Baku. 16 September. REPORT.AZ/ The film “Nar bağı” (Pomegranate Orchard), shot by Azerbaijani director Ilgar Najaf, was screened at the international festival.
Report informs, screenshots of the movie held in Vlissingen, the Netherlands in “Film by the Sea” festival caused great interest of the audience and took second place in the festival.
At present, film screening continues as part of the festival. The Azerbaijanis living in the Netherlands can watch the film.
Notably, the Pomegranate Orchard is the only Azerbaijani film chosen for Oscar selections to be held in February 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug4BmWBFeRs&feature=share
Buta is an ornament on carpets, fabrics, embroideries, frescoes.
It had been known from times immemorial.
It has polysemantic symbolics.
It is interpreted as a bud, the Sun, a drop of water,
a tongue-flame, an ovary of fruit and many other things.
But mainly it symbolizes life.
From the opening credits of Buta
Scripted and directed by Ilgar Najaf, Buta was chosen as the Azerbaijani entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 85th Academy Awards. Buta is a nickname of the film’s protagonist, a seven-year old boy, who lives in a remote village in Azerbaijani highlands. Disconnected from the modern world, he and other villagers display a strong connection to their land and to the traditions of their ancestors. The film develops three main plotlines: Buta’s conflict with a group of other boys in the village and his friendship with a little girl, the sister of the main bully, Buta’s opponent; Buta’s grandmother’s re-union with the love of her youth, an elderly man referred to as Grandpa; and a young woman, Grandmother’s apprentice, Gyoncha, and her relationship with a merchant who represents some transnational company that produces soap and shampoo. The three storylines are brought together by the figure of Buta, for whom the other main characters—with the exception of his grandmother of course—function as a surrogate family.
Story-telling in the film is compared to weaving: Buta’s grandmother is a carpet maker and also a story-teller. At the start of the film she is shown working on a carpet outside the house; the pattern is just beginning to emerge; towards the end of the film the carpet is finished and the beauty of the ornament is revealed. Predictably it includes buta as its key element. The film might seem to make an obvious connection between weaving and story-telling, and perhaps this is its main message: it encourages the viewer to enjoy the pattern rather than try to guess what the pattern might be. So the film celebrates the slow pace of everyday life and also shows how the mundane is home to the extraordinary. Acceptance and humility are the values the villagers invariably embrace. Their life seems to follow the pattern of buta—an almost circular shape with a curly protrusion on one side—and so combines repetition and difference.
From the very outset the film focuses on the exploration of ancient decorative motifs, including buta, which seems to appear everywhere. In the beginning, digitally animated credits are interspersed with scenes of male villagers playing a game that looks similar to polo; the camera picks buta as an element of the ornament on the players’ clothes, on carpets, in the form of a tattoo on a girl’s hand, on a duvet Buta uses in bed; later buta re-appears in the form of a pond where the local boys bathe and in the shape of the stone structure Buta builds on top of a hill. These exterior patterns represent the characters’ interior world: for example, Buta wears a checkered cowboy shirt, with the sharp geometry of this pattern hinting at his maturation, at his developing more masculine, edgy traits of character which contrast with his inner plasticity, symbolized by buta. Therefore, the film is rich in symbols and allegories, and it functions as a cinematic exploration of allegory per se.
Three other poignant symbols in the film are the tree, the river and the carpet. They provide the film with a narrative structure, frame characters’ development and enable an allegorical reading of the events. The river separates the village from the rest of the world; as a symbol of time, the river emphasizes the eternal nature of the conflict; its meandering waters provide Grandma with inspiration when she is working on her carpets.
Shot from a distance, the tree enters the visual landscape of the film from the very outset. It grows in the middle of a vast field, a solitary reminder of life, transformation, continuity and wisdom. The characters come to the tree at moments of crises, for example, when Buta is bullied by other boys, and it provides them with a spiritual remedy. The tree that grows far off in the field is contrasted with some trees in the village: Grandpa has one, and it symbolizes his love for a woman, and this is where he dies; Grandma has one, and it symbolizes her love for her grandson. She reminds Buta that the tree always blooms on his birthday, and it becomes a symbol of youth, potency and a start of new life.
The carpet is perhaps the central symbolic element in the film. On one level, it is a utilitarian object—hung vertically, it shelters Buta from strong winds; on another level it is an artifact that enables highly ritualized communication—placed horizontally on the ground it becomes a symbol of a young woman’s devotion to a man. Most importantly, the carpet functions as a canvas that characters use to inscribe their feelings and thoughts. If Grandpa needs to restore an ancient mill to complete the circle of his life, Grandma needs to create a beautiful carpet that would “summarize” her life, with all its suffering and happiness. As soon as she finishes one carpet she moves onto the next, using flowers to dye the yarn. When Grandpa dies, Buta finds him lying on a carpet—the viewer has reason to suspect it is the carpet Grandma gave him when they were young.
