Table of Contents
THE CINEMA OF SERGEI PARAJANOV
1. Introduction
2. Biographical notes on Parajanov
3. General outline of Parajanov’s cinematic approach
Break of causality and narrative logic
The primitive and the modern
The phenomenological approach
Parajanov’s earthly poetics
4. Cinematography
‘Lived Space’ in Shadows
Framing and camera movement
Olexo’s death and within-the-shot montage
Childhood scene and emotional camerawork
Cinematic space beyond pure reason
5. Colour
Colour as metaphor
Colour and indexicality
In the tavern
Ivan’s death delirium
Ivan’s death
Red
Colour and folk art
Monochrome
6. Sound
The asynchronous voice
Sound’s location in the diegesis of the film
‘Acousmetre’ in Shadows
7. Conclusion
8. Bibliography
9. Filmography
10. Netography
1. Introduction
In this essay, I will discuss the works of one of these film directors who despite their meager public recognition and popularity left an ineradicable imprint on the face of visual art. Federico Fellini and Tonino Guera considered him a magician, Antonioni called him ‘one of the best contemporary film directors’, Godard said that ‘In the temple of cinema there images, light and reality,’ and he ‘was the master of that temple’, Tarkovsky stated that he loved ‘his way of thinking, his paradoxical, poetical…ability to love beauty and ability to be free within his own vision.’ (n/a, 2001)Yet he remains almost completely unknown in the English-speaking world. He is Sergei Parajanov.
In a critical examination of his film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, (Sergei Parajanov, 1967,USSR) I will attempt to shed some light on how the filmmaker’s unique cinematic language functions. My analysis will be mostly focused on three key aspects of the film work – cinematography, colour and sound.
2. Biographical notes on Parajanov
Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov was born in 1924 in Tiflis, Soviet Union – nowadays Tbilisi in Georgia. After graduating high school he moved to Moscow and entered the Russian National Film School VGIK. There he was taught by Igor Savchenko and later by the renowned Ukrainian filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko, whose most famous film Earth, ( Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930, USSR) has been widely acclaimed and venerated by the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky. It may be said that it was Dovzhenko who instilled this passion for tradition and unity of man and nature that dominated the late films of Sergei. After graduating VGIK in 1951 with a short diploma film called Moldavian Tales he got assigned at the Dovzhenko Studio in Kiev, nowadays Ukraine. There he made a number of documentaries and features all styled in the principle fashion of soviet realism. Later Parajanov disavowed the artistic qualities of these works. As the Armenian admitted himself it was the appearance of Ivan’s Childhood, ( Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962, USSR ) that occurred to be the major turning point of his career. After seeing Tarkovsky’s poetic masterpiece Parajanov rediscovered cinema itself and eventually found his own creative vision. Sergei’s words are illustrative of the magnitude of the impact Ivan’s Childhood had on Parajanov, which resulted in Sergei placing Andrei’s artistic virtues on pedestal: ‘As my teacher, I consider an absolutely young and amazing director, Tarkovsky, who didn’t even realize himself what a genius he was in ‘Ivan’s Childhood’’ (Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov - Islands, 2003).
The artistic ‘leap of faith’
Parajanov experienced prepared the soil for his first ‘great’ work – Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The influence of Tarkovsky reverberated through many of the images in this ‘village Romeo and Juliette’ (Christie, 2010, p.24). Seething with music, dance, colour and emotion the film is based on a folklore legend adapted and published in 1864 by Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi. Every aspect of the film was marked by originality and creative iconoclasm. Perhaps, the wildly imaginative cinematography, however, stands out as the most immediately striking element. This work will be the center of analysis in this study and I shall discuss it in greater detail further on in the essay.
After the international success of Shadows, which won multiple awards on many film festivals, Parajanov’s individualism was not overlooked by the officials and he entered, what would happen to be a life-long struggle with the uncompromising censors and secret police officers, which would eventually cost him many years in prison under forged accusations (Ramsey, 2001). In the creation of his second feature, Parajanov went through numerous impediments and the difficulties continued after the work was completed. The Colour of Pomegranates, (Sergei Parajanov, 1968, USSR ) was a reedited multiple times by external bodies and as a result the officially released version was very different from Parajanov’s initial vision of the film. Nevertheless, it still turned to be Parajanov’s most discussed and lauded film that fascinates with its boldness of expression, unusual structure and ‘baroque aestheticism’ (Radvanyi, 1996, p.653). In a highly unusual manner The Colour of Pomegranates tells the story of medieval Armenian poet-troubadour Sayat Nova. Unlike conventional biopic films, though, Parajanov’s work does not deal with clear narration of events, but utilizing the symbolism of traditional Armenian culture, portrays the poet’s inner world, teeming with sentiments and turmoil.
The film also marks a drastic stylistic shift from Shadows. The extremely mobile camera is replaced by completely static framing. Drawing inspiration from Eisenstein and Pasolini, Parajanov developed an inimitable visual language largely utilizing tableaux vivants. As Karla Oeler notes, Sergei’s ‘poetic montage of tableaux emerges as a key cinematic stream-of-consciousness technique’ (Oeler, 2006, p. 480). In her essay on Eisenstein, Joyce and Parajanov she went ever further proclaiming that ‘With this film, Parajanov achieves one possible – and unique - realization of Eisenstein’s vision of Joycean cinema’ (Oeler, n.d., p.147). A discussion of the film in relation to these two titans of thought is a vast topic, which could perhaps be a subject of a separate study. However, this film indisputably marks a historic moment in the development of cinematic language.
After the release of The Colour of Pomegranates, Parajanov underwent an excruciatingly difficult period of his life, during which he spent more than 4 years in prison and even after his release, partially as a result of the campaign of world eminent artists lead by the poet Luis Aragon, he got project after project declined by the authorities. It took whole 15 years for him to be given the chance to make a film again. The project was The Legend of Suram Fortress, (Sergei Parajanov, 1984, USSR) - a film based on a Georgian tale in which as he employed his already established technique to create ‘‘pre-Oedipal’, ‘pre-patriarchal, prehistorical world in which there is room for everything and everyone’ (Gvakharia cited by Aksenova, 2004, p. 521). Using almost no dialogue and structuring the work in tableaux Parajanov created a richly metaphorical cinematic realm in which he again strove to portray the invisible, inner world of the characters.
Subsequently in 1986, the Armenian shot a short documentary Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme, (Sergei Parajanov, 1985, USSR) and in 1988 he filmed his last work Ashik Kerib, (Sergei Parajanov, 1988, USSR). Parajanov’s infatuation with fantastic subjects and Caucasian folklore was more evident than ever. The film is an adaptation of a legend later reworked into a fairy-tale by the outstanding Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. It follows the adventures a poor minstrel as he departs on a journey to earn money and become eligible for the hand of his beloved. Ashik Kerib turned out to be Parajanov’s last finished film. He initiated a project titled ‘Confession’, but passed away in 1990, before the film could be finished. Despite winning many awards and international recognition for his work, Sergei remained a shadow figure alien to the wide audience. This, nevertheless, makes the task of exploring his vision even more intriguing.
3. General outline of Parajanov’s cinematic approach
The three aspects of Parajanov’s cinema that I shall analyze may be generally seen as defined by the creator’s disregard of conventional narrative form. The space-time continuum of the photographic reality is not the frame in which the directors pours the dramaturgical elements and develops the action. Moreover, the filmic realm is not an attempt to replicate or evoke the structures, principles that appearances of the material world. The space in Parajanov’s film rather acquires a non-Euclidean geometrical properties while time, though rendered as unidirectional, is void of linearity. Thus space and time become active elements that are directly related and dependent on the irrational sensual flux of emotions and spiritual states of the characters. Thus, the cinematic world is not a static stage for the story, but an amorphous entity that twists and whirls according to its own laws.
Break of causality and narrative logic
Shadows breaks the canonic representational mold of narrative cinema by completely abstracting itself from direct delineation of a concrete ‘physical reality’ (Kracauer, 2004, p.145). Rejecting the conventional narrative pattern irrevocably leads to a disruption in one pivotal cinematic principle – causality. In Parajanov’s film the binding force that links the separate components into a whole is not the rational formula of cause and effect. The thus produced in that disturbance of narrative logic is something rather peculiar not only to Parajanov’s films, but to the structural and aesthetic gist of art cinema in general. As David Bordwell argues, the aesthetics of art cinema is one that ‘defines itself…against the cause-effect linkage of events” (2008, p.152) and instead grounds its organizational principles on ‘psychological causation’ (Bordwell, 2008, p.153). Further on the deviations from the classical canon that Bordwell discusses in relation to art cinema seem to outline perfectly the fundamental attributes; the very roots of Parajanov’s cinematic style: ‘…an unusual angle, a stressed bit of cutting, a prohibited camera movement, an unrealistic shift in lighting or setting – in short, any breakdown of the motivation of cinematic space and time by cause-effect logic’ (Bordwell, 2008, p.154).
More interesting, though, is the reason for the appropriation of such an irrational cinematic language. It can be argued that it is the very subject matter of Shadows that requires such an approach in order that its essence is revealed. It is a folk legend that lies in the core of the film and therefore the cinematic edifice rests on a subject that itself is principally emptied of common sense. The folkloric root of Shadows is full of magical, phantasmagoric and mystical elements that cannot be rightfully conveyed if one is to stick to conventional storytelling devices such as continuity editing. It can be argued that the power of Parajanov’s visual expression is fully manifested exactly in his ability to unify form and content. Hence the irrationality and intuitiveness of his iconography and style aims to delineate and convey ‘people’s elemental perception of the world’ (Gillespie, 2003, p.73). As Cook argued:
‘ The ultimate effect of both the sound track and the color system, like that of the film’s optical distortions and dislocations, is to destabilize the spectator perceptually, and therefore psychologically, in order to present a tale that operates at the level not of narrative, but of myth, a tale that is an archetype of life itself…’ (Cook, 2004, p.695).
The primitive and the modern
All of the Armenian’s major films depict worlds and people historically and culturally far away from contemporary Western civilization. Parajanov’s disinterest in the mores of modern times turns his artistic gaze towards the primal. Similarly to the filmmaker he felt closest to – Pier Paolo Pasolini, Parajanov was ultimately interested in the idea of primitivism as a state of existence and perception. It is this primordial perception of life that defines both the subject and audio-visual presentation of it. One could see Parajanov’s fondness towards his characters’ anachronistic and primitive world-view as a reaction towards the modern world. Gillespie notes that ‘Parajanov rejects ‘rationalism and the consequent materialism of the modern world’ and rather relishes the ‘elemental unity of life’ (2003, p.73). Thus, the stylistic decisions in Shadows are based on an ethical as much aesthetic artistic position. In this line of thoughts, the words of the celebrated filmmaker, and Parajanov’s close friend - Andrei Tarkovsky sound somewhat descriptive of Parajanov’s own worldview manifested in his film: ‘The function of the image…is to express life itself, not ideas or arguments about life. It does not signify life or symbolize it, but embodies it, expressing its uniqueness.’ (Tarkovsky, 2008, p.111) The outlined by Tarkovsky artistic attitude can be quite fairly described as phenomenological.
The phenomenological approach
As marked out by Belton, the phenomenological approach is one interested not in intellectual schematization and cerebral formulas that seek to define or explain reality but in essence of things while permitting them ‘to preserve their essential mystery’ (Belton, 2008, p.24). The complete detachment from any analytical or explanatory renditions of the phenomenon and the aspiration towards its full, untainted by rationality, communication on screen is quintessential for Parajanov’s artistic vision. Merleau-Ponty wrote that ‘To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge’ (Merleau-Ponty cited by Belton, 2008, p.23). This thought seems to resonate with the Parajanov’s portrayal of the primitive ‘pre-industrial civilization where man’s bond with his native land and his spiritual and cultural links with his ancestors are not lost’ (Gillespie, 2003, p.73). The world of Prajanov’s imagination is a seething well of unbridled, uncultivated passions and beliefs. A mix of both Christian piousness and wild and carnal pagan exuberance, the spiritual gamut of Shadows encompasses and unifies the seemingly irreconcilable realms of the metaphysical and the corporeal; spirit and matter.
Parajanov’s earthly poetics
Moreover, what’s distinctive for Parajanov’s cinematographic practice is that he does not lean on abstractions but seeks spirituality within the matter itself and evokes the transcendental - the ethereal home of the soul, by artistically manipulating the very basic and tactile earthly entities. The primordial elements of veneration like sun, water, fire, earth, tree are all central figures within his work but their function is not to shape the physicality of the diegesis, but to figuratively convey and set free the immaterial essence capsulated within the material shell. In that respect the aesthetics of Parajanov’s cinema may well be seen as one similar to the literary style of Nikos Kazantzakis who similarly gives expression to his metaphysical findings through the very elemental earthly ingredients and appropriates a ‘primitive’ verbal imagery. For instance, in his Report to Greco the Cretan writes:
‘You are a goat’, I often tell my soul, trying to laugh, for fear I might cry, you are a goat, my poor soul. You are hungry and instead of drinking wine and eating bread and meat, you take a sheet of paper and write on it the words: wine, meat and bread and then you eat it’ (Kazantzakis, 1986, p. 203).
The richly allegorical prose of Kazantzakis is a literary equivalent to Parajanov’s Shadows. Chris Fujiwara argues that while leaving ‘Socialist Realism in the dust, Shadows still has a legible narrative and traces of naturalism’ (1999). The narrative thread in Parajanov’s work is feeble and mostly implied yet it is necessary for it to exist for there is a folk legend with its storyline that serves for a basis of the film. One could argue that this is the evidently prosaic characteristic of the film, that the linear sequence of events that unfolds throughout the film should be seen as one marking a stereotypical approach to visual storytelling. However, Parajanov’s utilization of an intensely metaphorical cinematic language to shape what one might call visual folk-poetry appears to be in variance with that assumption. The centrality of the visual figures and tropes that carry the story arguably puts the narrative in the background and rids the film of the continuity ubiquitous in conventional narrative cinema. In support to this argument one may examine the characteristics of metaphor itself which ‘by its very nature disrupts continuity and therefore tends to undermine the narrative function in any use of language. It conceals causality of connection and promotes transversal leaps of vertical deviation from a strong line of horizontal sequence’ (Gordon, 1996, p.229).
