh derev'ev, 172- 173.


172 Slavic Review

rejoicing evilly at someone or something. But I couldn't make out a single word. The flow was dumb.

The crowd was driving an ass ahead of it. On the ass sat a woman in just a nightshirt, backward, . . . shaking, . . . trembling, . . . cold and in pain, flushed and bitter, humiliated, tortured, . . . So they lead the rural martyr to her shame, and she seemed a queen with a vulgar retinue behind. . . . The crowd rolled forward silently, uncontrolled, like an angry mountain stream. In its path everything was powerless, even God himself.37

In the allegorical frame of The Prayer, man falls into doubt and hesitation at the great destruction and blood-letting of the modern period and loses his soul (beauty) to the devil. In Tree of Desire, the village elder marries Marita off to a rich man she does not love and orders her crucified for a chance meeting with the man she does. During Marita's wedding, the crowd, like a Greek chorus, intones: "There is no justice in man's he6irt." "You sold Queen Tamar for money." "You sold the Virgin Mary." Recalling the priest's earlier references to loram as "Judas Iscariot," the attentive viewer cannot ignore the connection.

In both The Prayer and Tree qf Desire, the connection between beauty or the beloved and Georgia is clear. Marita is Queen Tamar; Vazha's poet (from "Cemi vedreba") seeks courage in order to fulfill his "beloved's dream," which is the liberation of Georgia. In both films the beloved and, by extension, Georgia, is crucified-sold for lucre or abandoned by cowardice and doubt, the elemental forces of nature, and a false dream for a new world.

Built on a vision of "the new society," "brotherhood," and "scientific enlightenment," the modern world of Repentance contrasts with the reality and values of the Georgian past portrayed in the first two parts of the trilogy. In Varlam's kingdom, death, the grave, and the graveyard are a joke, cause for drunkenness and farce. Death has become unreal. Varlam rises from the dead but is not alive. Entire clans disappear. Mass murder takes place far away and names of the dead, carved on logs floated down river from prison camps, are soon ground into sawdust. In Varlam's kingdom, the dead have no names and no monuments, and their fate can be captured by the Russian folk maxim: "les rubiat, shchepki letiat."

Varlam spilled more blood than anyone in the history of Georgia, but his kingdom stands out starkly in the context of the trilogy for its lack of blood.38 Only very subtle details from the world of art and nature keep the theme alive. The Proof of Thomas, the painting that Varlam singles out at the Barateli's home, harks back to Chorekhi's feelings discussed above. The bright red flowers at Varlam's funeral, coupled with an unidentified and seemingly casual remark by a minor character in the garden following the funeral, "individual men come and go. but nothing really changes in this blossoming world," repeat the color symbolism of Tree of Desire.39

Robbed of the tangibility of the grave, of respect for the dead and the blood of the past and present, Varlam's kingdom is a place where history, the continual and never-ending battle for the motherland, ends. Life, death, and time itself have become unreal in this new paradise.

In Repentance, Varlam appropriates loram's dream for a new world, for a planned society based on science. In a series of juxtaposed images contrasting religion and science (nuclear reac- tors in an ancient cathedral, the appearance of a Hieronymus Bosch-like figure representing Satan in the church), Varlam's dream marches forward to destroy the past. In this new world outside of time and history, Varlam plays the great father to his flock, that exists happily in a green garden protected from the outside world by medieval guards.

Varlam makes short shrift of his predecessors, the old anarchists and revolutionaries. Misha Koreli, played by Kakha Kavsadze, the same actor who played loram, represents the original

37. Ibid., 219-220. 38. Note here a very interesting remark by Zorkaia, "Dorogoi," 41: "The concentric circle rings and

temporal layers of the film are linked, like tissues of a living organism, permeated by common pulses of blood. "

39. Compare to Leonidze, V teni rodnykh derev'ev, 224: "I looked at that bright, sunny blooming tree, and I couldn't believe that beautiful Marita was no longer with us! . . . And in truth-where does beauty come from? And where does it go when it leaves this world? Why is it lost? Why does it disappear?"



dream of the revolution. Here a member of the professional intelligentsia supporting the new society, Misha continues to justify the actions of Varlam (against his better judgment) until he loses his mind. His conclusion (in captivity) that one must add to the list of "traitors" until the absurdity of the situation becomes obvious to everyone brings him to smash his forehead on the white grand piano of paradise, a crushing blow to the brain of the revolution.

The irony of the fate of loram's dream for a new society is repeated in the sequence which begins with Misha Koreli's wife Eliko, near-sighted, ecstatic, and fanatic, singing, acapella, the "Ode to Joy." The well-known stanzas of Schiller's ode, particularly the lines

Praise to Joy, the God descended, By thy magic is united what stern Custom parted wide. All mankind are brothers plighted where thy gentle wings abide.... Yea, if any hold in keeping, only one heart all his own, Let him join us, or else weeping, Steal from out our midst, unknown. Draughts of joy, from cup o'er flowing, Bounteous Nature freely gives, Grave to just and unjust shewing, Blessing ev'ry thing that lives.4

ring prophetically tragic as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony rises into full chorus and orchestra and climaxes at the moment when the religious artist Sandro is hung over a pond of water, a double crucifixion image. Sacrificial lamb, Sandro is shot, just as the cathedral, which represented everything he defended, is blown up.

In the Russian critical view, Schiller's ode represents here "the tragic symbol of the time, of the twentieth century, which did not justify the beautiful dreams of the idealists and utopians," "a requiem to the victims of the terror," which is "addressed to all mankind" and calls for "another brotherhood-a brotherhood of the victims of the terror.""

