It has been a long time since cinema stopped being a mass entertainment spectacle. It is a reflection of society now - sometimes propagandistic, sometimes harsh and sometimes fantastically bright, but it should clearly show the line between good and bad, white and black and even if it is a film about a negative character, the audience should not want to be in his place.
Soso Bliadze's film "Otar’s Death" (2021) is a bizarre work. When the film is over, you are left unsure of your feelings. What does it say, exactly? The idea is now out of fashion, but in today's terms - what message does it convey? Which is the positive hero? Negative? Who is the audience supposed to empathize with?
In the daily routine, people lose important values, opportunities to communicate with loved ones. It seems to suppress feelings and emotions, it does not allow us to think about how much time we waste on futile actions and acquiring material values. Only the feeling of approaching the end of life makes you look at the world anew and see how important the spiritual freedom of a person is.
After the film "Anna's Life" it became clear that the story told in it would have a continuation. Today, Nino Basilia’s film and two subsequent works - "Person No. 2" and "Chemical Wedding" can be considered a film trilogy, and not only because the same actors participate in them. Playwright, director, writer, Nino Basilia's novel "Plastic Nerve" has this inscription: "female novel." Accordingly, this film trilogy is also about the female gender, specifically "Person No. 2" (2020), if we use a paraphrase, is a "female film." It reminded me of my favorite play,
David Pirtskhalava's short film "Father" (2015) is the director's debut work. Dozens of films with similar (or approximate) names have been shot worldwide. Fatherhood or fatherlessness is the main topic of many works. David Pirtskhalava also entered cinema with such an important statement and so interestingly that in 2015, the jury of the Locarno Film Festival acknowledged his film as one of the best and awarded him a prize.
Winter. The season when time stands still. People lock up themselves in warm houses and almost stop contact with the outside world. They are away from it all until the sun comes through their windows again or they hear a swallow chirping. There is a huge chance of depression during this period. You, as a person, remain alone with yourself and have more time to express your emotions, to find out in life. Depression and existential crisis occur when favorable conditions arise and remain with a person for a very long time.
The often used expression, the biggest animal is man, accurately reflects the content of Amiran Dolidze's film, "The Animal" (2019). But a title - "Man as an Animal" would be more appropriate for the movie. The director carefully observes the main character, whose name we do not learn throughout the film. The latter is ready to use forbidden means to achieve the final goal.
It's night. Ramo and Makho are stealing the railway tracks, are in a hurry... Shalva Sokurashvili's camera nervously follows their movement. This camera is one of the active heroes of the film, which sometimes conveys other characters’ inner state, or sometimes is an objective narrator, goes away and forces you to discover new details as if in an already familiar image, in order to immerse yourself...
Initially everything seems familiar, as if it has been seen many times and left behind, stepped and passed, or it is even better to be passed. Vague and clear associations and parallels appear - with other times - with other films, their other content, in them - with other people and their adventures, their problems. with other parts of their/others' lives, other developments and other (and/or similar) endings...
In the 1950s, after large-scale cinema and films about great historical figures in the post-Stalinist era, cinema turned to "simply" people, for whom history is only the background of daily life, those who encounter and solve (or do not solve) the small (but also possibly large) routine problems...