Furthermore, Parajanov’s inclination for figurative expression may be seen as one stemming from a much vaster tradition than the Ukrainian folklore in which Shadows is rooted. Doubtlessly, a director like Parajanov, born and educated in the Soviet Union, despite being a representative of an ethnic minority, has been greatly influenced by the distinctive artistic practice of Russia and has naturally immersed in the peculiarities of the Russian Weltanschauung. Interestingly, the Russian facet in Parajanov’s artistic identity may be seen as rather determinative for his aesthetic paradigm. It may be that Russianness which fundamentally unites the ‘elemental perception of the world’ and the poeticism of his visual language. As Robert Bird observed, it is no coincidence that ‘the Russian words for natural element (stikhiia) and poetry (stikhi) are etymologically related’ (Bird, 2008, p.16). Indeed, the aural and visual units that constitute Parajanov’s distinctive language appear to be deeply attached to the natural world. His artistic expression seems to spring from the depths of the raw earth itself. I shall now proceed to examine how the filmmaker utilizes the concrete ingredients of the cinematic language in the construction of his inimitable film world.
4. Cinematography
Shadows ’s cinematography is probably the most distinctive and memorable element in the film, often praised for the ‘wild kineticism’ of the camera movement (Steffen, 1996, p.19). An ardent opponent of modern rationality Parajanov rebels against the hegemony of pure reason and deifies the unfathomable, ineffable spiritual gist of man. Condemning any attempt of defining and schematizing the human existence, which would inevitably destroy the magic and mystery of life, he seeks an ultimate manifestation of his philosophical position and artistic aspirations in the aesthetics of his work. Thus, in Shadows, the idiosyncratic world he creates, his ‘ultimately harmonious and hermetic’ universe (Brashinsky, 1992, p.227) is one that resolutely disobeys the rational laws that govern physical reality and the corresponding representational postulates of conventional narrative cinema. In contrast to the tenets of continuity the cinematography in Shadows does not attempt to generate an illusion of space-time consistency and logic. As Cook argues the essential effect of Yuri Iliyanenko’s cinematography is that ‘the relationship between narrative logic and cinematic space is consistently undermined’ (2004, p. 694). Yet, if Shadows does not obey the canonic narrative laws then what are the principles that determine its structure? I will argue that the cinematography outlines a poetic reality that is governed by the irrational poetic flux of sensations and emotions. In a way, it is not the actions, events and places in the story that determine the space-time properties, but the spiritual development and emotional shifts of the characters.
‘Lived Space’ in Shadows
One may say that Parajanov renders the soul with flesh - he portrays the invisible- the spiritual and so within his cinematic reality the material objects and forms are just an appearance of the ethereal. Stemming from that assumption one could see the cinematic space-time of Shadows as one full of ‘internality’ – it is directly related to the inner world of the personages. Thus, the pictorial and stylistic decisions in the moving images are subordinate to the inner perceptions of the characters. In these lines it could be argued that Parajanov constructs a phenomenological cinematographic space - one wich is not an objective construct and does not deal with cerebral certainties and logics of but one which is entirely dependent on the unique individual perception of the world. I will argue that the cinematic space in Shadows may be seen as a pure expression of what Juhanni Pallasmaa named ‘lived space’ (2007, p.18). In his architectural analysis of cinematic space he states that lived space ‘resembles the structures of dream and the unconscious’ and is ‘organized independently of the boundaries of physical space and time’ (Pallasmaa, 2007, p.18). Most importantly Pallasmaa argues a dualistic nature of lived space and states it is ‘always a combination of external space and inner mental space, actuality and mental projection’ (Pallasmaa, 2007, p.18). This argument seems to outline rather precisely the fundamental properties of the space-time continuum in Parajanov’s work – it is an abolishment of dialectic differentiation and an act of unification of the ostensible opposites. The cinematic space in Shadows is not just a sheer amorphous abstraction and has concrete physicality and this is the ‘external’ element in it; it’s reference to the physical world. The physical world however is not the determining factor for the structure; not the fundament of the cinematic edifice but just a façade for the film space is actualized and defined existentially by the experience of the characters that inhabit it and therefore it is primarily internal.
Framing and camera movement
The two primary elements of the cinematography of Shadows – the framing and the camera movement stand out as probably the most distinctively utilized expressive devices that mold the sculpt the cinematic space. The opening scene shows the demise of young Ivan’s brother Olexo. While hewing trees in the forest he tries to save Ivan from a falling tree and eventually gets crushed by it himself. The following sequencepresents the mourning of Olexo’s death and is notable for the peculiar use of camera movement. In the beginning of the scene we see Ivan on a hill where his brother’s grave has been dug. Ivan then descends from the hill and heads towards the church where there is a service.
Olexo’s death and within-the-shot montage
In this scene the spectator is presented with a creative technique that Parajanov goes on using throughout the whole film. This technique is what Sergey Eisenstein categorized in his theoretical works as ‘montage within the shot’ (Milev, 1998, p.104). This type of montage may have various expressions and forms but ultimately suggests an organization of the objects and camera point of view in such a way that substantial structural alterations and shifts of the visual field happen in the borders of a single take. There is a peculiar trait of that artistic method which is of interest for this study. The main effect of the montage within the shot is that unlike between-the-shots montage it ‘suggests a certain homogeny of space and the point of view from which it is shot’ (Milev, 1998, p.113).
The scene is comprised of two long and complex takes which incorporate several very short sub-episodes in which the spectator is presented with various characters such as ebullient merchants selling talismans, whistles, crosses and bells, temperamental old women playing on primitive musical instruments, youths carrying lambs on their shoulders, a madman and Ivan’s mother calling him to enter the Church for a service. The hand-held camera lingers on the personages for several seconds while the shifts between the images are carried by rapid pans and tilts. The extreme speed and agility of the camera movement is used to mask the cut between the two takes in which the first shot ends with a brisk pan continued in the second shot. The overall effect is a sense of deliriousness and spatial confusion or, as Cook puts it - ‘perceptual dislocation’ (2004, p.694). Although the conventions and rules of narrative cinema are completely ignored and the filmmaker shows little concern about building a clear and coherent space-time relation, this perceptual dislocation does not necessarily mean total absence of uniformity of space. The ‘subjectivism’ or internality of the cinematic space is achieved precisely through the clash between the sense of incoherence generated by the apparent spatial disconnection of inter-shot sub-episodes and the locality achieved through their integration within a single space-time unit.
The unsteadiness of the visual planes achieved by the hand-held camera work connotes a point-of-view nature of the shots. The scene seems to be presented as an inner perception of people and events.
However, the scene cannot be classified as a conventional point-of-view one due to the fact that in the beginning of the first take and the end of the second we see Ivan himself. Interestingly, the camera’s gaze seems to be both subjective, directly linked to Ivan’s perception and objective or external to Ivan’s psyche. The result is a construction of cinematic ‘lived space’ in which the dialectic oppositions are fused into an irrational flow. Similar act of blurring the boundaries of objectivity and subjectivity, of reality and dream can be witnessed in the films of Tarkovsky, where the oneiric is depicted on equal footing with the physical.
It is important to notice the concord between the camerawork and the emotional charge of the particular moments in the film. While in the scene discussed above the unbridled camera works in harmony with the exuberance of the represented, in the following scene, in which Ivan and his parents are inside a church, the camerawork becomes significantly calmer. The cinematic space delineated by the much smoother and slower camera movement seems to attain the spirituality of the internal world of the characters and is devoid of the chaotic whirls and frantic paganism of the preceding sequence. The pace of the camera movement is much slower, instead of shaky hand-held motion there are smooth dollies and pans. The framing is almost entirely from frontal perspective similar to the depictions of saints on the icons hanging on the church walls. The iconography is styled in contrast to the merchants scene and the church interior seems to be explored with modesty and respect. A sense of Christian humility emanates from the images.
Identical artistic decisions are applied in the other church scene, which appears later on in the movie. In it the second church scene, in which Ivan and Marichka individually light candles. The Christian feel of the iconography is achieved through what Pallasmaa calls ‘compressed space’ (2007, p.73). The term refers to space which ‘is rendered in frontal perspective with a single vanishing point’ which helps to ‘flatten the scene into a two dimensional image’ (Pallasmaa, 2007, p.73). This representational approach, as Pallasmaa noted, ‘bears resemblance with the canon of icon painting’ (2007, p.75). Identically to the first church sequence the visual depiction is bereft of extremities and the camera is again restrained and smooth while the framing – frontal and balanced. Crossing the threshold of the sanctuary the riotous ebullience of the expression vanishes and the pictures become calmly immersed in piety and humility. The carefully stylized choreography of the camera work is synchronized with the emotional trajectory of the tale.
In his comment on the film Marc Le Fanu mentions the ‘camera’s sensuous appropriation of the terrain’ (1987, p.10). I would add that not only does the camera appropriate the physical terrain of the location, but also the spiritual realm within the protagonists. In that way it sculpts a psychosomatic cinematic space that exists in a seminal area situated between the factual and the metaphysical. It finds traces its roots in the immateriality of the soul but manifests itself in the very materiality of the setting, thus, unifying abstraction of matter. Perhaps there lies a deep philosophical statement that Prajanov seeks to communicate, a call for reconciliation of body and soul, man and nature. Shadows leaves the impression of a nostalgic infatuation with the nature’s beauty and a devout adoration of its elements. In a world increasingly dependent on machines and rationality Parajanov seems to yearn for the primitive in which the deep connection between men and earth is intact. Like Picasso’s sculptures inspired by primitive African art, Parajanov’s cinematic creation is grounded not on representation of the appearances but on the primordial core of the unburdened by the intellect perception of life.
Childhood scene and emotional camerawork
A good example of how the cinematography of Iliyanenko conveys the unity of man and nature is the scene revealing Ivan and Marichka’s childhood love. Richly metaphorical the scene is synthesis of the blithe years of childhood. It’s a celebration of the innocent, yet ardent love but also the ‘elemental enjoyment of natural world’ (Gillespie, 2003, p.72). From the very first shot we are invited to join Ivan and Marichka’s rapturous dance of pure joy. The use of fish eye lens and extreme low angle are aesthetic decisions that distort physical reality and shape a deeply symbolic image of the two infants cheerily spinning around each other seen through the blooming daisies. The exceedingly heightened perspective alters the logic of scale and leads to a single flower occupying a great part of the frame looking bigger than the children. Moreover, the meticulous composition positions the flower in such a way that it perfectly covers the sun while the sunlight forms a nimbus around petals look like sun rays. The shot is animated and saturated with dynamism as the flower stem gently quivers and makes the sun ‘peek’ behind the daisy. The figurative nature of the visual language annuls any literal reading of the image causing the quivering of the flower to appear as an allegorical visual echo of the emotional tremor of the characters themselves. In a shot full of potential for semiotic analysis the daisy which has attained a cultural significance as a symbol of innocence, may be seen as a synecdoche of spring but also a metaphor of the radiant blossoms of childhood love.
The adoption of natural elements as expressive ingredients and sources of visual tropes continues further on in the sequence. Two independent and seemingly unconnected spatially shots are visually ‘rhymed’ by a common element –fire. Blazing flames appear out of focus, covering the foreground of the two shots while at the background we see first Ivan and then Marichka. The emotional gradation of the sequence is further enforced by a stylistic shift. The static framing of the beginning is replaced by a much more mobile cinematic gaze that is incorporated in two very complex and technically elaborate long takes. The first one is a hand-held shot that first closely follows Ivan who jovially prances around playing his whistle and then follows the two infants running down a slope scared by some mysterious distant voice. The following shot similarly follows the motion of the protagonists, but this time the camera is mounted on a cabin-lift for greater and smoother mobility. Keeping the two characters relatively far from the point of view – long shot, the camera glides parallel to them down the slope, through a forest where it pauses as the kids stop in a mountain brook pool and enthusiastically jump and spray each other with water. Then as they go on running through the forest the camera continues to slide through the trees in parallel to their axis of motion.
This long take is a good example of the construction of emotional cinematic space or if we use Pallasmaa’s term – lived space. On one hand the characteristics of the camera movement are determined by the very physical properties of the location. Its vertical and subsequent horizontal movement is subordinate to the specificity of the terrain – the camera appropriates the geometry of the physical space. On the other hand, the cinematic gaze seems to delineate the not only the physical journey of Ivan and Marichka, but also their spiritual one. As Nacify reasons, Parajanov often favours ‘the use of journey as a metaphor for psychological and spiritual transformation’ (2001, p.223). Drawing from that assumption I will argue that the camera movement is largely symbolic and may be seen as subordinate to and propelled as much by the actual motion of the protagonists as by the invisible emotional torrents flowing and raging in them. One could argue that in this part Parajanov largely utilizes what Nedeltscho Milev calls ‘expressive camera movement wich contains the conceptual Weltansicht of the characters’ (Milev, 1998, p.152). Thus the unbridled camera outlines a deeply subjective cinematic space in which the point of view is external but the logic of behavior of the cinematic gaze is subordinate to the inner realm of the characters.
Regardless of the expressive significance of the integrated in the soundtrack ‘punctuative musical effects’ (Chion, 1994, p.48), which I shall discus later in this essay, the finale of the episode is a climactic point in which the emotive potential of the imagery is unleashed in its fullest. A rapid flow of short shots form a montage phrase which may be classified as a structural variation of ‘disjunctive editing’ (Corrigan & White, 2009, p.172). A sequence of alternating low angle medium-close-up shots showing individually Ivan and Marichka buoyantly gamboling. In each independent shot, the intrinsic dynamism of the image generated by the fast motion of the subject is further enhanced by the unusual angle. Cinematically portraying a child from a long-angle is doubtlessly a strong visual statement. One that, in the particular case, seems to impart an epic feeling to the otherwise rather mundane childish play. Here again the formal characteristics of the film are a reverberation of the content. The ecstatic euphoria of childhood is emphasized through the irrationality of the editing. In this sequence some of the paramount principles of continuity are broken in the construction of cinematic space. A shot of Ivan moving left to right is quickly followed by another showing him moving in the opposite direction, then the following one is again left to right. In this chain of cinematic units we see no rational pattern and the asynchrony between the separate shots’ spatial signification is apparent. The mechanical logic of cutting is substituted with emotional montage full of ostensible paradoxes, which challenge the perception and make it ‘impossible at any given moment to imagine a stable space-time continuum’ (Cook, 2004, p. 694).
