Ashik Kerib

1988 Paradjanov movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A poor minstrel falls in love with a rich gal and then wanders all over the place having various misadventures, most of them colorful.

It's lucky for us that the U.S. and Soviet Union stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War because if we had decided to attack each other with color, it would have been hopeless. This is my fourth and likely final Sergei Paradjanov joint (that's what he called them), and like the other three, this is an unusual but wonderful experience. This is very obviously filmed on a tight budget, but Paradjanov overcomes that with his creative spirit and visual eye. Admittedly, I was frustrated early. It either took this story about this minstrel a while to gain momentum or I just needed to be warmed up a bit. My suggestion would be to try to find a Paradjanov short to use as foreplay before letting one of his features seduce you. This not only looks great; it sounds fantastic, too, with a soundtrack rich in Georgian folk music, the only kind of auditory daffiness that could fit a lot of this imagery. Observe: lots and lots of camels and guys with unibrows, beard thievery, a guy with fuzzy dice hanging from his crotch, birds and more birds, evil spirits arriving on ponies. Visual bliss if you ignore some of the most stilted acting you'll ever see and a story that didn't make a lot of sense. That acting. Yeesh. It was like a church group performance with even less of a budget. This movie might have the cheapest special effect I've ever seen, by the way--horse flight simulated with a close-up of a spinning globe. Oh, with a couple of dudes blowing shells in the only way shells can be blown into--gaily. My favorite scene features a guy sharpening knives while a guy spins a colorful umbrella behind him and to his right. It's a beautiful shot anyway, but then the camera pulls back and you have all these women undulating on the ground in the foreground pretending to be snakes. I think it's symbolic. Which reminds me--for a movie that is supposed to be a children's movie (I read), this is sure heavy on the symbolism. I don't think children can think this abstractly. And there's also a sex scene where some clowns toss a curtain over a man and a woman before the shell blowers do their shell-blowing thing and a guy starts throwing doves around. Yeah, that's exactly as spicy as it sounds. Ashik Kerib is more flawed than the other Paradjanov movies, more meandering and choppily incoherent, but if you're hip to the guy's cinematic voice, you'll be glad you popped this in. If I get married again, I'm having a Paradjanov-inspired wedding and reception, by the way.