Rating of
3.5/4
The Poetry of an Avant-Garde Biopic
cacb3995 - wrote on 12/21/17
“The Color of Pomegranates” is rich with meticulously planned shot compositions and beautifully designed sets and costumes. The use of color (as suggested in the title) plays an important part in creating the visual variety on display. The dialogues on this film are sparse and seldom do they really matter, and yet the sound design helps to create the feeling of other-worldliness, not to mention the greatly spiritual soundtrack composed of several mantras. There is something theatrical about this film: how the actions are staged and how the setting itself plays with our expectations. More than once will a character look directly into the camera, but due to the particularly composed syujet this works in natural fashion, without ever making the audience question themselves if the camera (or themselves, for that matter) belong to the diegesis of this mystical world.
“The Color of Pomegranates” and its director Sergei Parajanov are certainly not the most known in the world of film. Regardless, they both have received deserved praise from important institutions and film personalities: Sight & Sound ranked the film as number 84 in their 2012 list of the 250 best films ever made, Le Cahiers du Cinema also listed the film in one of their lists back in 1982, the great Michelangelo Antonioni described the film as “perfect beauty” and Parajanov as “one of the best directors in the world”, and even Martin Scorsese himself said that watching the film was “like opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed.” I must say that I agree with all that: “The Color of Pomegranates” is a deeply spiritual and mystical cinematic experience, one full of great visual imagery and inner poetic harmony, and is the prime example of how a biopic should be made.
Full review at: breakingthefourthwallsite.wordpress.com/2017/12/21/the-color-of-pomegranates-the-poetry-of-an-avant-garde-biopic/