Cinematic space beyond pure reason
Throughout the whole film there is a strong sense that it is not pure reason, but Parajanov’s artistic intuition and his aspiration for musicality and rhythm of the visual expression that underlies the formation of the work. The filmmaker seems to portray that element of man, which is invisible, intangible, beyond the reach of rational thought. The representational mode is intentionally paradoxical and illogical, for it is the cinematic antinomies that beget the poeticism of the imagery. By means of reconciliation of conflicting opposites Parajanov evokes a territory across the borders of the mind. In relation to that Cook rightfully argued that ‘Shadows exists most fully not in the realm of narrative, but in the world of myth and the unconscious’(2004, p.695). In this scene Parajanov displayed his idiosyncratic artistic vision and harnesses all of his ‘extravagant poetic talent’ (Robinson, 1981, p.321) to create a visual Ode to joy.
It’s impossible that one would fail to see the common ground the Armanian shares with his fellow Tarkovsky. Effectively, the scene, especially its finale, looks and feels like a paraphrase of a sequence in Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood. Another influential filmmaker that appropriates elaborate choreography of the camera is the Hungarian Miklos Jansco. However, while Jansco’s camera smoothly sculpts the film space-time with a graceful ballet-like motion, the camera movement in Shadows is ful of temperament and vigour and evokes the feeling of exuberance in a primordial ritual dance. Sklar however, finds that the greatest similarity between the two is that: ‘as in Jancso’s works, however, narrative hardly matters’ (Sklar, 1993, p.449).
5. Colour
Another pivotal expressive element in Shadows is colour. The wide range of methods that Parajanov employs in the chromatic manipulation of his cinematic world is, similarly to the other cinematic ingredients, aimed at achieving a filmic poetry by almost absolute detachment from replication of actual physical reality. Thereby, colour functionally follows the logic of the image’s plastic parameters. The thus created unison of the film’s graphic realization, in which each of the formative elements is subordinate to one ultimate principle, is illustrative of the work’s structural architectonics. Parajanov’s inimitable visual rhetoric finds sublime manifestation in its abstraction from objectivism in favour of a highly metaphorical pictorial system.
Colour as metaphor
Sklar noted that Parajanov uses ‘symbolic colours and non-realistic tinting’ (1993, p.449). Here one could see two main strands of colour manipulation. One is the chromatic properties of the mise-en scene components and the other is the cinematographic colour direction of the picture. Naturally, these two methods are not independent of each other and often they interact and intertwine to materialize the incorporeal and thus create a cinematic universe that is a reflection of the spiritual realms of the characters. Cook argued in support of that statement stating that ‘Prajanov employs color in a psychologically provocative way, having developed for Shadows what he called a ‘dramaturgy of color’ (2004, p.695). It can be argued that the filmmaker’s expressive utilization of colour varies from relatively natural palette where the chromatic properties are inherent to the material objects in the image, to abstract, surreal colour schemes where colour exists independently of the objects it relates to. In the first case the allegorical value is more subtle and implicit. The vivid green of the meadows, the pure white of the snow fields and the saturated red in the Gutsul traditional costumes are all intrinsic to the physical reality and in a way may be seen as ‘realistic’. They achieve metaphorical value only in context of the syuzhet development and in their interaction with other expressive elements such as graphic forms, shapes and sounds. The second type of chromatic decisions is one, which operates towards a direct visual translation of the emotional patterns and psychological states of the protagonists.
Colour and indexicality
In an essay on Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964) Richard Misek discusses the Italian filmmaker’s attempt to break ‘the indexical link between objects and the colours with which they’re associated’ which stemmed from his viewpoint that ‘colour needed to be expressive of the artist’s ideas, rather than representative of the chromatic chaos of the world’ (2010, p.65). I will argue that at many points throughout the film Parajanov comes very close to Antonioni in the way he handles colour but instead of filling a rather conservative and objective reality with abstraction like the Italian does, he uses the abstraction itself as a fundament of his cinematic edifice. Like folklore art itself, Parajanov’s film conveys the utter conviction that reality in its essence is magical.
If one isolates colour from the other filmic elements and analyses it as a self-sufficient domain, he would inevitably witness how it independently delineates the emotional flow of the story. Cook, succinctly, outlined the main chromatic transformation throughout the film:
‘When Ivan and Marichka are first drawn together as children, for example, the prevailing color is the white of the snow, corresponding to their innocence; the green of the spring dominates their young love; monochrome and sepia tones are used to drain the world of color during the period of Ivan’s grieving, but color returns riotously if briefly, after he meets Palagma; as their relationship turns barren, the film is dominated by autumnal hues; monochrome returns during Ivan’s death delirium; and at the moment of his death the natural universe is painted in surreal shades of red and blue.’ (2004, p.695)
In the tavern Under closer scrutiny the episode of Ivan’s death reveals further insights into the mechanism of the film’s chromatic system. In the beginning of the episode the viewer is presented with Ivan and his second wife - Palagna entering a village tavern full of music and reveling people. Alone on a table there sits Yurko the local sorcerer and Palagna’s secret beloved. Palagna then, seemingly unnoticed by her husband, starts coquetting with Yurko until it all culminate in Yurko and Ivan’s affray in which the sorcerer blows a deadly strike on Ivan. The chromatic scheme in this first part of the episode is characterized by vivid, highly saturated colours. The bright elements of the Gutsul traditional costumes are intensified cinematographically. Though generally defined by relevant chromatic realism, the scene marks a pictorial shift from the preceding episode in which the colour palette consists of subdued, unsaturated colours. One could notice the manner in which colour mirrors the inner existential alterations of the charactersv - Ivanko’s arid relationship with Palagna resulting in his existential ennui and apathy is chromatically indicated by the dull, dry colours which endow the image with a mundane, realistic feeling. The subsequent denouement of the suyzhet and story’s emotional zenith is hinted through the chromatic shift in the tavern sequence where the vivid red and pure white shades imbue the imagery with visual angst and gives the scene with a more expressionistic air. Important to note is the fact that the main device of chromatic manipulation is cinematography and while the colours of the mise-en scene are not void of allegoric value, they remain indexically linked to the objects they relate to.
Ivan’s death delirium
In the proceeding scene after Yurko’s deadly blow we see Ivan walk out of the tavern, faltering and holding his head with hands. The shot is filmed in slow motion and marked by a further chromatic shift. The vivid palette is replaced by a monochrome sepia one. The uniformity of the formal properties of the cinematic language and the subject matter escalate in a subliminal portrayal of Ivan’s inner world. As Ivan approaches the threshold of the other world all objectivism of the representation is swept away and the high contrast sepia pictures appear like a visual reverberation of the impeding existential end. There is one final journey, one step that separates Ivan and the celestial realm where Marichka’s waiting for him. Important to mention is that in this depiction of ‘Ivan’s death delirium’ the mise-en-scene again remains rather unaltered. It is the same inn but ‘seen’ differently by the gaze of the camera. The space of Ivan’s death walk is existential but not entirely ‘internal’ for it still bears physical resemblance with the material world. Ivan is leaving the physical reality to enter the kingdom of heaven and the material world now depicted in monochrome hues appears to have lost all petty detail and condensed into a an essence of light and shadows.
Ivan’s death
The final moments of Ivan’s death are portrayed in a dreamlike, visually confusing sequence in which the spectator sees alternating shots of Ivan roaming in a phantasmal forest towards Marichka who smilingly beckons him to join her. The posthumous union of the Caucasian Romeo and Juliet is arguably the visual climax of the whole film. While cinematographically the chromatic scheme is rather conventional, there is no tinting. This time it is the colours of the mise-en-scene that carry the expressive charge of the artistic thought and generate the poetic, ethereal sense of the picture. The scene is evidently shot on location, like the rest of the picture, but the painterly manner in which Parajanov utilizes the natural elements abstracts the sequence from any sense of realism. The branches of the trees and the face and hands of Marichka are entirely painted in pale silver-blue shades while Ivan is only partly covered with these nuances. What unravels before the spectator is a portrayal of the soul’s passage through the purgatory. The paradoxical vision of Parajanov, however, illustrates the incorporeal, the spiritual seminal realm not through a construction of an artificial abstract space, but through a chromatic alteration of the physical world. Like Antonioni in Red Desert, the Armenian separates colour and object. Branigan argued that ‘the split between color and object is evidence that a logic other than verisimilitude (the probable) is at work’ (1976, p.178). I would add that it is exactly this split that produces the fantastic, fairy-tale like atmosphere of the episode. The conflict between the colours of the world and the objects they inhabit opens a perceptual gap and provokes the senses of the viewer. Crucially, the space of Ivan’s death is not a territory disconnected from reality, but a paraphrase of reality in which the incorporeal is embodied within the matter.
In the end of the scene the spectator is presented with a close-up shot of Marichka’s hand, gliding through the net of silver branches reaching for Ivan. In the moment her hand grasps his we hear an off screen sound of Ivan’s death cry. The obvious metaphor of the hand of death reaching for Ivan’s breath is reminiscent of the archetypal portrayals of death in mythology and folklore. In traditional folklore death is rarely imagined formless immaterial. Instead it is seen as built of flesh and bone. Accordingly Parajanov portrayed the fatal shadow of fortune with a body and a face. The conclusive moment of the episode - Ivan’s final parting with the terrestrial world, is cinematically conveyed exclusively through what Monaco calls ‘metonymics of color’ (2000, p.138).
Red
What follows the sound of Ivan’s cry is a very short shot marked by complete chromatic naturalism. We see a doe anxiously turning its head. The shot seems to be a visual reaction to the sonic indication in the preceding one. Next comes the final metaphorical montage phrase that starts with a shot of a sphere of entangled blood-red dyed twigs spinning in the air, followed by several static close-ups of encrimsoned tangles of branches and a final shot in which the whole image is occupied by red–tinted tree bark. It is in these final shots that colour seems to be the element carrying the whole expressive potential of the image. Entirely disconnected from objective reality the red colour operates as a chromatic metonym. Eisenstein called red ‘the colour of warm human blood’ (Eisenstein, n.d., p. 107) while Cage labeled it ‘the chromatic representative of fire and light’ (1993, p.26). In these lines, it is hardly an accident that the film was initially named Wild Horses of Fire. This initial title doubtlessly refers to one of the most memorable poetic moments in the film – Ivan’s father’s death. The slow-motion monochrome shot of red-tinted horses jumping across pure white background is highly stylized visual trope, in which identically to the episode of Ivan’s demise, red become the chromatic carrier of Parajanov’s visual symbolism. Because of its centrality in these two scenes, red may be seen as a visual leitmotif of death and the ascent towards the celestial kingdom. This interpretation is solidified by the fact that ‘Red, had since the earliest times and in many cultures, heralded the divine’ (Cage, 1993, p.26).
Leaving aside the possible cultural references and interpretations of red, it is important to give attention to that in this final sequence the denotative scope of meanings of the image is brought to absurdity but the connotative plane is opened to infinity. Regardless of the possible readings of the red, colour here is concentrated in a strong psychological and sensory impact. The ultimate expressivity of the shots creates a cinematic universe that bears strong resemblance to the imaginary worlds found in the paintings of Marc Chagall and early Kandinsky. Also the iconography of Shadows as well as the one of all his subsequent films is indisputably influenced by the art of Georgian primitivist painter Niko Pirosmani. What marks Parajanov’s approach with notable artistic ingenuity is that he succeeds in blending the imaginary with the physical, creating in that way a realm where dream and reality coexist uniformly. The connection of the realistic image of the doe and the subsequent symbolic shot of the peculiar red sphere is organic and there is no indication of a transgression of cinematic realms. The incoherence of the chromatic scheme leads to a rupture of the causality and the ostensible discord of the space-time logic within the sequence. This in turn, does not indicate simply the lack of physical reality-based space-time continuum, but the presence of one governed by the forces incognizable for pure reason.
Ivan’s demise is the climax of Parajanov’s stylistic utilization of colour and the one that doubtlessly stands out is red. This colour, in different variations and hues dominates the chromatic palette of the whole picture and may be defined as one of the two thematic colours in the film (the other being white). One could see this as an intentional creative decision that aims at bringing the form of the film as close as possible to the subject matter. Red is a central element in ethnic costume, ‘it is the predominant colour in all tribal and peasant embroidery’ (Paine, 2008, p.212). It may well be concluded since costumes and textiles are perhaps the key manifestation of Gutsul people’s beliefs and traditions, that in them one should find the purest expression of this people’s perception of the world. It is by adhering to the chromatic peculiarities of folklore costume that Parajanov manages to visualize not only the external but also to imply the inner and the spiritual.
Colour and folk art
Moreover, it is not only in the colour red that one finds this chromatic unity between the palette of Shadows and the film’s folkloric roots. One general characteristic of the colours in Parajanov’s work is that similarly to the Gutsul, and most East European, traditional costumes the colours are simple solid ones, with little hues. Strong and saturated red, blue, green and yellow are the primary colours that dominate the film and these are the elemental colours of traditional costume. Partly due to the primitive methods of pigment extraction and fabric dying, in most East European folk costumes the colours are very simple and void of hues and tinges. Similarly, in Shadows the general palette is scarce on complex colour mixtures. Even the natural locations are photographically depicted in highly accented solid colours that appear rather isolated from each other. In that approach of isolation of the central colours one could discern a cinematic approach similar to impressionistic practices in the works of Cezanne where colours do not gradually flow and merge but exist distinctly separated. This painterly technique relies on the viewer’s perception to unite the elements together and form a coherent whole. It may be argued that in Shadows Parajanov employs what might be defined as phenomenological approach to colour. In a sense the filmmaker forsakes imitative methods of depiction of the appearance of the physical objects but instead seeks to bring to surface the very essences of things, the hidden beyond apparition incognizable gist. In that respect one may observe a rather strong artistic kinship between the Armenian and his fellow filmmaker Tarkovsky, who similarly strives to fill his works with images that emerge from beyond the apparent and are meant to portray the unfathomable essence of the bottomless human soul.
Monochrome
In terms of chromatic manipulation of the cinematic medium, Shadows shares common ground mostly with Tarkovsky’s late works – Nostalghia, (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, USSR/Italy) and Sacrifice, (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986, Sweden) where the use of monochrome colour scheme is directly linked to the characters’ inner realms. Ridding the image of colour in Tarkovsky’s works is never just a stylistic decision, but one that is aimed at indicating or accentuating particular states of mind and spiritual shifts of the protagonists. As Johnson noted, in Nostalghia and the Sacrifice the Russian auteur ‘seems to have equated this monochrome effect…with particularly ‘spiritual scenes’ (Johnson & Petrie, 1994, p.189). Identically in Shadows, the phenomenological character of the monochrome can be traced in the aesthetic decisions in the episode of Ivan’s mourning and the inn shot of his death delirium.