For Georgians, this scene is particularly ironic. One shot conveys the destruction caused by loram's dream for a new society in its realization by Varlam: the detonation of the church (the symbol of the Georgian nation), the crucifixion of the hero, and the loss of beauty to the devil. The question of a new brotherhood, at least of an international brotherhood, seems absurd. Not only loram, but more importantly Sandro and Georgia, together with Georgian history and Geor- gian culture, have been sacrificed in the name of a false foreign dream.

loram and Sandro were easily destroyed, but the dream represented by Sandro (and Chorekhi) is passed from generation to generation. Played out in Repentance by the duel between the Aravidze and the Barateli families, the struggle for freedom based on respect for the past lies at the structural center of the film and brings about the final judgment. The duel begins when Sandro Barateli closes the window on Varlam's speech, continues as Sandro defends the church in Varlam's garden of paradise, and reaches a crescendo as Varlam visits the Barateli home to enlist Sandro in the cause. As Varlam bows down to Nino, kissing her hand and calling her the goddess of Boticelli, he feigns devotion to the highest aesthetic. As he recites William Shakespeare's Sixty-sixth Sonnet, he mocks his victims and their elevated love for beauty, culture, and the past: "Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, / Save that, to die I leave my love alone." 42 Varlam kills Sandro and appropriates his wife Nino, but he underestimates their daughter, Keti, and the seed of faith planted by the Baratelis in Varlam's own son, Abel. In the end, Varlam cannot kill the spirit of the Barateli dream.

Within the context of the film trilogy, Shakespeare's "my love," evoked by Varlam's ironic

40. Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, passim. 41. Zorkaia, "Dorogoi," 44. 42. William Shakespeare, The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1761.


174 Slavic Review

reading and portrayed after his visit by scenes of Nino sleeping and Sandro at the piano in their home for the last time, brings us back to the beginning of the trilogy, to the title poem of the The Prayer.

Burning with the fire of love, May I never wander the earth Cold corpse, . . . Be merciful to my beloved, Warm her heart with your flame. May she soon see her dream.43

For Vazha and his readers, the beloved's dream is the liberation of Georgia. That subject was the dream for the poet in The Prayer, for Chorekhi in Tree of Desire, for Sandro in Repen- tance. As the glasnost press reminds us, the real Stalin could have inherited that dream:

There was a short period in Stalin's life when he could have chosen the path of a Georgian nationalist. That was his youth, the "Soselo" [his pseudonym] period, when Soso Dzhugashvili wrote patriotic poems in the style of Akaky Tsereteli, some published by Il'ya Chavchavadze in his journal Iveria. What would have happened had he continued on that path, no one can say. But that interest in Georgian poetry, the poetic potential in his following years and subsequent activity disappeared without a trace.44

Stalin, native son of Georgia, chose a different path:

Stalin was never a narrowly nationalist player in the "Georgian little league." He was a revolutionary of international scope, partner to Lenin, . . . who emerged victorious in a merciless ideological battle and through personal vendetta became sole ruler with absolute and unlimited personal power, de facto heir to the Russian autocracy.45

Stalin was a superman born from the soil of Georgia who could have devoted himself to the beloved and her dream. Like Judas, however, Stalin sold Georgia and her history, her culture, and her dreams, for his own aggrandizement and a dream foreign to the ground he trod as a child.

The reckoning between Varlam and his son Abel occurs at the moment when Varlam par- takes of the flesh of Christ in a kind of demonic Eucharist, laughing and mocking his only-begot- ten son. Varlam's greasy hands and face in deep chiaroscuro and his demonic laughter recall the devil from The Prayer and evoke the struggle between man and the devil over his soul. While the suicide of his only son, Tornike, turned Abel Aravidze's world upside down, his horror at finally recognizing just who his father was and what the dictator had done to his own people prompted Abel to throw his father's corpse to the carrion.

Abel's heart-rending cry as he tosses his father's remains over the cliff is a call for Geor- gians to recognize Stalin for who he was, to let him go, to rip him from their hearts, to deny him a place in the history of their nation, and to return to the beloved and her dream, to that old road leading from the bloody past into the future-that their sons not damn their graves.

Repentance closes by returning to the opening sequence of the film. Keti decorates her cakes, Varlam is dead, and the viewer is not sure whether Varlam is resting in the ground or rotting above it. The last shot (the moment of catharsis for many Soviets) restates the main themes of the Georgian text: death and the grave (Gounod's "Life and Death"), the father (Varlam Street), the past destroyed (the cathedral which is no more), and beauty. Veriko An- japaridze (the famous Georgian screen and cinema actress who played Marita's grandmother in Tree of Desire) evokes the cinematic past and the real-life cultural past of her nation. In her last role, she plays the beloved and her dream, ancient, beaten down, and alone, but alive and headed for the cathedral.

Circling back first on itself, then on the trilogy as a whole, Repentance carries the viewer

43. Vazha Pshavela, Tkhzylebani, 72-73. 44. Buachidze, "Martovskaia tragediia 1956," 111. 45. Ibid., 111-112.



back to the beginning of this particular story and the beginning of the basic struggle: to man, the devil, and his soul, or his beloved. There is no end to the story. For Georgians, the quest remains the same.

In its form, structure, text, and themes, Repentance remains faithful to itself, its cycle, its native soil, and its cultural heritage. If it speaks to others, it does so as previous Abuladze ilms have: In its particularity, it becomes universal. Underestimating the national content of Abuladze's work is a misreading of the complex, polyphonic text of this important film.


Nationalism

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