There might be a moment in every person's life when they realize that it is time for a change and something pushes them to deviate from the straight, mediocre, wrong path. It could be someone whose one word shakes you like a bolt of lightning or something that completely changes their consciousness and thinking. This happens especially when you realize that life is slowly pushing you towards the abyss, and you follow it like an exhausted, almost weightless log of wood, on which the current of the river sometimes knocks you over one stone, sometimes over another, but you get so used to following the will of this current that you no longer even resist until you hit a huge rock with your head and a sharp pain runs through your whole body like a knife. That moment of awakening comes when you realize that you can no longer follow the flow, otherwise the rock you encounter will be fatal. It is precisely such an acute “awakening” that the main character Anna (Nino Kasradze) faces in director Margo Zubashvili’s short film “Anna” (2017). The film is the winner of the “Georgian Panorama” nomination at the 18th Tbilisi International Film Festival in the Best Short Georgian Film category.
The plot of the film tells a simple story, the action of which unfolds over the course of just two days and for the entire half hour, it mainly observes the emotions, mood, actions and routine life of one character. The very first shots of the film begin with a Georgian singer Nani Bregvadze’s concert, who performs a famous song from her repertoire, “The Sun Falls Asleep,” accompanied by the Georgian Symphony Orchestra, which is also conducted by the famous Georgian pianist Nikoloz Rachveli. After demonstrating the virtuosity of these famous figures, the aesthetics of the film go beyond the framework of a documentary and the director takes us into the dramaturgical structure characteristic of a feature film. This is where the “love triangle” of the main character Anna, her beloved man, Irakli (Erekle Zhordania) and his wife, Lika (Anna Nizharadze) begins, a very dry story devoid of any psychological depth.
Forty-five-year-old Anna, who lives with her mother, copes alone with all the difficulties and obstacles that accompany everyday life. Many single women might have often complained about how bad it is that there is no male in their family and how easily they would solve this or that issue, such as, plumbing, electricity (at least of simple complexity), moving heavy furniture, solving the problem of repairing a broken car. Whatever it may be, a single woman remembers a representative of the opposite sex precisely in those “difficult” moments, when it comes to repairs or when there is a bolt to tighten. This is also the case with Anna, when a water pipe bursts in the bathroom and the entire apartment is flooded with water. Completely helpless, with a frozen gaze, she stands in the open doorway and stares in shock at the stream of water flowing from her apartment to the stairs.
Although the main character of the film is a strong, independent woman, at such a moment she still needs her beloved man to stand beside her, and Anna “remembers” that such a man really is next to her. But this does not happen, it does not happen because Irakli already has his family to worry about and Anna’s problems are an unnecessary burden for him. He needs Anna as a beautiful jewel that will adorn his side at the casino table and share the pleasure and love feelings caused by gambling with him.
The director shows the inner state of two women, both with different “status” and feelings, a wife and a lover, who, surprisingly, equally evoke sympathy. Both have a beloved man by their side, but they do not have him with them at the same time. The director thus emphasizes that the shared partner, in the end, belongs to neither one nor the other and will never be there for either one or the other, which is why Irakli avoids excessive responsibility and gives Anna, who got out of the car, some instructive advice, instead of going there himself and repairing the damaged water pipe.
Anna is the one who is almost never left behind throughout the film. The film begins with Anna and ends with Anna, as if the other characters in the film, even Lika (despite the fact that her husband is cheating on her, she has two children to raise, and what’s more, it turns out that she is pregnant in such a critical situation), do not deserve attention as a female character. And who is this Anna anyway? Why is she so precious to the director? It is unclear. Or why does she deserve such great attention when, as a character, she is not distinguished by any special qualities in her inner world. The only significant turning point that changes Anna's mood is the realization that Irakli's wife is pregnant with their third child.
In the episode, when Anna, together with her friend, undergoes water jet healing procedures, it evokes associations of relaxation. Although these procedures perform a kind of healing function, they can also be perceived metaphorically. The hero, stressed by this new shocking story, reaches a stage of mental "awakening" as a result of the influence of a strong stream of water and also acquires the metaphorical charge of spiritual purification. This story is so shocking for him that his subsequent actions and decisions undergo radically different, opposite, upstream changes.
Still, why Anna's character evokes the same sympathy that brings destruction to someone else's family, as does Irakli's wife Lika, whose husband was appropriated, is really interesting. There are many characters like Anna in reality, and who can count how many wives are embittered by women like her? So, what is it about Anna that fascinates and enchants us? Probably nothing except that her role is played by Nino Kasradze, whose character is so lacking in depth due to her role that you look at her not as a different character but as a beautiful, intelligent, talented actress who, unfortunately, the director did not give a full opportunity to realize her abilities.
The dramaturgical development of the film develops monotonously, dullly, even a little boringly, where there is no intrigue, tension, suspicion. The monotonous rhythm of the film is so stretched and uniform that it absolutely does not create an atmosphere of tense development of events. From the very first shots it is clear that Irakli's wife knows about their love, the love, which throughout the entire film neither tells us any beautiful and charming story about them nor hints at a passionate connection. The relationship between Irakli and Anna is superficial and empty, which we cannot blame on the actors' acting. Nino Kasradze's face here, as in her other films, is so expressive, charming and natural that she doesn't need unnecessary gestures and intense emotional actions to convey the character's inner mood and state to the viewer. The main charge that doesn't come from the characters' relationships can only be blamed on the director's weak mise-en-scenes.
The film ends with such an unexpected climax and Anna's request to Lika is so absurd that her character is completely lost and you only get the feeling that the director wanted to make some kind of impact on the viewer and instill more sympathy for Anna, which she tried with great determination throughout the film. But why? The question arises when Irakli's wife deserves more solidarity because she finds Anna's presence in her family space so unbearable that she no longer wants to keep the third child she is expecting from Irakli.
When we talk about the importance of close-ups in cinema, we probably remember many shots that have never been erased from our visual memory after the first viewing. Such can be found in many of Bergman's films, as well as Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, and especially in the silent film directors, when the "narrator" of the story is the face, not the words. It is enough to recall, in this regard, the close-ups of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Joan of Arc, which had a strong emotional impact on the viewer. As for “Anna,” the director, although she tries to add more expressiveness to Nino Kasradze’s inner mood by showing close-ups, and to intensify this, the cameraman (Dimitri Dekanosidze) uses a long, static shot, still feels that the shot lacks depth, drags on in time, and goes beyond the high artistic values characteristic of the cinematic language.
Those drawn-out episodes, especially at the end, when Anna suddenly changes her mind and, instead of going to her birthday party, prefers to spend the whole night alone with herself and walk through the night markets and streets lit by lanterns, create a long, exhausting mood. And yet, no matter how hard the director tried to make the film more profound and psychologically impactful on the audience, it is still a whole cascade of routine shots with the demonstration of one beautiful, talented actress.
Ketevan Ghonghadze