In these segments the inner logic of the image is dictated not by the external properties of the setting but by existential parameters of Ivan’s soul. Bereft of his beloved, the world of the protagonist once illuminated and mottled by the presence of Marichka, suddenly turns barren and dull. The black and white cinematography mirrors Ivan’s inability to experience the life in all its joy and opulence. He has become blind to the diversity of the world, and accordingly the photographic vision seems to have become blinded to the diversity of colours. Ivan’s inner world has become one of extremes, and this spiritual battlefield where the conflicting forces of good and evil clash is portrayed through the interplay of light and shadow within the cinematic image. Thus, the chromatic register is equated with the emotional scope of the character. This aesthetic device of colour binarisation as an indicator of deep internal turbulence adopted by Parajanov, traces its roots, along with its filmic equivalents in the works of Tarkovsky, in the painterly practices of the great Dutch masters. As Hollander states, for instance, Rembrandt is notable for his utilization of chiaroscuro to ‘invoke the soul’ (1989, p.48). In these lines, Parajanov follows a long-existing tradition of the portrayal of spirituality. The archetypal entities white and black, intrinsically conflicting, appear to be the elemental visual expression of existential extremities. As Goethe’s character Goetz famously says, ‘where light is brightest, the shadows are deepest’ (1837, p.38). The shadows of the forgotten ancestors are ephemeral dancers around the fire of life.
6. Sound
Though Shadows is a cinematic work that builds a strong visual relation with the spectator, this study will lack depth if one is to neglect the non-visual aspects of the film. Indeed, it is hard to overlook the film’s sonic dimension and the ways in which sound interacts with picture. The soundtrack of Parajanov’s work is rich, multifarious and eclectic. It encompasses and mixes together an extensive range of sounds. The unifying principle in its construction, similarly to the pictorial logic of the work, is the immediate expression of the characters inner worlds. All sounds in the film are rooted in the immaterial realms underneath the surface of the material world and follow the emotional currents that flow in the veins of the film. In his brief outline of the soundtrack of Shadows Cook notes that ‘Parajanov uses a complex variety of music – from atonal electronics, to lush orchestral romanticism, to hieratic religious chants, to vocal and instrumental folk music – to create leitmotifs for the film’s various psychological atmospheres’ (2004, p. 695). The sheer span of the sonic field, abounding with multicultural elements and influences, is a topic sufficient for whole separate essay and is impossible for one to present a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the whole soundtrack in just several pages. Therefore, I shall limit my scrutiny and center it at several definitive features of the filmmaker’s utilization of sound.
The asynchronous voice
The first intriguing characteristic of the soundtrack is the use of asynchronous sound. Despite the fact that throughout the film many sonic entities are objectively fixed to the visuals, there are many cases in which we witness a highly idiosyncratic and non-conventional building of the audio-visual whole. In these occasions the ‘discrepancy between the things heard and the things seen in the film’ (Balazs, …,p120) generates the asynchrony of the aural in its relation to the visual. As Balazs reason, ‘If the sound or voice is not tied up with the picture of its source, it may grow beyond the dimensions of the latter’ (Balazs, .., p.120). An apposite example for asynchronous sound may be found in the already discussed scene of Ivan’s death. Accompanying the surrealistic images of Ivan and Marichka’s wondering through the forest is a love song in which the two lovers express their genuine feelings towards each other. The male and female singing voices are easily recognizable, for they are the voice of the protagonists themselves. The audio-visual conflict in this case is born from a twofold incongruity. On one hand the images of Ivan and Marichka are organically connected to the voices due to the already established relation character-voice. One the other hand, however, the voices are not lip-synced with the picture. We do not see Ivan or Marichka sing, but we hear them. Thus, the song is not simply a non-diegetic musical accompaniment to the picture but instead it appears to be springing from it without being limited to its visual concreteness. The asynchronous voice then becomes an expressive tool that serves not only to impact on the visual field, but to alter it altogether as well. The objects within the frame are sonically redefined and the complete lack of audio-visual realism opens an intentional gap between the image and its objective, literal facets. The voices, which relate to the image but do not strictly adhere to it generate a certain figurative meaning. What we’re invited to behold is not the physical beings of Ivan and Marichka, but their souls, or in an even bolder interpretation - the metaphysical idea of the union between man and woman.
In her essay on voice in cinema Mary Ann Doane argues that in the places where the voice is used asynchronously ‘the body in the film becomes the body of the film’ (Doane, … p.163). In other words, through the distancing of the visual subject and the voice that relates to it, the cinematic work itself inherits the artistic functions of the personage. The component and the whole achieve an architectonic unity. Arguably, the pivotal effect that asynchronous voice achieves is to convey the unearthliness of the cinematic world. By eradicating the intrinsic bonds of the moving images with the photographed physical reality, sound shapes Parajanov’s filmic universe in which the determining principles are ephemeral and impalpable like the sensations and quivers of man’s soul.
Shadows, as I argued in the beginning of this essay, is a film that rests much more on mythology and folklore than on conventional narrative formulas and patterns. For that reason the sonic decisions in the film seem to disobey logic and do not entirely fit any standard definitions. The folk songs that appear throughout the film, for instance, are quite often synchronous with the image in the beginning of the film and as it progresses they become completely detached from the visuals, or vice versa. This adoption of asynchrony becomes an expressive device for the creation of a poetic world, which relies much more on pure sensory impact than clear rational representation. As Balazs notes, asynchronous use of sound is ‘The surest means by which the director can convey the pathos or symbolical significance of sound or voice’ (Balazs,…, p.120).
Sound’s location in the diegesis of the film
The other aspect of sound, which is of particular interest for this study, is the topology of the soundtrack and its variable spatial relation between sound and the visual dimension of the film. I shall closely examine the episode of Ivan’s mourning, titled ‘Loneliness’ and demonstrate how the voice freely travels between the on-screen, off-screen and non-diegetic borders, thus questioning them altogether. Throughout the filmic segment the spectator is presented with episodic renderings of Ivan’s life after Marichka’s decease. We see him taking sporadic jobs as a shepherd, digging graves and building houses. Although the pictures are sonically underlined with different atmospheric ambient sounds that appear to be objectively diegetic, the dominant aural element in the soundtrack is voice. In the different stages of the episode we hear clear voices of people who discuss and comment on Ivan’s fate. The voices of these mostly unseen characters are sometimes individual and tell stories about their encounters with Ivan while in places the voices are involved in casual conversations about him.
In the beginning of the episode we see a high angle wide shot of Ivan walking out of his home and the dominating sound is a conversation between two women who gossip about the dejected protagonist. In the beginning of the shot the voice is off-screen but as the camera glides along Ivan, we see that outside his yard stand two old women. As Ivan appears before them, the voices turn to whispers and murmurs. In this case it seems that the voice is clearly diegetic and fixed to the visible objects in the frame – the two women. It simply crosses the off-screen – on-screen border. Interestingly, though, the spatial characteristics of the sound, or what Truppin calls sound’s ‘spatial signature’ (1992, p.241), seem to be in variance with the visual space. The voices are distinct and loud, in other words – in close-up and remain such regardless of the alterations of both the spatial relation between the characters these voices belong to and Ivan, and the distance of the characters to the point of view of the camera itself. In that way there is a certain spatial asynchrony between image and sound. Thus, the dominant sound does not seem to be limited to the physical dimensions of the image. As the episode progresses the different voices get even more disembodied and detached from the objects in the frame. We hear the speech of these invisible people, without having any clear indication of their actual presence in the diegesis of the work. Moreover, the commentary character of the spoken words and the clear spatial disconnection of the sound make the voices sound like voice-over. Drawing from that one could conclude that the voice then is clearly non-diegetic.
However, there are several occasions in which we’re presented with indications of potential bodies the voices belong to. For example in the part of the episode in which we hear the story of a woman telling how Ivan is building her house and how he refuses to talk and eat we actually see the house in construction, Ivan and an old woman. The seemingly non-diegetic voice then is logically linked to a personage within the diegesis, while yet it remains asynchronous and physically aloof from the visually delineated world. Hence, one can define the voices as neither completely diegetic, nor non-diegetic and can fairly position them in the liminal zone between off-screen space and non-diegetic space. In his discussion of cinematic space and sound, Chion says that the ‘non-diegetic-off-screen border is the most mysterious’ and goes on declaring that ‘opening this border, which amounts to its loss, is just about the most poetically fateful thing one can do in the cinema’ (2009, p.260).
‘Acousmetre’ in Shadows
I would argue that through the specific use of voice in Shadows, Parajanov does exactly that – he annihilates the space-time borders of the sound field. The result is an amorphous fluid audio-visual entity, which disobeys the parameters of the real world. One could argue that the particular use of voice in the mourning episode is an example of what Chion calls ‘acousmetre’ (1994, p.129) an invisible voice that belongs to the diegetic world of a film and yet it’s shrouded in ambiguity and completely alien to the visual ingredients of the film. However, the ‘acousmetre’ is usually of a structurally pivotal importance for the cinematic work, it is a definitive element for the whole film, take the acoustic character of the mother in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, USA) for example, while the voices in Shadows organically cohere with the other sonic elements without being in conflict with them. The elimination of off-screen – non-diegetic border is an act of affirmation of the poetic nature of Parajanov’s world. It results in broadening of the diegetic plane, which just like a folk legend becomes full of things heard of, but never seen.
In effect, apart from the atonal electronic music and the orchestral score, which may be classified as ‘screen music’ (Chion, 1994, p.80), all the other components of the soundtrack appear to be more or less diegetic. The voice of the boy singing a-capella a traditional Christmas song, the folk instrumentals, the religious chants all seem to be gushing from the images. It is as if the locations themselves are infused with the folk rhythms and melodies. Parajanov’s sounds are not information carriers - they are not aimed at explaining and orienting. Instead, the sounds are emotional units, sonic manifestations of the transcendental. Sound in Shadows emanates from universal indestructible element in the human soul; the ineffable divine essence. Parajanov thought of cinema as a ‘synthetic art’ (Taylor, 2000, p.176) and perhaps through his unification of expression and subject he aspired to resolve the imperfections of reality and bring it closer to the unattainable ideal. The filmic world he created seems to be the highest manifestation of man’s striving for divine simplicity and unity. The world portrayed in Shadows is a realm where colours, shapes and sounds are all part of one syncretic ancient whole where faith, nature, man and history exist in unadulterated harmony.
7. Conclusion
In Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov employs the creative instruments of the cinematic art in a highly idiosyncratic manner. Regardless of the common grounds he shares with other masters of cinema, his films remain distinctly individual, elusive and beyond categorization. In this study, through an analysis of three main expressive materials – cinematography, colour and sound, I attempted to go beyond the purely sensory response to the film and seek the roots of Parajanov’s artistic methods. The unbridled passion for life embodied in his creation appears to be a reflection of his utopic and perchance atavistic Weltanschauung. His work, heavily influenced by traditional folk art renounces the doctrines of modern humanity and strives for the primitive form of existence where the fantastic and the earthly exist in perpetual unanimity. The particular characteristics of Parajanov’s cinematic approach lead to a much broader picture of himself alone. The shapes, colours and sounds in his work are the means through which the artist shares with us the thirst of his avid soul for the unattainable ideal. Apart from anything else Shadows is an inextinguishable plea and a beckoning for spirituality.
8. Bibliography
Balazs, Bella (1970) ‘Theory of the Film: Sound’ in Weis, Elisabeth and Belton, John eds. (1985) Film Sound: Theory and Practice, New York: Columbia University Press
Belton, John (2008) ‘The Phenomenology of Film Sound: Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped’ from N/A, Lowering the boom: critical studies in film sound, pp. 23-35, Urbana, IL.: University of Illinois Press
Bird, Robert (2008) Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema, London: Reaktion Books Ltd
Bordwell, David (2008) Poetics of Cinema, London: Routledge
Branigan, Edward, 1976, ‘The Articulation of Color in a Filmic System’ in Della Vache, Angela and Price, Brian eds.(2006) Color: The Film Reader, Abington: Routledge
Brashinsky M. and Horton, A. (1992) The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition, Oxford: Princeton University Press
Bresson, Robert (1997) Notes on the Cinematographer, Los Angelis: Green Integer Books
Cage, John (1993) Colour and Culture: Practise and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction, London: Thames and Hudson
Chion, Michel (1994) Audio-vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press
Chion, Michel (2009) Film, a Sound Art, New York: Columbia University Press
Christie, Ian (2010) ‘Out of the Shadows’ in Sight&Sound. March, pp.24-26
Cook, David A. (2004) A History of Narrative Film: fourth edition, New York: W.W. Norton & Company
Doane, Mary Ann (1980) ‘The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space’ in Weis, Elisabeth and Belton, John eds. (1985) Film Sound: Theory and Practice, New York: Columbia University Press
Eisenstein, Sergei (1975) ’On Colour’ in Della Vache, Angela and Price, Brian eds.(2006) Color: The Film Reader, Abington: Routledge
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1837) Goetz von Berlichingen with the iron hand, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard
Hollander, Anne (1989) Moving Pictures, New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Johnson, Vida T. & Petrie, Graham (1994) Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Kazantzakis, Nikos (1986) Report to Greco, London: Faber and Faber Ltd
Le Fanu, Mark (1987) The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, London: BFI
Milev, Nedeltcho (1998) Theory of the Elements of Cinema, Sofia: Sofia University Press
Misek, Richard (2010) Chromatic Cinema: A History of Screen Color, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Monaco, James (2000) ‘Signs’ in How to Read a Film, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 133-141
Gillespie, David (2003) Russian Cinema, Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd
Gordon, Robert S.C. (1996) Pasolini: Forms of Subjectivity, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Naficy, Hamind (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton: Princeton University Press
Pallasmaa, Juhani (2007) The Architecture of image: existential space in cinema
Helsinki: Rakennustieto Publishing
Radvanyi, Jean (1996) ‘Cinema in the Soviet Republics’ in Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (1996) The Oxford History of World Cinema, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Paine, Sheila (2008) Embroidered Textiles: A World Guide to Traditional Patterns, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Ramsey, Nancy, (2001). A dangerous pursuit of beauty, in life and on screen. The New York Times. (July 1)
Robinson, David (1981) World Cinema: A Short History, London: Eyre Methuen
Sklar, Robert (1993) Film: An International History of the Medium, London: Thames and Hudson Ltd
Steffen, James (1996) ‘Parajanov’s Playful Poetics: On the Director’s Cut of the Colour of Pomegranates’ in Journal of Film and Video, Vol.47, No. 4, International Film and Television (Winter 1995-96), pp.17-32
Tarkovsky, Andrei (2008) Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses his Art. Austin: University of Texas Press
Taylor, Richard; Wood, Nancy; Graffy, Julian and Iordanova, Dina eds. (2000) The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema, London: British Film Institute
9. Filmography
Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme, Sergei Parajanov, 1985, USSR
Ashik Kerib, Sergei Parajanov, 1988, USSR.
