1980s black comedy unravels the brutal legacy of a despot who is as ludicrous as his crimes are appalling
The sense of an ending is what this fascinating film delivers: an unimaginably painful ending and the moral reckoning that has to follow. This dreamlike satire from Georgian film-maker Tengiz Abuladze, was made in 1984 but suppressed for three years before release. This was not so much for its coded critique of Stalinism – of which the Soviet authorities had long since learned to parrot their regretful disapproval – but of the pusillanimous loyalty to the Stalinist memory that persisted in the Ussr for generations, and the taboo that even then forbade serious reassessment of Stalinist crimes and exhumation of its buried horror. Now Repentance is revived and its strange theatricality and madness are more disturbing than ever.
Partly a bizarre parable, it is an absurdist social-surrealist attack on power and state violence. Like Blue Mountains,...
The sense of an ending is what this fascinating film delivers: an unimaginably painful ending and the moral reckoning that has to follow. This dreamlike satire from Georgian film-maker Tengiz Abuladze, was made in 1984 but suppressed for three years before release. This was not so much for its coded critique of Stalinism – of which the Soviet authorities had long since learned to parrot their regretful disapproval – but of the pusillanimous loyalty to the Stalinist memory that persisted in the Ussr for generations, and the taboo that even then forbade serious reassessment of Stalinist crimes and exhumation of its buried horror. Now Repentance is revived and its strange theatricality and madness are more disturbing than ever.
Partly a bizarre parable, it is an absurdist social-surrealist attack on power and state violence. Like Blue Mountains,...
- 2/8/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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