I hate writing reviews. I am racked with doubt whenever I write a positive review. However, I feel compelled since this film is truly under-appreciated.
Armenian cinema is barely known. Unrestored, untranslated and over-shadowed by Muscovy's crushing imperialism, this film and many like it are forgotten outside of Armenia.
This is a film that is haunted by the past, that bitter pain present in many great films by Satyajit Ray (The Music Room, Charulata). It is a film that contains stunning shots. The music is worthy of 400 Coups (Jean Constantin) or Cléo de 5 à 7 (Michel Legrand). The film however marries baroque, pristine imagery and divine music in a way that echoes Pakeezah, Hitchcock or Korean melodramas (whether Early Rain, Lady Vengeance or The Housemaid). I do not want to unveil the plot. It is a construct that must be discovered with fresh eyes.
The film has at its heart, the fragility of myths. It is an echo to cinema. An echo to a struggle between the traditional and the personal, between beliefs and desire. How the petty desires of people collide with the great, the mysterious and the eternal.
But this is not the greatest film ever made, sadly.
Though some shots are pure magic, worthy of the best of Mizoguchi, and though the music is heart stopping, the characters seem shallow. The impenetrability of the characters and the suddenness of events, at times a lapidary tone, dull the emotional impact. It seems its relations to myths and legends force upon the film this legendary feel. The feeling of a distant tale from another time. The film brought me to tears, but it may have benefitted from a longer runtime.
Lapidary is a word that encapsulates this film. Both sudden and disarming, but also literally "of stone". As with many Armenian films, the mineral world lives and the transience of life is omnipresent.
