User Reviews

I've never seen a movie that looks like The Legend of the Suram Fortress.

Directed by Georgian SSR-born Soviet-Armenian director Sergei Parajanov and Georgian actor Dodo Abashidze, this was the first movie that Parajanov had made in 15 years after being censored by Russia and 4 years in jail for "lewd acts and bribery." That's because he was bisexual and he was sentenced to five years in a hard labor camp despite a letter from Andrei Tarkovsky to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which stated, "In the last ten years Sergei Parajanov has made only two films: Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates. They have influenced cinema first in Ukraine, second in this country as a whole, and third in the world at large. Artistically, there are few people in the entire world who could replace Paradanov. He is guilty - guilty of his solitude. We are guilty of not thinking of him daily and of failing to discover the significance of a master." The letter was also signed by Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Leonid Gaidai, Eldar Ryazanov, Yves Saint Laurent, Marcello Mastroianni, Françoise Sagan, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky and Mikhail Vartanov.

This is not the first tragedy in his life, he was married to a Muslim woman who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity for him. Her relatives saw this as blasphemy and killed her. Knowing this will make this movie even richer for you, as he lived the pain that his characters do.

Much like The Color of Pomegranates, this film uses tableaux -- a static scene containing one or more stationary actors who poses with props and scenery, combining theater and visual art to tell the story -- to create a surreal effect as it moves from dramatic image to image, filled with actors who each speak their part within these pieces of motion art.

This is an adaption of a traditional Georgian folk story of Durmishkhan, who has been freed by his master and now wants to buy the freedom of his lover Vardo. He is told another story by a merchant who lost his mother because of the cruel nature of his master. He killed that man and became a Muslim to escape the law.

Durmishkhan works for this man and marries a woman and has a son named Zurab. As his boss retires, he gives the business to him and converts again, this time to being Christian and dreams of the Muslims killing him for his crime.

Vardo becomes a fortune teller who is called upon when the Muslims invade their country. Despite all their efforts, the Suram Fortress is falling. She fortells that a blue-eyed young man from the countryside must be walled inside the fortress alive and it will stand. The bou who she be her son, Zurad, volunteers and gives his life to save the country and Christianity.

The band Voidcraft used this movie for one of their videos, "The Vertical Mammal."

The Legend of the Suram Fortress feels like a movie that was made before cameras were invented, if that makes sense, something captured through time and delivered to us in the future. Filmed in the grassy scenery of Georgia with all actors facing the camera as we study the frame for its many meanings. It's presented plainly but holds many secrets, literally the most pure expression of the secret and the occult.

It's hard to say which one is more visually impressive, this or Colour of Pomegranates. Like Colour, every frame of Suram Fortress is a work of art. It's hard to even find words to convey the mastery of what Parajanov does, but one of the many things that some of his unmoving shots incorporate is movement. Specifically: graceful, flowing movement. The movement of blade of grass as a man pours a bucket of eggs. The movement of blue ribbons like flowing water. The movement of sheep in the background as two dancers leap in the foreground.

The other thing, like in his two previous films, that he uses wonderfully is colour. Humans, animals and objects are used for the visual aspect they add to the scene and are placed in ways that are pleasing to the eye. All this is done in ways that display elements of Georgian culture. There is dancing, there are flamboyant clothes.

The clearer narrative (although still not that clear!) of this film compared to Colour leads to a genuinely quite stirring final act in which the prince chooses to sacrifice himself so the fortress can be built and the invaders stopped. It draws on the importance of belonging to a 'people', a group wider than yourself, but doing so by individual choice, as opposed to the lack of choice in being a serf.

Parajanov gives screen time to the Muslim invaders that are the enemies of the Christians as well as to the culture of the native Christians. There is no strong moral condemnation, just an equal fascination with their culture. What makes the world culturally rich is the breathtaking variety of cultures, each with its own customs and traditions that are precious. This is why there is much more focus on the Muslims' culture than on presenting them as enemies, especially when all civilisations have done evil at one time or another. Indeed, it is Osman's masters in Christian Georgia that display the most evil acts we see in the film. One of the most visually stunning but harrowing scenes is him dragging his mother's body.

This film, like the one before, has an almost mystic quality that makes it feel like more than just history and culture. Then again, that speaks to how otherworldly Eastern Orthodox Christian culture can seem to those used to Western Christianity.