Earth, Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930, USSR
Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962, USSR
Moldavian Tales, Sergei Parajanov, 1951, USSR
Nostalghia, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, USSR/Italy
Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, USA
Red Desrt, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, Italy
Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986, Sweden
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sergei Parajanov, 1967,USSR
The Colour of Pomegranates , Sergei Parajanov, 1968, USSR
The Legend of Suram Fortress, Sergei Parajanov, 1984, USSR
10. Netography
Fujiwara, Chris (1999). Living Collage: Sergei Parajanov's film fever. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/movies/99/11/25/SERGEI_PARADJANOV.html. [Last Accessed 16 February 2012].
(2001).. [ONLINE] Available at: www.parajanov.com. [Last Accessed 10 March 2012].
THE CINEMA OF SERGEI PARAJANOV
1. Introduction
2. Biographical notes on Parajanov
3. General outline of Parajanov’s cinematic approach
Break of causality and narrative logic
The primitive and the modern
The phenomenological approach
Parajanov’s earthly poetics
4. Cinematography
‘Lived Space’ in Shadows
Framing and camera movement
Olexo’s death and within-the-shot montage
Childhood scene and emotional camerawork
Cinematic space beyond pure reason
5. Colour
Colour as metaphor
Colour and indexicality
In the tavern
Ivan’s death delirium
Ivan’s death
Red
Colour and folk art
Monochrome
6. Sound
The asynchronous voice
Sound’s location in the diegesis of the film
‘Acousmetre’ in Shadows
7. Conclusion
8. Bibliography
9. Filmography
10. Netography
1. Introduction
In this essay, I will discuss the works of one of these film directors who despite their meager public recognition and popularity left an ineradicable imprint on the face of visual art. Federico Fellini and Tonino Guera considered him a magician, Antonioni called him ‘one of the best contemporary film directors’, Godard said that ‘In the temple of cinema there images, light and reality,’ and he ‘was the master of that temple’, Tarkovsky stated that he loved ‘his way of thinking, his paradoxical, poetical…ability to love beauty and ability to be free within his own vision.’ (n/a, 2001)Yet he remains almost completely unknown in the English-speaking world. He is Sergei Parajanov.
In a critical examination of his film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, (Sergei Parajanov, 1967,USSR) I will attempt to shed some light on how the filmmaker’s unique cinematic language functions. My analysis will be mostly focused on three key aspects of the film work – cinematography, colour and sound.
2. Biographical notes on Parajanov
Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov was born in 1924 in Tiflis, Soviet Union – nowadays Tbilisi in Georgia. After graduating high school he moved to Moscow and entered the Russian National Film School VGIK. There he was taught by Igor Savchenko and later by the renowned Ukrainian filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko, whose most famous film Earth, ( Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930, USSR) has been widely acclaimed and venerated by the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky. It may be said that it was Dovzhenko who instilled this passion for tradition and unity of man and nature that dominated the late films of Sergei. After graduating VGIK in 1951 with a short diploma film called Moldavian Tales he got assigned at the Dovzhenko Studio in Kiev, nowadays Ukraine. There he made a number of documentaries and features all styled in the principle fashion of soviet realism. Later Parajanov disavowed the artistic qualities of these works. As the Armenian admitted himself it was the appearance of Ivan’s Childhood, ( Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962, USSR ) that occurred to be the major turning point of his career. After seeing Tarkovsky’s poetic masterpiece Parajanov rediscovered cinema itself and eventually found his own creative vision. Sergei’s words are illustrative of the magnitude of the impact Ivan’s Childhood had on Parajanov, which resulted in Sergei placing Andrei’s artistic virtues on pedestal: ‘As my teacher, I consider an absolutely young and amazing director, Tarkovsky, who didn’t even realize himself what a genius he was in ‘Ivan’s Childhood’’ (Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov - Islands, 2003).
The artistic ‘leap of faith’
Parajanov experienced prepared the soil for his first ‘great’ work – Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The influence of Tarkovsky reverberated through many of the images in this ‘village Romeo and Juliette’ (Christie, 2010, p.24). Seething with music, dance, colour and emotion the film is based on a folklore legend adapted and published in 1864 by Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi. Every aspect of the film was marked by originality and creative iconoclasm. Perhaps, the wildly imaginative cinematography, however, stands out as the most immediately striking element. This work will be the center of analysis in this study and I shall discuss it in greater detail further on in the essay.
After the international success of Shadows, which won multiple awards on many film festivals, Parajanov’s individualism was not overlooked by the officials and he entered, what would happen to be a life-long struggle with the uncompromising censors and secret police officers, which would eventually cost him many years in prison under forged accusations (Ramsey, 2001). In the creation of his second feature, Parajanov went through numerous impediments and the difficulties continued after the work was completed. The Colour of Pomegranates, (Sergei Parajanov, 1968, USSR ) was a reedited multiple times by external bodies and as a result the officially released version was very different from Parajanov’s initial vision of the film. Nevertheless, it still turned to be Parajanov’s most discussed and lauded film that fascinates with its boldness of expression, unusual structure and ‘baroque aestheticism’ (Radvanyi, 1996, p.653). In a highly unusual manner The Colour of Pomegranates tells the story of medieval Armenian poet-troubadour Sayat Nova. Unlike conventional biopic films, though, Parajanov’s work does not deal with clear narration of events, but utilizing the symbolism of traditional Armenian culture, portrays the poet’s inner world, teeming with sentiments and turmoil.
The film also marks a drastic stylistic shift from Shadows. The extremely mobile camera is replaced by completely static framing. Drawing inspiration from Eisenstein and Pasolini, Parajanov developed an inimitable visual language largely utilizing tableaux vivants. As Karla Oeler notes, Sergei’s ‘poetic montage of tableaux emerges as a key cinematic stream-of-consciousness technique’ (Oeler, 2006, p. 480). In her essay on Eisenstein, Joyce and Parajanov she went ever further proclaiming that ‘With this film, Parajanov achieves one possible – and unique - realization of Eisenstein’s vision of Joycean cinema’ (Oeler, n.d., p.147). A discussion of the film in relation to these two titans of thought is a vast topic, which could perhaps be a subject of a separate study. However, this film indisputably marks a historic moment in the development of cinematic language.
After the release of The Colour of Pomegranates, Parajanov underwent an excruciatingly difficult period of his life, during which he spent more than 4 years in prison and even after his release, partially as a result of the campaign of world eminent artists lead by the poet Luis Aragon, he got project after project declined by the authorities. It took whole 15 years for him to be given the chance to make a film again. The project was The Legend of Suram Fortress, (Sergei Parajanov, 1984, USSR) - a film based on a Georgian tale in which as he employed his already established technique to create ‘‘pre-Oedipal’, ‘pre-patriarchal, prehistorical world in which there is room for everything and everyone’ (Gvakharia cited by Aksenova, 2004, p. 521). Using almost no dialogue and structuring the work in tableaux Parajanov created a richly metaphorical cinematic realm in which he again strove to portray the invisible, inner world of the characters.
Subsequently in 1986, the Armenian shot a short documentary Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme, (Sergei Parajanov, 1985, USSR) and in 1988 he filmed his last work Ashik Kerib, (Sergei Parajanov, 1988, USSR). Parajanov’s infatuation with fantastic subjects and Caucasian folklore was more evident than ever. The film is an adaptation of a legend later reworked into a fairy-tale by the outstanding Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. It follows the adventures a poor minstrel as he departs on a journey to earn money and become eligible for the hand of his beloved. Ashik Kerib turned out to be Parajanov’s last finished film. He initiated a project titled ‘Confession’, but passed away in 1990, before the film could be finished. Despite winning many awards and international recognition for his work, Sergei remained a shadow figure alien to the wide audience. This, nevertheless, makes the task of exploring his vision even more intriguing.
3. General outline of Parajanov’s cinematic approach
The three aspects of Parajanov’s cinema that I shall analyze may be generally seen as defined by the creator’s disregard of conventional narrative form. The space-time continuum of the photographic reality is not the frame in which the directors pours the dramaturgical elements and develops the action. Moreover, the filmic realm is not an attempt to replicate or evoke the structures, principles that appearances of the material world. The space in Parajanov’s film rather acquires a non-Euclidean geometrical properties while time, though rendered as unidirectional, is void of linearity. Thus space and time become active elements that are directly related and dependent on the irrational sensual flux of emotions and spiritual states of the characters. Thus, the cinematic world is not a static stage for the story, but an amorphous entity that twists and whirls according to its own laws.
Break of causality and narrative logic
Shadows breaks the canonic representational mold of narrative cinema by completely abstracting itself from direct delineation of a concrete ‘physical reality’ (Kracauer, 2004, p.145). Rejecting the conventional narrative pattern irrevocably leads to a disruption in one pivotal cinematic principle – causality. In Parajanov’s film the binding force that links the separate components into a whole is not the rational formula of cause and effect. The thus produced in that disturbance of narrative logic is something rather peculiar not only to Parajanov’s films, but to the structural and aesthetic gist of art cinema in general. As David Bordwell argues, the aesthetics of art cinema is one that ‘defines itself…against the cause-effect linkage of events” (2008, p.152) and instead grounds its organizational principles on ‘psychological causation’ (Bordwell, 2008, p.153). Further on the deviations from the classical canon that Bordwell discusses in relation to art cinema seem to outline perfectly the fundamental attributes; the very roots of Parajanov’s cinematic style: ‘…an unusual angle, a stressed bit of cutting, a prohibited camera movement, an unrealistic shift in lighting or setting – in short, any breakdown of the motivation of cinematic space and time by cause-effect logic’ (Bordwell, 2008, p.154).
More interesting, though, is the reason for the appropriation of such an irrational cinematic language. It can be argued that it is the very subject matter of Shadows that requires such an approach in order that its essence is revealed. It is a folk legend that lies in the core of the film and therefore the cinematic edifice rests on a subject that itself is principally emptied of common sense. The folkloric root of Shadows is full of magical, phantasmagoric and mystical elements that cannot be rightfully conveyed if one is to stick to conventional storytelling devices such as continuity editing. It can be argued that the power of Parajanov’s visual expression is fully manifested exactly in his ability to unify form and content. Hence the irrationality and intuitiveness of his iconography and style aims to delineate and convey ‘people’s elemental perception of the world’ (Gillespie, 2003, p.73). As Cook argued:
‘ The ultimate effect of both the sound track and the color system, like that of the film’s optical distortions and dislocations, is to destabilize the spectator perceptually, and therefore psychologically, in order to present a tale that operates at the level not of narrative, but of myth, a tale that is an archetype of life itself…’ (Cook, 2004, p.695).
The primitive and the modern
All of the Armenian’s major films depict worlds and people historically and culturally far away from contemporary Western civilization. Parajanov’s disinterest in the mores of modern times turns his artistic gaze towards the primal. Similarly to the filmmaker he felt closest to – Pier Paolo Pasolini, Parajanov was ultimately interested in the idea of primitivism as a state of existence and perception. It is this primordial perception of life that defines both the subject and audio-visual presentation of it. One could see Parajanov’s fondness towards his characters’ anachronistic and primitive world-view as a reaction towards the modern world. Gillespie notes that ‘Parajanov rejects ‘rationalism and the consequent materialism of the modern world’ and rather relishes the ‘elemental unity of life’ (2003, p.73). Thus, the stylistic decisions in Shadows are based on an ethical as much aesthetic artistic position. In this line of thoughts, the words of the celebrated filmmaker, and Parajanov’s close friend - Andrei Tarkovsky sound somewhat descriptive of Parajanov’s own worldview manifested in his film: ‘The function of the image…is to express life itself, not ideas or arguments about life. It does not signify life or symbolize it, but embodies it, expressing its uniqueness.’ (Tarkovsky, 2008, p.111) The outlined by Tarkovsky artistic attitude can be quite fairly described as phenomenological.
The phenomenological approach
As marked out by Belton, the phenomenological approach is one interested not in intellectual schematization and cerebral formulas that seek to define or explain reality but in essence of things while permitting them ‘to preserve their essential mystery’ (Belton, 2008, p.24). The complete detachment from any analytical or explanatory renditions of the phenomenon and the aspiration towards its full, untainted by rationality, communication on screen is quintessential for Parajanov’s artistic vision. Merleau-Ponty wrote that ‘To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge’ (Merleau-Ponty cited by Belton, 2008, p.23). This thought seems to resonate with the Parajanov’s portrayal of the primitive ‘pre-industrial civilization where man’s bond with his native land and his spiritual and cultural links with his ancestors are not lost’ (Gillespie, 2003, p.73). The world of Prajanov’s imagination is a seething well of unbridled, uncultivated passions and beliefs. A mix of both Christian piousness and wild and carnal pagan exuberance, the spiritual gamut of Shadows encompasses and unifies the seemingly irreconcilable realms of the metaphysical and the corporeal; spirit and matter.
Parajanov’s earthly poetics
Moreover, what’s distinctive for Parajanov’s cinematographic practice is that he does not lean on abstractions but seeks spirituality within the matter itself and evokes the transcendental - the ethereal home of the soul, by artistically manipulating the very basic and tactile earthly entities. The primordial elements of veneration like sun, water, fire, earth, tree are all central figures within his work but their function is not to shape the physicality of the diegesis, but to figuratively convey and set free the immaterial essence capsulated within the material shell. In that respect the aesthetics of Parajanov’s cinema may well be seen as one similar to the literary style of Nikos Kazantzakis who similarly gives expression to his metaphysical findings through the very elemental earthly ingredients and appropriates a ‘primitive’ verbal imagery. For instance, in his Report to Greco the Cretan writes:
‘You are a goat’, I often tell my soul, trying to laugh, for fear I might cry, you are a goat, my poor soul. You are hungry and instead of drinking wine and eating bread and meat, you take a sheet of paper and write on it the words: wine, meat and bread and then you eat it’ (Kazantzakis, 1986, p. 203).
