People always have to leave someone, change the environment. Sometimes they do it by their own will, sometimes by force. They become entangled in a network of relationships and cannot find a way out, they do not know how to return to where they belong or they know but cannot return.
In many cases, the majority of society has to fight for survival. They give up everything in order to make both ends meet. This sacrifice is sometimes so severe that it also damages a person mentally. Some artists have a hard time adapting to the change of environment. Its members try to stay in one place or leave and save themselves. Exactly as it is in Nana Jorjadze's film "Forced Migration of Butterflies" (2024).
Butterflies in the film are not just individuals in one room. This name includes those who were forced to leave their homes due to the war or those who left the country to save themselves and their families.
Kosta, Nina, Misha, Mura and Nata are friends from their youth. Together with Abkhazia, they lost their childhood friend Zura and chose Kosta's house as their only refuge. Nina and Kosta have a strange relationship. It can even be said that it is toxic. They are together, not together. They neither let each other go, nor try to live together. Nina is so confused in her feelings that she agrees to marry the first man she meets. She doesn't want to lose Kosta and doesn't want to stay either. She tries to save herself by running away, she seems to love Kosta, even is jealous of him, but still leaves and goes to another country. Moreover, she does not give up even from there, she calls him and enquires about his news every day.
William Shakespeare wrote about love: "Love is not a feeling that changes when its alternative appears. Life may get complicated and things may change, but true love always remains the same." It turns out that Nina does not love Kosta, she is only deceiving herself, she is selfish. The man doesn't want to forget and that's why he comes back every time. Or maybe he doesn't know the meaning of this feeling at all and what he feels is real.
Everyone leaves the friendship one by one and no one comes back. In the end, Nata and Kosta face each other, and there is a feeling that Nata has fallen in love with Kosta. When they are alone face to face, everything indicates that unexpressed feelings are about to burst out, but Nina's return prevents it. Before Nina arrived, Kosta fell asleep on the couch. He might wake up in another reality, who knows.
Kosta did not sell his painting only because he saw in it the youth that had worn off. Those years are gone, they are not happy anymore. It seems that one evening they fell asleep on the couch and woke up in a different reality, in the time when neither Abkhazia was part of Georgia, nor other parts of the country were free and they did not have Zura. They are immersed in sadness, they don't smile like before. Time has left its mark on everyone. Kosta can't even part with the horses painted on the wall. He felt a spiritual closeness to them. As if he found himself in them and was looking for peace in the valley, he felt a sense of freedom. When they informed about the demolition of the house, he was probably even happy. Now he would have the opportunity to spend the whole day in the stable and not think about the past. Horses can also be associated with Abkhazia.
Butterflies are all individuals who left their home and did not know where to go. They are returning immigrants who can no longer find themselves at home. Or at least those, who are thinking of leaving their homeland now and do not know what they will find beyond the borders.
It is said that butterflies appear in the stomach when seeing a loved one. That's when the longing is so strong that it can take over the whole body. what is love? Trying to fill the emotional void with another person – mutual understanding, harmony, butterflies in the stomach? But along with these positive aspects, it also has a negative one, the constant fear of abandonment that does not allow a person to breathe. While Nina went to another country, Kosta lost the part of his emotions that connected him to her. He has weakened, he gets irritated faster than before, he has changed, and only Nata notices it.
In the movie, love is unleashed. It is impossible for a person to fall in love with someone at first sight and want to be with him for the rest of his life. The director treats this feeling cynically and tries to turn it into irony. This is exactly what marriage promotion serves. The action in the film develops so quickly that you cannot take it seriously.
The title can be explained in many ways. A movie will have as much meaning and ending as the number of viewers watching it. This is both good and bad. Many topics are interwoven in the film. A shot of the war cuts in between the arranged shots that depict ordinary life, soon disappears and the action continues as usual. It seems as if the director did not understand which story line to follow and everything is mixed up. The film is a complete chaos and is connected to each other only by one word – compelled. This one word is not enough for the plot, and it doesn't mean anything that "butterflies" is heard in almost every dialogue. Nor was there anything to do with promoting women’s marriage line.
Nana Jorjadze first reminded the audience of the war in Abkhazia, and then the war of 2008, awakening the sadness that they have never forgotten. It seems as if the director simply listed the topics and tried to connect them with butterflies. But the question is, did she succeed? Probably not, because the movie is anything but a perfect piece of work. Various situations are raised in this movie: love, emigration, financial crisis, self-searching, life of artists, etc.
The film doesn't have one main conflict around which the action can revolve. Everything is scattered. It's hard to pick one particular story line and then stick to it to see how events unfold.
Everything begins and ends with the new year. As if nothing happened in their life. Zura is not dead, there was no war, and Nata has to come from somewhere with a camera. Unfortunately, everything happened and now Kosta's house is also being destroyed. After its destruction, Kosta will join those butterflies who don't know where to go and are waiting for the wind to blow. Unfortunately, they only have three days to live. No one might have remembered this. Spectators are also somewhere there, next to Kosta, waiting for the first breeze to start.
Barbare Kalaijishvili
