First Published: Frontline, Vol. 5, No. 15, February 1, 1988.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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“Repentance”
Directed by Tengiz Abuladze
Gruziafilm Studio (Georgia, USSR)
What is the Soviet film industry coming to, one might ask, with a movie whose central character is an anticommunist stereotype – an amalgam of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini? And why has this Cannes prizewinner, rich in religious symbolism, surrealism and an emphasis on morality, had such an impact in the Soviet Union and around the world?
Seeing the value of this film requires placing it in the context of glasnost. As an instance of the Soviets’ “new way of thinking,” the release of “Repentance” is a welcome part of the society-wide re-examination of the Stalin period. The film’s production was made possible by glasnost advocate Eduard Shevardnadze, currently the Soviet foreign minister, who was party head in Soviet Georgia in the early 1980s when “Repentance” was made. Its bold style, and even in a sense its ideological and artistic excesses, are quite appropriate to such a period. Thus, the film has struck a powerful chord and gotten a favorable reception in the Soviet Union well beyond the small group of dissidents who use any critical analysis of Soviet history to repudiate the Soviet system.
As an absurdist morality play, “Repentance” projects a one-sided and at times idealist view of history, but in the glasnost era it serves as a powerful and provocative challenge to those in Soviet society who oppose the opening up of Soviet history books for fresh scrutiny, and who downplay the very real suffering of some portions of Soviet society during the Stalin period. It is a challenge to those who wish to cover up all negative phenomena in Soviet history, dwell only on the advances, and thereby hold back the process of revolutionary change embodied in perestroika. For without a deep understanding of the historical roots of stagnation and passivity, these phenomena cannot be fully addressed and corrected today. “Repentance” helps to develop that understanding.
The movie begins with the death of Varlam Aravidze, party head in a small Georgian town. A day after his lavish funeral, his body appears in the garden of his son Avel (played by the same actor, Avtandil Makharadze). Avel quietly buries it again, but the corpse shows up once more in the garden.
The grave robber turns out to be Katevan Baratelli, whose parents’ deaths were attributable to Varlam’s reign of terror, which presumably reached its heights during the 1930s. She goes on trial, pleads innocent and swears she will never let the corpse rest below the ground as long as she lives. As she tells the story of her famiIy’s persecution to the court, lengthy flashbacks describe the hypocrisy, deviousness and cruelty of Varlam.
Varlam’s tyranny is manifested in many forms: a disrespect for the town’s history, a manipulation of Marxist slogans and a charlatan act to charm and terrorize at the same time. Well into his campaignto root out traitors, he proclaims to the citizenry, “Four out of every three are enemies .... If we wish, we’ll catch a black cat in a dark room, even if there’s none there.” And director Tengiz Abuladze weaves Varlam’s persona with a combination of buffoonery, cunning and gangsterism that is absolutely chilling.
Varlam moves with the spontaneous sentiments which blindly brand everyone who raises questions in the struggle against fascism and for socialism as an “enemy.” He calls these sentiments “the will of the masses.” He sees all ideological differences as dangerous political differences, and acts upon them accordingly.
After the court hears Katevan’s story, it refuses to find her guilty of the grave robbing, but Avel tries to use his political influence to get the woman declared insane. Now the moral focus shifts from father to son. Avel is portrayed as a man with a “dual consciousness” – Varlam’s immorality, which he has not repudiated, and Christian morality.
Avel is the most complicated character, since he reflects the tension and struggle in Soviet society for both historical continuity and a revolutionary advance. Part of him is faithful to the memories of the long and painful struggle against fascism and idealistically enshrines that history as inviolable. The other part acknowledges mistakes in the past and the need to repudiate them, at least superficially. Avel’s own son, on the other hand, is outraged at the revelations about his grandfather, but is rebuffed by his father’s seemingly blind loyalty to Varlam’s memory. Through tragedy and the heavy weight of reality, Avel is ultimately forced to grapple with the past and “repent.” The myth of Varlam is finally shattered.
“Repentance“ alternates between realism and surrealistic flourishes and fantasies, and is clearly a stylistic departure from the traditional canons of socialist realism. The surrealism includes the mixing of elements from different historical periods, such as Varlam’s guards dressed in tuxedos or medieval armor, These techniques successfully create a sense of timelessness, abstracting general moral principles from history.
The film’s central characters are universalized. The object of critique is the corrupt local party leader who exhibits many of the personal attributes of Joseph Stalin (a native of Soviet Georgia, where the movie was filmed). But Aguladze clearly intended to portray a more generic character type, not just a local Stalin. The burly Varlam is a physical conglomerate of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Stalin’s interior minister, Lavrenti Beria, as well. Katevan’s father, a talented religious artist, is also a “type” – a Christ-like, persecuted figure.
Within the tension of creating a relevant and meaningful parable, Abuladze apparently intended to strive for universality over history, and fantasy over reality, but he was constantly pulled by the impulse of realism, the need to explore actual human experience and maintain an historical footing. According to Abuladze, a student of the Soviet pioneer filmaker Sergei. Eisenstein, “We wanted as much as possible to get away from concreteness, but we found that the more we tried to generalize, the more concrete it became, the more universal. ... Behind every episode in ’Repentance’ stands a fact of real life.”
The lesson of this morality play, according to the director, is that “evil that usurps power is a blind alley.” This is, however, not just an abstract moral principle to the Soviet people today. Corruption, alcoholism, and unprincipled and even criminal behavior among leading individuals are surely not just historical problems. The tension between leadership and workers in the film underlies the continuing struggle for democracy at all levels of Soviet society. And the struggle between the generations over “socialist consciousness” reflects a very real tension present in every Soviet family.
Soviet critics of the film have rightly pointed out that Abuladze poses religious morality as the alternative to the dogmatic “Marxism” of Varlam. And he makes a leap of faith by equating religious morality with the church (which is persecuted under Varlam). Because of the operation of this alternative philosophical framework, the film does not explore the complexities of socialist morality as a concrete set of ideological and political principles bound up with the task of building socialism.
Western critics, on the other hand, naturally take the director’s moralism at face value and hail the film as proof that godless communism produces fanatical dictators, “totalitarians” no different than fascists. They are quick to reason that the director’s religious symbolism proves that the spiritual must rule over the material, Marxism to the contrary. With such an interpretation, it is easy to understand why the U.S. film industry chose to make such a splash with the distribution of this particular Soviet film.
But this self-congratulatory reasoning reflects a superficial reading of the film, of the revolution underway in the Soviet film industry and of Soviet history in general. The process of opening up the Soviet past, of which this film is a part, fundamentally entails the rejection of all idealistic views of Soviet history, not their affirmation. It is an attempt to come to grips with the real, concrete damage that was done by violations of socialist legality and Stalin’s personality cult. In the context of the glasnost spirit spreading throughout Soviet society, “Repentance” has itself become historically significant.