For this week, I wanted to cover a Ukrainian film, both because I never had before and also because of the sadly still on-going conflict between the country and Russia. To my surprise, one of the most regarded Ukrainian films turned out to be a creation of none other than Sergei Parajanov, the same man who gave us the visually and spiritually engrossing experience The Color of Pomegranates. Once I found that out, I knew I had to see it, and his unique directorial vision did not disappoint. This was another very interesting film, one that was not as deliberately crafted in the way that Pomegranates was, but instead creates a more hands-on experience rather than a more presentational one, though still one with a lot of Parajanov style to it. So, let’s get into it.
The film takes place in the Ukrainian section of the Carpathian Mountains and follows a man named Ivan. The story starts off with him as a boy wherein, not long after losing his older brother in a tree-falling incident, his father is killed in an altercation by the patriarch of another family in the area. Ever since that day, his and their families have had bad blood, but this doesn’t stop Ivan from hanging out with the daughter of that family, Marichka. The two develop feelings for each other over the years but know that their families would never approve of their love. They intend to get married anyway, so Ivan leaves his long-widowed mother to take up a farming job and earn some money for his and Marichka’s new life together. The two miss each other greatly, to the point where Marichka winds up climbing up the mountain path either to reach Ivan (who’s working on the opposite side) or just to feel closer to him, but the path gives way and sends her tumbling into the river below. The villagers find her downstream and hold a sort of mourning ritual (not sure if it was an official funeral yet) for her. At around that time, Ivan travels by on a raft with his farming coworkers and sees the gathering on the riverbank. Something compels him to check it out, and when he sees the body, he’s left in a state of shock. After this, Ivan loses a lot of hope and ambition in life, becoming little more than a recluse that the locals gossip and spread rumors about. To add insult to injury, his mother passes on not long after Marichka, so now he has no one left in his life to care for or who would care for him. Eventually, though, he does meet another woman, Palahna, who he forms a relationship with and later marries. However, Palahna doesn’t exactly share Ivan’s Christian beliefs, and Ivan’s fixation on the memory of Marichka puts a severe strain on their marriage, to the point where Palahna seeks help from an “unorthodox source” who might be able to “give her what she needs.” No, it’s not demons or anything, but I’ll leave the rest of the film for you to see. Now, let’s get on to my review.
Though I’ve only seen two of his films so far, I get the impression that Parajanov really likes to capture the culture of wherever his films are set. Throughout Shadows, we see various scenes of the locals, known as the “Hustuls” (an ethnic group in the Ukraine and Russia), taking part in various festivals, rituals, and day-to-day tasks (farming, logging, singing traditional songs, parading while adorned with masks and costumes, etc.). However, dissimilar from the subsequent Pomegranates, the film isn’t a meticulously constructed series of shots and sets, but rather it’s shot more like the audience is an omniscient observer or a fly-on-the-wall within the film’s setting. The camera in this film is much more active, practically hand-held at times, panning and moving its focus in cinematic yet intentionally loose ways. For example, during the scene where Ivan sees the mourning ritual on the riverbank, the camera starts off looking at him, but then pans up to the sky, rotates itself, and pans back down with its focus now on the riverside. Another instance is a bit where we start with a character outside of a rural housing establishment, and after the character exits the shot, the camera moves up into a semi-aerial shot of the inner courtyard as the character walks in. This sort of cinematography really allows the audience to feel like they’re in the space with the characters and the general village folk, but not only that, it also seemed to give the experience this almost tense and even ethereal vibe. It’s tense in the sense that the camera is somewhat restless and considering that several parts of the film portray emotional turmoil, it instills this slight disorientation in the viewers that makes you feel like you can never quite fully relax (there’s always something lingering within you). As for the ethereal quality, the sort of omniscient camera movements makes the audience feel like they’re some sort of spirit, a figure that exists with the people in the story but isn’t bound by normal human limitations. This is interesting to think about, since a big element of the story is Ivan’s fixation on Marichka and his inability to let her go. Ivan falls into a depressing isolation after she dies, and the film illustrates this by going black and white for a while as we watch footage of Ivan while voice-overs of town gossip as accompaniment. When he gets together with Palanha, it seems like some of the spark in his life is back, but everyone, including Palahna, can tell that Marichka has never truly left his mind. It’s gotten to the point where Ivan resists hearing about or talking about death or “those that have passed on,” and not only that, but he often has dreams where a pale and ghostly Marichka comes to his window, staring inside, as if she’s longing to be with him once more. Now, granted, the moving camera style was somewhat present before Marichka’s death, so I don’t necessarily think that we’re seeing things from her perspective (plus, I have no idea if that’s what Parajanov was even going for to begin with). However, I do think that this choice gives off the feeling that the audience is viewing the film’s world from a similar plane as Marichka is. Are we a spirit that flickers around the characters, never leaving them until their story is finished? When you think about it, that’s sort of the case almost every time we engage with a story. We don’t live in the same world as the figures in the tale, nor do we know them as friends or acquaintances, and yet we see everything that they do, and even what they think sometimes. In that way, are we no different than a ghost to these people? Again, I have no idea if any of this was intended, but the film does create a very unique vibe for itself with this sort of presentation and this is just how I interpreted it. Other than that aspect of the film, I have to note Parajanov’s visual construction. While Pomegranates would be the film where he took this aspect to the next level, Shadows is a very impressive first showing (I say first because, even though he made several films before this, this was the first one where he started making things in his own artistic style rather than the socialist realism stuff he had to make earlier). Some standout moments that I recall include using slow-motion red-filtered color negative footage of horses running as a symbol for blood spraying, fading to and out of red (as opposed to black or white) for the scene transitions, a shot (or variety of shots, really) of a pale and ghostly Marichka peering through Ivan’s window with what almost resemble cobwebs around her (just the representation of a corpse or a warning of a spider-like trap? I wonder), and a series of crimson red tree branches (or possibly antlers) all gnarled together yet done so almost like an art arrangement. These are very striking visuals, and I find it interesting that red, black, and white seem to come up quite a bit in this film, since it seems as though those are common colors you might see in these sorts of rural East Slavic regions. This could be an example of Parajanov creating an encompassing sense of the culture, not only showing it in a literal sense, but also weaving it into the film’s cinematic construction. There are probably other meanings you could glean, such as the red being tied with bloody death a la the one his father suffered, though the use of it in the scene transitions also suggests red as a symbol of the trauma of death that haunts Ivan (since he’s lost everyone he originally cared about, and the hurt has never left him). I’ll admit that I might very well be missing certain cultural influences, since I’m not too familiar with the Hutsul people, so that might be something worth looking into later. It’s about time for me to go, so I’ll give my final thoughts.
Overall, even without more in-depth cultural knowledge, this film is still a very engrossing film with some interesting presentational choices that enhance the overall experience. It is a bit difficult for me to talk about Parajanov’s work, since I find that it’s the sort of thing that’s best seen for yourself to really get a sense of what it’s like. So far, I’ve really enjoyed his work, and I’m interested to see the other two films he made later on after his career got stymied by the Soviet government (a story for another day, perhaps). So, keep an eye out for those two in the future, but until then, spend some time with Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, it’s a great first showing for Parajanov’s true filmography.