The richly allegorical prose of Kazantzakis is a literary equivalent to Parajanov’s Shadows. Chris Fujiwara argues that while leaving ‘Socialist Realism in the dust, Shadows still has a legible narrative and traces of naturalism’ (1999). The narrative thread in Parajanov’s work is feeble and mostly implied yet it is necessary for it to exist for there is a folk legend with its storyline that serves for a basis of the film. One could argue that this is the evidently prosaic characteristic of the film, that the linear sequence of events that unfolds throughout the film should be seen as one marking a stereotypical approach to visual storytelling. However, Parajanov’s utilization of an intensely metaphorical cinematic language to shape what one might call visual folk-poetry appears to be in variance with that assumption. The centrality of the visual figures and tropes that carry the story arguably puts the narrative in the background and rids the film of the continuity ubiquitous in conventional narrative cinema. In support to this argument one may examine the characteristics of metaphor itself which ‘by its very nature disrupts continuity and therefore tends to undermine the narrative function in any use of language. It conceals causality of connection and promotes transversal leaps of vertical deviation from a strong line of horizontal sequence’ (Gordon, 1996, p.229).
Furthermore, Parajanov’s inclination for figurative expression may be seen as one stemming from a much vaster tradition than the Ukrainian folklore in which Shadows is rooted. Doubtlessly, a director like Parajanov, born and educated in the Soviet Union, despite being a representative of an ethnic minority, has been greatly influenced by the distinctive artistic practice of Russia and has naturally immersed in the peculiarities of the Russian Weltanschauung. Interestingly, the Russian facet in Parajanov’s artistic identity may be seen as rather determinative for his aesthetic paradigm. It may be that Russianness which fundamentally unites the ‘elemental perception of the world’ and the poeticism of his visual language. As Robert Bird observed, it is no coincidence that ‘the Russian words for natural element (stikhiia) and poetry (stikhi) are etymologically related’ (Bird, 2008, p.16). Indeed, the aural and visual units that constitute Parajanov’s distinctive language appear to be deeply attached to the natural world. His artistic expression seems to spring from the depths of the raw earth itself. I shall now proceed to examine how the filmmaker utilizes the concrete ingredients of the cinematic language in the construction of his inimitable film world.
4. Cinematography
Shadows ’s cinematography is probably the most distinctive and memorable element in the film, often praised for the ‘wild kineticism’ of the camera movement (Steffen, 1996, p.19). An ardent opponent of modern rationality Parajanov rebels against the hegemony of pure reason and deifies the unfathomable, ineffable spiritual gist of man. Condemning any attempt of defining and schematizing the human existence, which would inevitably destroy the magic and mystery of life, he seeks an ultimate manifestation of his philosophical position and artistic aspirations in the aesthetics of his work. Thus, in Shadows, the idiosyncratic world he creates, his ‘ultimately harmonious and hermetic’ universe (Brashinsky, 1992, p.227) is one that resolutely disobeys the rational laws that govern physical reality and the corresponding representational postulates of conventional narrative cinema. In contrast to the tenets of continuity the cinematography in Shadows does not attempt to generate an illusion of space-time consistency and logic. As Cook argues the essential effect of Yuri Iliyanenko’s cinematography is that ‘the relationship between narrative logic and cinematic space is consistently undermined’ (2004, p. 694). Yet, if Shadows does not obey the canonic narrative laws then what are the principles that determine its structure? I will argue that the cinematography outlines a poetic reality that is governed by the irrational poetic flux of sensations and emotions. In a way, it is not the actions, events and places in the story that determine the space-time properties, but the spiritual development and emotional shifts of the characters.
‘Lived Space’ in Shadows
One may say that Parajanov renders the soul with flesh - he portrays the invisible- the spiritual and so within his cinematic reality the material objects and forms are just an appearance of the ethereal. Stemming from that assumption one could see the cinematic space-time of Shadows as one full of ‘internality’ – it is directly related to the inner world of the personages. Thus, the pictorial and stylistic decisions in the moving images are subordinate to the inner perceptions of the characters. In these lines it could be argued that Parajanov constructs a phenomenological cinematographic space - one wich is not an objective construct and does not deal with cerebral certainties and logics of but one which is entirely dependent on the unique individual perception of the world. I will argue that the cinematic space in Shadows may be seen as a pure expression of what Juhanni Pallasmaa named ‘lived space’ (2007, p.18). In his architectural analysis of cinematic space he states that lived space ‘resembles the structures of dream and the unconscious’ and is ‘organized independently of the boundaries of physical space and time’ (Pallasmaa, 2007, p.18). Most importantly Pallasmaa argues a dualistic nature of lived space and states it is ‘always a combination of external space and inner mental space, actuality and mental projection’ (Pallasmaa, 2007, p.18). This argument seems to outline rather precisely the fundamental properties of the space-time continuum in Parajanov’s work – it is an abolishment of dialectic differentiation and an act of unification of the ostensible opposites. The cinematic space in Shadows is not just a sheer amorphous abstraction and has concrete physicality and this is the ‘external’ element in it; it’s reference to the physical world. The physical world however is not the determining factor for the structure; not the fundament of the cinematic edifice but just a façade for the film space is actualized and defined existentially by the experience of the characters that inhabit it and therefore it is primarily internal.
Framing and camera movement
The two primary elements of the cinematography of Shadows – the framing and the camera movement stand out as probably the most distinctively utilized expressive devices that mold the sculpt the cinematic space. The opening scene shows the demise of young Ivan’s brother Olexo. While hewing trees in the forest he tries to save Ivan from a falling tree and eventually gets crushed by it himself. The following sequencepresents the mourning of Olexo’s death and is notable for the peculiar use of camera movement. In the beginning of the scene we see Ivan on a hill where his brother’s grave has been dug. Ivan then descends from the hill and heads towards the church where there is a service.
Olexo’s death and within-the-shot montage
In this scene the spectator is presented with a creative technique that Parajanov goes on using throughout the whole film. This technique is what Sergey Eisenstein categorized in his theoretical works as ‘montage within the shot’ (Milev, 1998, p.104). This type of montage may have various expressions and forms but ultimately suggests an organization of the objects and camera point of view in such a way that substantial structural alterations and shifts of the visual field happen in the borders of a single take. There is a peculiar trait of that artistic method which is of interest for this study. The main effect of the montage within the shot is that unlike between-the-shots montage it ‘suggests a certain homogeny of space and the point of view from which it is shot’ (Milev, 1998, p.113).
The scene is comprised of two long and complex takes which incorporate several very short sub-episodes in which the spectator is presented with various characters such as ebullient merchants selling talismans, whistles, crosses and bells, temperamental old women playing on primitive musical instruments, youths carrying lambs on their shoulders, a madman and Ivan’s mother calling him to enter the Church for a service. The hand-held camera lingers on the personages for several seconds while the shifts between the images are carried by rapid pans and tilts. The extreme speed and agility of the camera movement is used to mask the cut between the two takes in which the first shot ends with a brisk pan continued in the second shot. The overall effect is a sense of deliriousness and spatial confusion or, as Cook puts it - ‘perceptual dislocation’ (2004, p.694). Although the conventions and rules of narrative cinema are completely ignored and the filmmaker shows little concern about building a clear and coherent space-time relation, this perceptual dislocation does not necessarily mean total absence of uniformity of space. The ‘subjectivism’ or internality of the cinematic space is achieved precisely through the clash between the sense of incoherence generated by the apparent spatial disconnection of inter-shot sub-episodes and the locality achieved through their integration within a single space-time unit.
The unsteadiness of the visual planes achieved by the hand-held camera work connotes a point-of-view nature of the shots. The scene seems to be presented as an inner perception of people and events.
However, the scene cannot be classified as a conventional point-of-view one due to the fact that in the beginning of the first take and the end of the second we see Ivan himself. Interestingly, the camera’s gaze seems to be both subjective, directly linked to Ivan’s perception and objective or external to Ivan’s psyche. The result is a construction of cinematic ‘lived space’ in which the dialectic oppositions are fused into an irrational flow. Similar act of blurring the boundaries of objectivity and subjectivity, of reality and dream can be witnessed in the films of Tarkovsky, where the oneiric is depicted on equal footing with the physical.
It is important to notice the concord between the camerawork and the emotional charge of the particular moments in the film. While in the scene discussed above the unbridled camera works in harmony with the exuberance of the represented, in the following scene, in which Ivan and his parents are inside a church, the camerawork becomes significantly calmer. The cinematic space delineated by the much smoother and slower camera movement seems to attain the spirituality of the internal world of the characters and is devoid of the chaotic whirls and frantic paganism of the preceding sequence. The pace of the camera movement is much slower, instead of shaky hand-held motion there are smooth dollies and pans. The framing is almost entirely from frontal perspective similar to the depictions of saints on the icons hanging on the church walls. The iconography is styled in contrast to the merchants scene and the church interior seems to be explored with modesty and respect. A sense of Christian humility emanates from the images.
Identical artistic decisions are applied in the other church scene, which appears later on in the movie. In it the second church scene, in which Ivan and Marichka individually light candles. The Christian feel of the iconography is achieved through what Pallasmaa calls ‘compressed space’ (2007, p.73). The term refers to space which ‘is rendered in frontal perspective with a single vanishing point’ which helps to ‘flatten the scene into a two dimensional image’ (Pallasmaa, 2007, p.73). This representational approach, as Pallasmaa noted, ‘bears resemblance with the canon of icon painting’ (2007, p.75). Identically to the first church sequence the visual depiction is bereft of extremities and the camera is again restrained and smooth while the framing – frontal and balanced. Crossing the threshold of the sanctuary the riotous ebullience of the expression vanishes and the pictures become calmly immersed in piety and humility. The carefully stylized choreography of the camera work is synchronized with the emotional trajectory of the tale.
In his comment on the film Marc Le Fanu mentions the ‘camera’s sensuous appropriation of the terrain’ (1987, p.10). I would add that not only does the camera appropriate the physical terrain of the location, but also the spiritual realm within the protagonists. In that way it sculpts a psychosomatic cinematic space that exists in a seminal area situated between the factual and the metaphysical. It finds traces its roots in the immateriality of the soul but manifests itself in the very materiality of the setting, thus, unifying abstraction of matter. Perhaps there lies a deep philosophical statement that Prajanov seeks to communicate, a call for reconciliation of body and soul, man and nature. Shadows leaves the impression of a nostalgic infatuation with the nature’s beauty and a devout adoration of its elements. In a world increasingly dependent on machines and rationality Parajanov seems to yearn for the primitive in which the deep connection between men and earth is intact. Like Picasso’s sculptures inspired by primitive African art, Parajanov’s cinematic creation is grounded not on representation of the appearances but on the primordial core of the unburdened by the intellect perception of life.
Childhood scene and emotional camerawork
A good example of how the cinematography of Iliyanenko conveys the unity of man and nature is the scene revealing Ivan and Marichka’s childhood love. Richly metaphorical the scene is synthesis of the blithe years of childhood. It’s a celebration of the innocent, yet ardent love but also the ‘elemental enjoyment of natural world’ (Gillespie, 2003, p.72). From the very first shot we are invited to join Ivan and Marichka’s rapturous dance of pure joy. The use of fish eye lens and extreme low angle are aesthetic decisions that distort physical reality and shape a deeply symbolic image of the two infants cheerily spinning around each other seen through the blooming daisies. The exceedingly heightened perspective alters the logic of scale and leads to a single flower occupying a great part of the frame looking bigger than the children. Moreover, the meticulous composition positions the flower in such a way that it perfectly covers the sun while the sunlight forms a nimbus around petals look like sun rays. The shot is animated and saturated with dynamism as the flower stem gently quivers and makes the sun ‘peek’ behind the daisy. The figurative nature of the visual language annuls any literal reading of the image causing the quivering of the flower to appear as an allegorical visual echo of the emotional tremor of the characters themselves. In a shot full of potential for semiotic analysis the daisy which has attained a cultural significance as a symbol of innocence, may be seen as a synecdoche of spring but also a metaphor of the radiant blossoms of childhood love.
The adoption of natural elements as expressive ingredients and sources of visual tropes continues further on in the sequence. Two independent and seemingly unconnected spatially shots are visually ‘rhymed’ by a common element –fire. Blazing flames appear out of focus, covering the foreground of the two shots while at the background we see first Ivan and then Marichka. The emotional gradation of the sequence is further enforced by a stylistic shift. The static framing of the beginning is replaced by a much more mobile cinematic gaze that is incorporated in two very complex and technically elaborate long takes. The first one is a hand-held shot that first closely follows Ivan who jovially prances around playing his whistle and then follows the two infants running down a slope scared by some mysterious distant voice. The following shot similarly follows the motion of the protagonists, but this time the camera is mounted on a cabin-lift for greater and smoother mobility. Keeping the two characters relatively far from the point of view – long shot, the camera glides parallel to them down the slope, through a forest where it pauses as the kids stop in a mountain brook pool and enthusiastically jump and spray each other with water. Then as they go on running through the forest the camera continues to slide through the trees in parallel to their axis of motion.
This long take is a good example of the construction of emotional cinematic space or if we use Pallasmaa’s term – lived space. On one hand the characteristics of the camera movement are determined by the very physical properties of the location. Its vertical and subsequent horizontal movement is subordinate to the specificity of the terrain – the camera appropriates the geometry of the physical space. On the other hand, the cinematic gaze seems to delineate the not only the physical journey of Ivan and Marichka, but also their spiritual one. As Nacify reasons, Parajanov often favours ‘the use of journey as a metaphor for psychological and spiritual transformation’ (2001, p.223). Drawing from that assumption I will argue that the camera movement is largely symbolic and may be seen as subordinate to and propelled as much by the actual motion of the protagonists as by the invisible emotional torrents flowing and raging in them. One could argue that in this part Parajanov largely utilizes what Nedeltscho Milev calls ‘expressive camera movement wich contains the conceptual Weltansicht of the characters’ (Milev, 1998, p.152). Thus the unbridled camera outlines a deeply subjective cinematic space in which the point of view is external but the logic of behavior of the cinematic gaze is subordinate to the inner realm of the characters.
