Blue Mountains, or Unbelievable Story

Yay for a baiting title. The Blue Mountains, or Unbelievable Story. Refers to one of the slightly chuckles inducing gag with the protagonist trying to get his script read that is never read. Another one is the Greenland painting that is surrounded by bureaucracy to get removed. Other thing is the irksome motoball league that is somehow always playing outside, supposedly the cause of the building falling apart from the vibrations.

When it comes to humor, am I difficult to impress or is this not my type of humor? You tell me. I chuckled in my head maybe a few times, but other than that it was nothing impressive to warrant the ridiculously high ratings, currently 8.7 & 4.0, IMDB & LetterBoxd, respectively. Used repetition, running gags, in a proficient manner that made for an entertaining enough couple hours, but nothing to write home about!

In this extremely funny satire on Soviet bureaucracy, the protagonist, a hapless author, attempts again and again to get his editors to accept his manuscript -- a novel with the title "Blue mountains or Tienshan." The story unfolds with the inevitability of a fairy tale in which a naive hero is painfully being initiated into the ways of the world, and while the would-be author wanders through the hallways of his publishers, we in turn learn a lot about the crumbling Soviet system and the inactivity of its bureaucratic functionaries. By Hollywood standards, the film may be slow and repetitive, but it is precisely the repetition of tragicomic situations that bring the film to the heights of a Beckettian absurdity. Even after the end of the Soviet Union a film that is worth while watching.

BLUE MOUNTAINS, OR AN IMPROBABLE STORY ("Why two titles?") is an absurdist tale in which a novelist takes his latest manuscript to his familiar publishing house, only to have it pushed aside, lost, damaged, stolen, or simply ignored again and again as the employees go about their meaningless, repetitive work. Things start out fairly normal and get gradually stranger as the story continues. As film satires go it's not quite as cunning as Bunuel's best work (which it seems it could have been influenced by) but it's still a funny, sharp and brutally honest jab at the crumbling Soviet government and bureaucratic ineptness in all its forms. Ramaz Giorgobiani's expressionless lead performance is an interesting and eventually necessary realist counterpoint to the often wild and intentionally bloated performances of the bureaucrats. The aforementioned Bunuel is an obvious cinematic connection, as is Fellini's ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL, but as I was watching it I kept thinking this is what might happen if Preston Sturges filmed a Kafka story. Well worth a look.

This movie is timeless masterpiece, one of the best in Georgian cinematography. It is considered to be allegory of the system in Soviet Union and that is true; but nowadays when that system doesn't exist, it is difficult to relate to that period of time, especially for younger generations, who were born after collapse of Soviet Union.Somehow the movie hasn't lost it's relevance, even more, now this allegory can be attributed to organizations and to modern managers. Bureaucracy, lack of communication, procrastination,absenteeism and strange decision making process, what we often see in our workplaces, this movie is allegory to everything listed above. It is heavily loaded with quotations. It is one of the must watch movies in my opinion. Even more, you can watch it several times and every time you can rediscover a lot of new things. Thus, if you haven't seen it yet, I strongly recommend.

Twenty-two years after I saw it in cinema, Shengelaya's "Blue Mountains" still makes me laugh my ass off every time when I remember virtually ANY of its scenes. I can't forget the obsessive fight off the Honorable Vaso about the Groenland landscape threatening to crash upon his head, the eggs of the Venerable Irodion, or the perpetual answer of Shuqri Gomelauri: "No, I won't read - and YOU KNOW why I don't read!" :( The automatic idiosyncrasies of Zaza Zazaevitch ("Look at them! Playing football with motorcycles! I'm surprised they don't play it with buses!"), and the dementially absurd experiment with the bike's engine gunned inside the offices by Comrade Artem Tschatschanidze - the gorilla-like president of the moto-ball federation who, incidentally, also wrote a poetry manuscript - of love lyrics! The messy fables author who for no reason at all turns into a mining engineer, and his hysteric relationship with the dizzy Aunt Tamara. The daily ritual of the Beautiful Bella's husband and daughter coming to the office, after school, only to see her again courted by Soso... And, most of all, the irresistible absentee characters: Murmanidze, the one who never applied his signature, Kuparadze, the one who always gave a friendly call, and the elusive Guivi, always hidden and silent behind the locked door of his office where the two thugs knock every day: "Guivi, it's us!" - to no avail... Definitely, "The Blue Mountains" remains a masterpiece of the most absurd humor possibly. Imaginative and fresh, fast paced and precise - in a full contrast with the bureaucratic world it's depicting: dumb and stale, sluggish and chaotic. Worth sitting on the same shelf with Beckett's "En attendant Godot", Ionescu's "Rhinocéros" and "La Cantatrice Chauve", and Kafka's "Trial". I still pray to find it one day on the torrents or P2P!

L.E.: I got it! :D I have it on DVD! Wowwwidze!