The community living in the village is represented as a group of people practicing ancient traditions and beliefs. However, the film has a pseudo-anthropological quality to how it shows the everyday life of the village. It focuses on their practices and rituals, for example, carpet weaving and bread making; the camera celebrates the slow pace of life in showing a solitary figure of an elderly man; the director indulges in long takes of valleys, clouds and hills, and this imagery is unquestionably stunning. Buta makes a point about eschewing all signs of modernity—in fact, the commercial truck gets stuck in mud on the banks of the river, forcing the driver to abandon his vehicle and explore the village on foot. Local women reject his (promotional) gift of shampoo and liquid soap that comes in plastic bottles in favor of the homemade soap Grandpa sells. “Such are our traditions,” they say. The camera tries very hard to capture the traditional way of life; however, it is impossible to avoid the imagery of modernity even in this remote village: the viewer cannot help noticing electrical posts in the village which suggests they have electricity (in a different scene the camera lingers over an oil lamp), the crowd at the local festival wears modern clothes, and plastic covers are used to protect hay. As a result the traditional village looks like a well-preserved theme park, and life in the community appears staged, giving the film a glossy look. There are also some annoying incongruities of taste. For example, in the very beginning, to get the boy out of the house, Grandma asks Buta to collect dry cow “waste” in the fields to be used as fuel. The boy brings back a large sack of manure; however his clothes stay impeccably clean as if he were part of a promotional video for washing detergent.
The film advocates patriarchal values; as Grandma explains to her apprentice who is about to get married, “The family carpet is being made by two people. One of them weaves carefully and gently. The other—strongly and quickly.” Buta, an ornament, is clearly a feminine symbol, and perhaps it designates the softer, feminine side of the boy’s character and that of other villagers. The film celebrates imagery of circular objects, whether it is the predictably round shape of the mill wheel or the crown of the tree, or the weathered stones used to build the houses in the village, and the leather bag Grandpa carries around.
The story of the boy is about preserving his big-hearted nature and developing the more masculine, competitive side of his character. Other boys in the village tease Buta for being an orphan; the film does not explain if his parents are dead, or missing, and in fact it does not develop the theme as perhaps it is not very important. This is because the boy has a strong spiritual connection with his Grandma, and as mentioned above, the other characters function as his surrogate parents. He eventually becomes an embodiment of the community spirit, of the ensuing tradition and of life itself. He commemorates his progress by building a sculpture on top of a mountain: he carries rocks from the bottom of the river and places them on the hill so that they make a buta pattern. His earthwork—like many ancient monuments—can only be seen from the air. By building the sculpture, Buta demonstrates his intrinsic knowledge of the passage of time and of its cyclical nature, and his ability to communicate with gods.
Buta’s rites of passage are portrayed in rather subdued tones and include him learning about the meaning of life and death and to a lesser extent a demonstration of his authority and power. It is his Grandpa who teaches him about enduring love, perseverance and honesty; he was a man who left the village hoping his beloved—the boy’s grandmother—would follow him; although she did not, he continued to adore her. He returns to the village knowing that his life is coming to an end. The scene of their reunion is perhaps the most moving in the film. Grandpa pays back another debt—he restores an old mill which means the villagers can mill their grain locally. The spinning mill signifies the cycles of life, eternity and human achievement. Buta finds the body of his now deceased Grandpa next to the mill, and the death of the old man empowers the boy as he is now able to confront his opponent, the evil-minded brother of his girlfriend. (The other boy has a striking mop of blond hair; although I am not certain the director wanted to make a deliberate a reference to Nietzsche, there is something sinister about this boy). Their opposition is about their struggle for authority and leadership in their own community, and of course Buta wins in a brutal fight with the other boy.
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It would be a cliché to describe the style of the film as poetic; indeed, Buta is indulgent in its interest in ornaments, patterns and symbols. In this regard, the director makes a clear reference to Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates. However, the films differ greatly in their concerns, mode and structure, with Buta providing a more traditional form of story-telling and less complex use of mythological and religious motifs. Thematically, Buta is in line with a number of films produced in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc that focus on the figure of a young male orphan. Like in Jan Sverak’s Kolya (1996), Andrei Kravchuk’s The Italian (Italianets, 2005), andAndrei Panin and Tamara Vladimirtseva’s Gagarin’s Grandson (Vnuk Gagarina, 2007), in Buta the small boy is a symbol of new life and also of continuation of tradition; however, unlike the other films, Buta does not explore the social or cultural impact of the political transformations of the early 1990s on the new, post-communist generation. Instead the film celebrates the beauty of the natural world and the simplicity of life in a remote rural settlement.
Vlad Strukov
University of Leeds
Loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s last play The Cherry Orchard, Ilgar Najaf’s film The Pomegranate Orchard tells the story of a family in rural Azerbaijan, who are forced to sell their orchard. Najaf was born in Armenia in 1975, but in 1988 he and his family fled the country due to ethnic conflict. He went on to study film at the Azerbaijan State University in 1993. Pomegranate Orchard is his second feature film after Buta (2011).