Regardless of the expressive significance of the integrated in the soundtrack ‘punctuative musical effects’ (Chion, 1994, p.48), which I shall discus later in this essay, the finale of the episode is a climactic point in which the emotive potential of the imagery is unleashed in its fullest. A rapid flow of short shots form a montage phrase which may be classified as a structural variation of ‘disjunctive editing’ (Corrigan & White, 2009, p.172). A sequence of alternating low angle medium-close-up shots showing individually Ivan and Marichka buoyantly gamboling. In each independent shot, the intrinsic dynamism of the image generated by the fast motion of the subject is further enhanced by the unusual angle. Cinematically portraying a child from a long-angle is doubtlessly a strong visual statement. One that, in the particular case, seems to impart an epic feeling to the otherwise rather mundane childish play. Here again the formal characteristics of the film are a reverberation of the content. The ecstatic euphoria of childhood is emphasized through the irrationality of the editing. In this sequence some of the paramount principles of continuity are broken in the construction of cinematic space. A shot of Ivan moving left to right is quickly followed by another showing him moving in the opposite direction, then the following one is again left to right. In this chain of cinematic units we see no rational pattern and the asynchrony between the separate shots’ spatial signification is apparent. The mechanical logic of cutting is substituted with emotional montage full of ostensible paradoxes, which challenge the perception and make it ‘impossible at any given moment to imagine a stable space-time continuum’ (Cook, 2004, p. 694).
Cinematic space beyond pure reason
Throughout the whole film there is a strong sense that it is not pure reason, but Parajanov’s artistic intuition and his aspiration for musicality and rhythm of the visual expression that underlies the formation of the work. The filmmaker seems to portray that element of man, which is invisible, intangible, beyond the reach of rational thought. The representational mode is intentionally paradoxical and illogical, for it is the cinematic antinomies that beget the poeticism of the imagery. By means of reconciliation of conflicting opposites Parajanov evokes a territory across the borders of the mind. In relation to that Cook rightfully argued that ‘Shadows exists most fully not in the realm of narrative, but in the world of myth and the unconscious’(2004, p.695). In this scene Parajanov displayed his idiosyncratic artistic vision and harnesses all of his ‘extravagant poetic talent’ (Robinson, 1981, p.321) to create a visual Ode to joy.
It’s impossible that one would fail to see the common ground the Armanian shares with his fellow Tarkovsky. Effectively, the scene, especially its finale, looks and feels like a paraphrase of a sequence in Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood. Another influential filmmaker that appropriates elaborate choreography of the camera is the Hungarian Miklos Jansco. However, while Jansco’s camera smoothly sculpts the film space-time with a graceful ballet-like motion, the camera movement in Shadows is ful of temperament and vigour and evokes the feeling of exuberance in a primordial ritual dance. Sklar however, finds that the greatest similarity between the two is that: ‘as in Jancso’s works, however, narrative hardly matters’ (Sklar, 1993, p.449).
5. Colour
Another pivotal expressive element in Shadows is colour. The wide range of methods that Parajanov employs in the chromatic manipulation of his cinematic world is, similarly to the other cinematic ingredients, aimed at achieving a filmic poetry by almost absolute detachment from replication of actual physical reality. Thereby, colour functionally follows the logic of the image’s plastic parameters. The thus created unison of the film’s graphic realization, in which each of the formative elements is subordinate to one ultimate principle, is illustrative of the work’s structural architectonics. Parajanov’s inimitable visual rhetoric finds sublime manifestation in its abstraction from objectivism in favour of a highly metaphorical pictorial system.
Colour as metaphor
Sklar noted that Parajanov uses ‘symbolic colours and non-realistic tinting’ (1993, p.449). Here one could see two main strands of colour manipulation. One is the chromatic properties of the mise-en scene components and the other is the cinematographic colour direction of the picture. Naturally, these two methods are not independent of each other and often they interact and intertwine to materialize the incorporeal and thus create a cinematic universe that is a reflection of the spiritual realms of the characters. Cook argued in support of that statement stating that ‘Prajanov employs color in a psychologically provocative way, having developed for Shadows what he called a ‘dramaturgy of color’ (2004, p.695). It can be argued that the filmmaker’s expressive utilization of colour varies from relatively natural palette where the chromatic properties are inherent to the material objects in the image, to abstract, surreal colour schemes where colour exists independently of the objects it relates to. In the first case the allegorical value is more subtle and implicit. The vivid green of the meadows, the pure white of the snow fields and the saturated red in the Gutsul traditional costumes are all intrinsic to the physical reality and in a way may be seen as ‘realistic’. They achieve metaphorical value only in context of the syuzhet development and in their interaction with other expressive elements such as graphic forms, shapes and sounds. The second type of chromatic decisions is one, which operates towards a direct visual translation of the emotional patterns and psychological states of the protagonists.
Colour and indexicality
In an essay on Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964) Richard Misek discusses the Italian filmmaker’s attempt to break ‘the indexical link between objects and the colours with which they’re associated’ which stemmed from his viewpoint that ‘colour needed to be expressive of the artist’s ideas, rather than representative of the chromatic chaos of the world’ (2010, p.65). I will argue that at many points throughout the film Parajanov comes very close to Antonioni in the way he handles colour but instead of filling a rather conservative and objective reality with abstraction like the Italian does, he uses the abstraction itself as a fundament of his cinematic edifice. Like folklore art itself, Parajanov’s film conveys the utter conviction that reality in its essence is magical.
If one isolates colour from the other filmic elements and analyses it as a self-sufficient domain, he would inevitably witness how it independently delineates the emotional flow of the story. Cook, succinctly, outlined the main chromatic transformation throughout the film:
‘When Ivan and Marichka are first drawn together as children, for example, the prevailing color is the white of the snow, corresponding to their innocence; the green of the spring dominates their young love; monochrome and sepia tones are used to drain the world of color during the period of Ivan’s grieving, but color returns riotously if briefly, after he meets Palagma; as their relationship turns barren, the film is dominated by autumnal hues; monochrome returns during Ivan’s death delirium; and at the moment of his death the natural universe is painted in surreal shades of red and blue.’ (2004, p.695)
In the tavern Under closer scrutiny the episode of Ivan’s death reveals further insights into the mechanism of the film’s chromatic system. In the beginning of the episode the viewer is presented with Ivan and his second wife - Palagna entering a village tavern full of music and reveling people. Alone on a table there sits Yurko the local sorcerer and Palagna’s secret beloved. Palagna then, seemingly unnoticed by her husband, starts coquetting with Yurko until it all culminate in Yurko and Ivan’s affray in which the sorcerer blows a deadly strike on Ivan. The chromatic scheme in this first part of the episode is characterized by vivid, highly saturated colours. The bright elements of the Gutsul traditional costumes are intensified cinematographically. Though generally defined by relevant chromatic realism, the scene marks a pictorial shift from the preceding episode in which the colour palette consists of subdued, unsaturated colours. One could notice the manner in which colour mirrors the inner existential alterations of the charactersv - Ivanko’s arid relationship with Palagna resulting in his existential ennui and apathy is chromatically indicated by the dull, dry colours which endow the image with a mundane, realistic feeling. The subsequent denouement of the suyzhet and story’s emotional zenith is hinted through the chromatic shift in the tavern sequence where the vivid red and pure white shades imbue the imagery with visual angst and gives the scene with a more expressionistic air. Important to note is the fact that the main device of chromatic manipulation is cinematography and while the colours of the mise-en scene are not void of allegoric value, they remain indexically linked to the objects they relate to.
Ivan’s death delirium
In the proceeding scene after Yurko’s deadly blow we see Ivan walk out of the tavern, faltering and holding his head with hands. The shot is filmed in slow motion and marked by a further chromatic shift. The vivid palette is replaced by a monochrome sepia one. The uniformity of the formal properties of the cinematic language and the subject matter escalate in a subliminal portrayal of Ivan’s inner world. As Ivan approaches the threshold of the other world all objectivism of the representation is swept away and the high contrast sepia pictures appear like a visual reverberation of the impeding existential end. There is one final journey, one step that separates Ivan and the celestial realm where Marichka’s waiting for him. Important to mention is that in this depiction of ‘Ivan’s death delirium’ the mise-en-scene again remains rather unaltered. It is the same inn but ‘seen’ differently by the gaze of the camera. The space of Ivan’s death walk is existential but not entirely ‘internal’ for it still bears physical resemblance with the material world. Ivan is leaving the physical reality to enter the kingdom of heaven and the material world now depicted in monochrome hues appears to have lost all petty detail and condensed into a an essence of light and shadows.
Ivan’s death
The final moments of Ivan’s death are portrayed in a dreamlike, visually confusing sequence in which the spectator sees alternating shots of Ivan roaming in a phantasmal forest towards Marichka who smilingly beckons him to join her. The posthumous union of the Caucasian Romeo and Juliet is arguably the visual climax of the whole film. While cinematographically the chromatic scheme is rather conventional, there is no tinting. This time it is the colours of the mise-en-scene that carry the expressive charge of the artistic thought and generate the poetic, ethereal sense of the picture. The scene is evidently shot on location, like the rest of the picture, but the painterly manner in which Parajanov utilizes the natural elements abstracts the sequence from any sense of realism. The branches of the trees and the face and hands of Marichka are entirely painted in pale silver-blue shades while Ivan is only partly covered with these nuances. What unravels before the spectator is a portrayal of the soul’s passage through the purgatory. The paradoxical vision of Parajanov, however, illustrates the incorporeal, the spiritual seminal realm not through a construction of an artificial abstract space, but through a chromatic alteration of the physical world. Like Antonioni in Red Desert, the Armenian separates colour and object. Branigan argued that ‘the split between color and object is evidence that a logic other than verisimilitude (the probable) is at work’ (1976, p.178). I would add that it is exactly this split that produces the fantastic, fairy-tale like atmosphere of the episode. The conflict between the colours of the world and the objects they inhabit opens a perceptual gap and provokes the senses of the viewer. Crucially, the space of Ivan’s death is not a territory disconnected from reality, but a paraphrase of reality in which the incorporeal is embodied within the matter.
In the end of the scene the spectator is presented with a close-up shot of Marichka’s hand, gliding through the net of silver branches reaching for Ivan. In the moment her hand grasps his we hear an off screen sound of Ivan’s death cry. The obvious metaphor of the hand of death reaching for Ivan’s breath is reminiscent of the archetypal portrayals of death in mythology and folklore. In traditional folklore death is rarely imagined formless immaterial. Instead it is seen as built of flesh and bone. Accordingly Parajanov portrayed the fatal shadow of fortune with a body and a face. The conclusive moment of the episode - Ivan’s final parting with the terrestrial world, is cinematically conveyed exclusively through what Monaco calls ‘metonymics of color’ (2000, p.138).
Red
What follows the sound of Ivan’s cry is a very short shot marked by complete chromatic naturalism. We see a doe anxiously turning its head. The shot seems to be a visual reaction to the sonic indication in the preceding one. Next comes the final metaphorical montage phrase that starts with a shot of a sphere of entangled blood-red dyed twigs spinning in the air, followed by several static close-ups of encrimsoned tangles of branches and a final shot in which the whole image is occupied by red–tinted tree bark. It is in these final shots that colour seems to be the element carrying the whole expressive potential of the image. Entirely disconnected from objective reality the red colour operates as a chromatic metonym. Eisenstein called red ‘the colour of warm human blood’ (Eisenstein, n.d., p. 107) while Cage labeled it ‘the chromatic representative of fire and light’ (1993, p.26). In these lines, it is hardly an accident that the film was initially named Wild Horses of Fire. This initial title doubtlessly refers to one of the most memorable poetic moments in the film – Ivan’s father’s death. The slow-motion monochrome shot of red-tinted horses jumping across pure white background is highly stylized visual trope, in which identically to the episode of Ivan’s demise, red become the chromatic carrier of Parajanov’s visual symbolism. Because of its centrality in these two scenes, red may be seen as a visual leitmotif of death and the ascent towards the celestial kingdom. This interpretation is solidified by the fact that ‘Red, had since the earliest times and in many cultures, heralded the divine’ (Cage, 1993, p.26).
Leaving aside the possible cultural references and interpretations of red, it is important to give attention to that in this final sequence the denotative scope of meanings of the image is brought to absurdity but the connotative plane is opened to infinity. Regardless of the possible readings of the red, colour here is concentrated in a strong psychological and sensory impact. The ultimate expressivity of the shots creates a cinematic universe that bears strong resemblance to the imaginary worlds found in the paintings of Marc Chagall and early Kandinsky. Also the iconography of Shadows as well as the one of all his subsequent films is indisputably influenced by the art of Georgian primitivist painter Niko Pirosmani. What marks Parajanov’s approach with notable artistic ingenuity is that he succeeds in blending the imaginary with the physical, creating in that way a realm where dream and reality coexist uniformly. The connection of the realistic image of the doe and the subsequent symbolic shot of the peculiar red sphere is organic and there is no indication of a transgression of cinematic realms. The incoherence of the chromatic scheme leads to a rupture of the causality and the ostensible discord of the space-time logic within the sequence. This in turn, does not indicate simply the lack of physical reality-based space-time continuum, but the presence of one governed by the forces incognizable for pure reason.
Ivan’s demise is the climax of Parajanov’s stylistic utilization of colour and the one that doubtlessly stands out is red. This colour, in different variations and hues dominates the chromatic palette of the whole picture and may be defined as one of the two thematic colours in the film (the other being white). One could see this as an intentional creative decision that aims at bringing the form of the film as close as possible to the subject matter. Red is a central element in ethnic costume, ‘it is the predominant colour in all tribal and peasant embroidery’ (Paine, 2008, p.212). It may well be concluded since costumes and textiles are perhaps the key manifestation of Gutsul people’s beliefs and traditions, that in them one should find the purest expression of this people’s perception of the world. It is by adhering to the chromatic peculiarities of folklore costume that Parajanov manages to visualize not only the external but also to imply the inner and the spiritual.