The film opens with an interior shot of a window with a pomegranate tree in full bloom just outside. The camera pans back to reveal the young boy Jalal taking an eye examination, as his mother Sara explains to the doctor that his vision has weakened ever since he accidentally fell off the roof. During the examination, Jalal is surprised to discover that he is color-blind: when shown the color red, he responds that it is black. Back home in the orchard, Jalal asks his grandfather Shamil what color pomegranates are, invoking Sergei Paradjanov’s film The Color of Pomegranates (1969). Although his grandfather expresses surprise that he doesn’t know pomegranates are red, we already sense that Jalal’s distorted vision accurately foresees the decline and death of the orchard. Indeed, we have just heard that their neighbor Rasim wants to buy the orchard to build a factory on the land. We know the plot of this story all too well from Chekhov’s play. Adding to the foreboding mood, Sara then tells Shamil, her father-in-law, about a nightmare she had the night before: the tree branches were hitting against the windows, causing pomegranates to splatter on the glass. “The juice was running down the glass like blood,” she says and then asks (rather improbably): “Do you think it’s a good sign?” If we had any doubt about the symbolism of the dream, the next shot makes clear the connection between the pomegranates and blood. The camera cuts to the wall at which Jalal has been throwing rotten pomegranates and slowly zooms in on the blood-red juice and pulp splattered on its surface. The visual effect is striking and again seems an oblique reference to Color of Pomegranates, which deploys a similar economy of images—one of the opening shots of Paradjanov’s film, for example, shows a cloth gradually soaking up the blood-red juice of the pomegranates that sit atop it.
The ruin that Sara’s dream predicts is set in motion when her husband, Gabil, unexpectedly returns home one rainy night after a twelve-year absence. He has been in Russia and claims to have done well for himself working in Moscow. And yet, despite the fact that he boasts about driving a Volvo and regularly pays for his friends at the tea house to demonstrate his largesse, several characters note that his clothes are in tatters. He tries to convince Sara and Jalal to move back with him to Moscow, but young Jalal is resistant. He is concerned about what will happen to the orchard, since his grandfather Shamil is getting old and won’t be able to harvest the pomegranates himself. The film plays on the theme of sight; although Jalal’s physical eye-sight is lacking, he is the one who seems to have true insight into his father’s motives.
Gabil eventually convinces his wife and son to move to Russia, promising that they will have more opportunities in Moscow. Recognizing that he will not be able to tend to the orchard himself, Shamil decides to sell the orchard to his neighbor Rasim, who plans to build a factory on the land. Shamil asks Gabil to take the money from the sale of the orchard and put it in a bank account for Jalal. Instead, Gabil absconds with the money to settle his debts, abandoning the family once again. While on the bus back to Moscow, he makes a phone call that reveals he has another family there. A friend later reveals, Gabil’s daughter there was being held hostage as collateral for his outstanding debts. The revelation of this detail feels somewhat gratuitous. Although it is meant to explain why Gabil has again betrayed his family, there was little sense of the severity of his situation prior to this moment. This slowly paced drama lacks the tension it would need to carry off such a revelation.
At the end of the film, we find ourselves back in the ophthalmologist’s office. The final shot is of the same pomegranate tree framed by the window at the beginning of the film, but now the fruit on the tree is blackened and shriveled. Although Jalal’s outward eye-sight has not improved, his vision of the black fruit has indeed come to pass.
The translation of Chekhov’s play to contemporary Azerbaijan yields some interesting results. If Chekhov’s play is concerned with changing socio-economic structures—the decline of the gentry and the rise of the middle class in post-reform Russia—so, too, does Najaf’s film attend to the rise of migrant workers coming to Russia from former Soviet republics and how this disrupts traditional ways of life.
Like Chekhov’s cherry orchard, the pomegranate orchard is portrayed as a fragile idyll, with signs of the modern world slowly encroaching. And yet, we are reminded that the idyllic nature of the orchard has already been pierced. In the play, Madame Ranevskaya’s son Grisha drowned in the river, thus impelling her to abandon the estate and move abroad. In the film, we learn that Gabil’s brother died when he crashed his car into one of the trees while driving drunk. It is Gabil’s guilt over this event—he had given his brother the keys to the car even though he knew he was drunk—that motivated him to flee to Russia twelve years ago. For both characters, the orchard is the beloved ancestral home but also the site of trauma.
What is intriguing, however, is that Gabil’s character doubles as both Ranevskaya, the aristocratic landowner of the orchard, and Lopakhin, the son of a former serf who buys the estate. Like Ranevskaya, Gabil returns to the family estate from abroad, heavily in debt. Despite their financial situations, both characters make a show of generosity so that others will still perceive them as prosperous. Like Lopakhin, though, Gabil also encourages the sale of the family estate in his attempt to gain ascendancy in the new socio-economic order. And yet, one feels that the film does not do as much as it could to explore this tension in Gabil’s character.
Robyn Jensen
Columbia University
Source: http://www.kinokultura.com/2018/60r-pomegranateorchard.shtml