Colour and folk art
Moreover, it is not only in the colour red that one finds this chromatic unity between the palette of Shadows and the film’s folkloric roots. One general characteristic of the colours in Parajanov’s work is that similarly to the Gutsul, and most East European, traditional costumes the colours are simple solid ones, with little hues. Strong and saturated red, blue, green and yellow are the primary colours that dominate the film and these are the elemental colours of traditional costume. Partly due to the primitive methods of pigment extraction and fabric dying, in most East European folk costumes the colours are very simple and void of hues and tinges. Similarly, in Shadows the general palette is scarce on complex colour mixtures. Even the natural locations are photographically depicted in highly accented solid colours that appear rather isolated from each other. In that approach of isolation of the central colours one could discern a cinematic approach similar to impressionistic practices in the works of Cezanne where colours do not gradually flow and merge but exist distinctly separated. This painterly technique relies on the viewer’s perception to unite the elements together and form a coherent whole. It may be argued that in Shadows Parajanov employs what might be defined as phenomenological approach to colour. In a sense the filmmaker forsakes imitative methods of depiction of the appearance of the physical objects but instead seeks to bring to surface the very essences of things, the hidden beyond apparition incognizable gist. In that respect one may observe a rather strong artistic kinship between the Armenian and his fellow filmmaker Tarkovsky, who similarly strives to fill his works with images that emerge from beyond the apparent and are meant to portray the unfathomable essence of the bottomless human soul.
Monochrome
In terms of chromatic manipulation of the cinematic medium, Shadows shares common ground mostly with Tarkovsky’s late works – Nostalghia, (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, USSR/Italy) and Sacrifice, (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986, Sweden) where the use of monochrome colour scheme is directly linked to the characters’ inner realms. Ridding the image of colour in Tarkovsky’s works is never just a stylistic decision, but one that is aimed at indicating or accentuating particular states of mind and spiritual shifts of the protagonists. As Johnson noted, in Nostalghia and the Sacrifice the Russian auteur ‘seems to have equated this monochrome effect…with particularly ‘spiritual scenes’ (Johnson & Petrie, 1994, p.189). Identically in Shadows, the phenomenological character of the monochrome can be traced in the aesthetic decisions in the episode of Ivan’s mourning and the inn shot of his death delirium.
In these segments the inner logic of the image is dictated not by the external properties of the setting but by existential parameters of Ivan’s soul. Bereft of his beloved, the world of the protagonist once illuminated and mottled by the presence of Marichka, suddenly turns barren and dull. The black and white cinematography mirrors Ivan’s inability to experience the life in all its joy and opulence. He has become blind to the diversity of the world, and accordingly the photographic vision seems to have become blinded to the diversity of colours. Ivan’s inner world has become one of extremes, and this spiritual battlefield where the conflicting forces of good and evil clash is portrayed through the interplay of light and shadow within the cinematic image. Thus, the chromatic register is equated with the emotional scope of the character. This aesthetic device of colour binarisation as an indicator of deep internal turbulence adopted by Parajanov, traces its roots, along with its filmic equivalents in the works of Tarkovsky, in the painterly practices of the great Dutch masters. As Hollander states, for instance, Rembrandt is notable for his utilization of chiaroscuro to ‘invoke the soul’ (1989, p.48). In these lines, Parajanov follows a long-existing tradition of the portrayal of spirituality. The archetypal entities white and black, intrinsically conflicting, appear to be the elemental visual expression of existential extremities. As Goethe’s character Goetz famously says, ‘where light is brightest, the shadows are deepest’ (1837, p.38). The shadows of the forgotten ancestors are ephemeral dancers around the fire of life.
6. Sound
Though Shadows is a cinematic work that builds a strong visual relation with the spectator, this study will lack depth if one is to neglect the non-visual aspects of the film. Indeed, it is hard to overlook the film’s sonic dimension and the ways in which sound interacts with picture. The soundtrack of Parajanov’s work is rich, multifarious and eclectic. It encompasses and mixes together an extensive range of sounds. The unifying principle in its construction, similarly to the pictorial logic of the work, is the immediate expression of the characters inner worlds. All sounds in the film are rooted in the immaterial realms underneath the surface of the material world and follow the emotional currents that flow in the veins of the film. In his brief outline of the soundtrack of Shadows Cook notes that ‘Parajanov uses a complex variety of music – from atonal electronics, to lush orchestral romanticism, to hieratic religious chants, to vocal and instrumental folk music – to create leitmotifs for the film’s various psychological atmospheres’ (2004, p. 695). The sheer span of the sonic field, abounding with multicultural elements and influences, is a topic sufficient for whole separate essay and is impossible for one to present a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the whole soundtrack in just several pages. Therefore, I shall limit my scrutiny and center it at several definitive features of the filmmaker’s utilization of sound.
The asynchronous voice
The first intriguing characteristic of the soundtrack is the use of asynchronous sound. Despite the fact that throughout the film many sonic entities are objectively fixed to the visuals, there are many cases in which we witness a highly idiosyncratic and non-conventional building of the audio-visual whole. In these occasions the ‘discrepancy between the things heard and the things seen in the film’ (Balazs, …,p120) generates the asynchrony of the aural in its relation to the visual. As Balazs reason, ‘If the sound or voice is not tied up with the picture of its source, it may grow beyond the dimensions of the latter’ (Balazs, .., p.120). An apposite example for asynchronous sound may be found in the already discussed scene of Ivan’s death. Accompanying the surrealistic images of Ivan and Marichka’s wondering through the forest is a love song in which the two lovers express their genuine feelings towards each other. The male and female singing voices are easily recognizable, for they are the voice of the protagonists themselves. The audio-visual conflict in this case is born from a twofold incongruity. On one hand the images of Ivan and Marichka are organically connected to the voices due to the already established relation character-voice. One the other hand, however, the voices are not lip-synced with the picture. We do not see Ivan or Marichka sing, but we hear them. Thus, the song is not simply a non-diegetic musical accompaniment to the picture but instead it appears to be springing from it without being limited to its visual concreteness. The asynchronous voice then becomes an expressive tool that serves not only to impact on the visual field, but to alter it altogether as well. The objects within the frame are sonically redefined and the complete lack of audio-visual realism opens an intentional gap between the image and its objective, literal facets. The voices, which relate to the image but do not strictly adhere to it generate a certain figurative meaning. What we’re invited to behold is not the physical beings of Ivan and Marichka, but their souls, or in an even bolder interpretation - the metaphysical idea of the union between man and woman.
In her essay on voice in cinema Mary Ann Doane argues that in the places where the voice is used asynchronously ‘the body in the film becomes the body of the film’ (Doane, … p.163). In other words, through the distancing of the visual subject and the voice that relates to it, the cinematic work itself inherits the artistic functions of the personage. The component and the whole achieve an architectonic unity. Arguably, the pivotal effect that asynchronous voice achieves is to convey the unearthliness of the cinematic world. By eradicating the intrinsic bonds of the moving images with the photographed physical reality, sound shapes Parajanov’s filmic universe in which the determining principles are ephemeral and impalpable like the sensations and quivers of man’s soul.
Shadows, as I argued in the beginning of this essay, is a film that rests much more on mythology and folklore than on conventional narrative formulas and patterns. For that reason the sonic decisions in the film seem to disobey logic and do not entirely fit any standard definitions. The folk songs that appear throughout the film, for instance, are quite often synchronous with the image in the beginning of the film and as it progresses they become completely detached from the visuals, or vice versa. This adoption of asynchrony becomes an expressive device for the creation of a poetic world, which relies much more on pure sensory impact than clear rational representation. As Balazs notes, asynchronous use of sound is ‘The surest means by which the director can convey the pathos or symbolical significance of sound or voice’ (Balazs,…, p.120).
Sound’s location in the diegesis of the film
The other aspect of sound, which is of particular interest for this study, is the topology of the soundtrack and its variable spatial relation between sound and the visual dimension of the film. I shall closely examine the episode of Ivan’s mourning, titled ‘Loneliness’ and demonstrate how the voice freely travels between the on-screen, off-screen and non-diegetic borders, thus questioning them altogether. Throughout the filmic segment the spectator is presented with episodic renderings of Ivan’s life after Marichka’s decease. We see him taking sporadic jobs as a shepherd, digging graves and building houses. Although the pictures are sonically underlined with different atmospheric ambient sounds that appear to be objectively diegetic, the dominant aural element in the soundtrack is voice. In the different stages of the episode we hear clear voices of people who discuss and comment on Ivan’s fate. The voices of these mostly unseen characters are sometimes individual and tell stories about their encounters with Ivan while in places the voices are involved in casual conversations about him.
In the beginning of the episode we see a high angle wide shot of Ivan walking out of his home and the dominating sound is a conversation between two women who gossip about the dejected protagonist. In the beginning of the shot the voice is off-screen but as the camera glides along Ivan, we see that outside his yard stand two old women. As Ivan appears before them, the voices turn to whispers and murmurs. In this case it seems that the voice is clearly diegetic and fixed to the visible objects in the frame – the two women. It simply crosses the off-screen – on-screen border. Interestingly, though, the spatial characteristics of the sound, or what Truppin calls sound’s ‘spatial signature’ (1992, p.241), seem to be in variance with the visual space. The voices are distinct and loud, in other words – in close-up and remain such regardless of the alterations of both the spatial relation between the characters these voices belong to and Ivan, and the distance of the characters to the point of view of the camera itself. In that way there is a certain spatial asynchrony between image and sound. Thus, the dominant sound does not seem to be limited to the physical dimensions of the image. As the episode progresses the different voices get even more disembodied and detached from the objects in the frame. We hear the speech of these invisible people, without having any clear indication of their actual presence in the diegesis of the work. Moreover, the commentary character of the spoken words and the clear spatial disconnection of the sound make the voices sound like voice-over. Drawing from that one could conclude that the voice then is clearly non-diegetic.
However, there are several occasions in which we’re presented with indications of potential bodies the voices belong to. For example in the part of the episode in which we hear the story of a woman telling how Ivan is building her house and how he refuses to talk and eat we actually see the house in construction, Ivan and an old woman. The seemingly non-diegetic voice then is logically linked to a personage within the diegesis, while yet it remains asynchronous and physically aloof from the visually delineated world. Hence, one can define the voices as neither completely diegetic, nor non-diegetic and can fairly position them in the liminal zone between off-screen space and non-diegetic space. In his discussion of cinematic space and sound, Chion says that the ‘non-diegetic-off-screen border is the most mysterious’ and goes on declaring that ‘opening this border, which amounts to its loss, is just about the most poetically fateful thing one can do in the cinema’ (2009, p.260).
‘Acousmetre’ in Shadows
I would argue that through the specific use of voice in Shadows, Parajanov does exactly that – he annihilates the space-time borders of the sound field. The result is an amorphous fluid audio-visual entity, which disobeys the parameters of the real world. One could argue that the particular use of voice in the mourning episode is an example of what Chion calls ‘acousmetre’ (1994, p.129) an invisible voice that belongs to the diegetic world of a film and yet it’s shrouded in ambiguity and completely alien to the visual ingredients of the film. However, the ‘acousmetre’ is usually of a structurally pivotal importance for the cinematic work, it is a definitive element for the whole film, take the acoustic character of the mother in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, USA) for example, while the voices in Shadows organically cohere with the other sonic elements without being in conflict with them. The elimination of off-screen – non-diegetic border is an act of affirmation of the poetic nature of Parajanov’s world. It results in broadening of the diegetic plane, which just like a folk legend becomes full of things heard of, but never seen.
In effect, apart from the atonal electronic music and the orchestral score, which may be classified as ‘screen music’ (Chion, 1994, p.80), all the other components of the soundtrack appear to be more or less diegetic. The voice of the boy singing a-capella a traditional Christmas song, the folk instrumentals, the religious chants all seem to be gushing from the images. It is as if the locations themselves are infused with the folk rhythms and melodies. Parajanov’s sounds are not information carriers - they are not aimed at explaining and orienting. Instead, the sounds are emotional units, sonic manifestations of the transcendental. Sound in Shadows emanates from universal indestructible element in the human soul; the ineffable divine essence. Parajanov thought of cinema as a ‘synthetic art’ (Taylor, 2000, p.176) and perhaps through his unification of expression and subject he aspired to resolve the imperfections of reality and bring it closer to the unattainable ideal. The filmic world he created seems to be the highest manifestation of man’s striving for divine simplicity and unity. The world portrayed in Shadows is a realm where colours, shapes and sounds are all part of one syncretic ancient whole where faith, nature, man and history exist in unadulterated harmony.
7. Conclusion
In Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov employs the creative instruments of the cinematic art in a highly idiosyncratic manner. Regardless of the common grounds he shares with other masters of cinema, his films remain distinctly individual, elusive and beyond categorization. In this study, through an analysis of three main expressive materials – cinematography, colour and sound, I attempted to go beyond the purely sensory response to the film and seek the roots of Parajanov’s artistic methods. The unbridled passion for life embodied in his creation appears to be a reflection of his utopic and perchance atavistic Weltanschauung. His work, heavily influenced by traditional folk art renounces the doctrines of modern humanity and strives for the primitive form of existence where the fantastic and the earthly exist in perpetual unanimity. The particular characteristics of Parajanov’s cinematic approach lead to a much broader picture of himself alone. The shapes, colours and sounds in his work are the means through which the artist shares with us the thirst of his avid soul for the unattainable ideal. Apart from anything else Shadows is an inextinguishable plea and a beckoning for spirituality.
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Steffen, James (1996) ‘Parajanov’s Playful Poetics: On the Director’s Cut of the Colour of Pomegranates’ in Journal of Film and Video, Vol.47, No. 4, International Film and Television (Winter 1995-96), pp.17-32
Tarkovsky, Andrei (2008) Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses his Art. Austin: University of Texas Press
Taylor, Richard; Wood, Nancy; Graffy, Julian and Iordanova, Dina eds. (2000) The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema, London: British Film Institute
9. Filmography
Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme, Sergei Parajanov, 1985, USSR
Ashik Kerib, Sergei Parajanov, 1988, USSR.
Earth, Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930, USSR
Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962, USSR
Moldavian Tales, Sergei Parajanov, 1951, USSR
Nostalghia, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, USSR/Italy
Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, USA
Red Desrt, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, Italy
Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986, Sweden
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sergei Parajanov, 1967,USSR
The Colour of Pomegranates , Sergei Parajanov, 1968, USSR
The Legend of Suram Fortress, Sergei Parajanov, 1984, USSR
10. Netography
Fujiwara, Chris (1999). Living Collage: Sergei Parajanov's film fever. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/movies/99/11/25/SERGEI_PARADJANOV.html. [Last Accessed 16 February 2012].
(2001).. [ONLINE] Available at: www.parajanov.com. [Last Accessed 10 March 2012].