Devon Yagian-Boutelle
The Colour of Pomegranates is a most memorable artifact in the history of global cinema perhaps most obviously for its unconventional style, which was (and is) a dramatic departure from the cinematic norms of storytelling in almost any artistic school or locale of film production one might have found in the world at the time. It is a film that most certainly would never have been made in the “Hollywood” system or arguably any mainstream studios in the Western markets. Yet what might seem equally unlikely was the fact that this film was entirely funded by the Soviet state system (as all films were in the USSR), a film that does not at all fit into the conventions of Socialist Realism. In the years after its release, the film’s director Sergei Parajanov would come under the scrutiny of the KGB and end up spending several years in prison for charges of homosexuality. Charges, however, most current scholars, and friends and colleagues around him at the time, say were really a pretext and simply the easiest and quickest manner to remove him from the cinematic scene. An examination of the KGB case reports on him from the period support this conclusion as the texts seem most concerned with Parajanov’s perceived anti-Soviet behavior, contact with foreigners from the West, and having had a “negative influence on the fostering of young creative workers” (Steffen 2013: 186-187). In the decades since the film’s release The Colour of Pomegranates has also been incorporated into the milieu of the Armenian nationalist identity, as a masterpiece of Armenian national art. The film is indeed full of symbolism associated with Armenian culture, its subject, Sayat Nova, is the most revered classical poet and minstrel and the pomegranate is as equally ingrained into the Armenian cultural psyche as is the apricot, both of which are probably only surpassed by the image of Mt. Ararat. Ask anyone today on the streets in Yerevan (capital of Armenia) or a diaspora in LA or Paris: ‘What is the greatest Armenian film ever made?’ Chances are they will say The Colour of Pomegranates (whether or not they have actually seen it).
The documented subversiveness of the director, the overtly nationalist symbolism, subject, and appeal of the film, would all seem to beg the question how could such a film have been made in the Soviet film industry that had a state monopoly on production, distribution and exhibition, a bureaucratized system of control that enforced an aesthetic-ideological orthodoxy (Steffen, 2013: 10). Could a film with a subversive anti-Soviet message, or a bourgeois-nationalist narrative, have somehow slipped through the proverbial crack of the State Committee of Cinematography? History would support an answer that was a resounding—No. Perhaps it would be valuable to take a step back and ask: is The Colour of Pomegranates actually a subversive film? If so, how?
Those close to him generally considered Parajanov, as not having been interested in politics (Steffen, 2013: 81). Despite this his film Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965) became associated with the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Ironically, this is the film that garnered him fame in the USSR and recognition in the West. It was the popularity and success of the film, not only amongst film critics and the general public, but also from the perspective of the Soviet authorities, which allowed him to go on to make The Colour of Pomegranates. So how did these paradoxical outcomes arise from the creation of that film?
I believe it becomes quite clear in reading accounts from friends, personal letters, and interviews with Parajanov, that the man was a narcissist. I would argue that it is his imbued sense of auteurship, the quest to realize his personal artistic vision, which motivated him above all else. His association with nationalist politics in the Ukraine is really a matter of chance. When asked by the Goskino in Moscow to have Shadows dubbed in Russian for Union-wide distribution, he claims to have had to fight to retain its original Ukrainian soundtrack, for the sake of the film’s artistic integrity and ethnographic authenticity of the subject (Steffen, 2013: 61). Although Steffen asserts in his own examination of the records there was not much resistance from Moscow on releasing it in Ukrainian. In any case, this was an anecdote that Parajanov often recalled both privately and publicly, including at the premiere of Shadows in Kiev. While once again recounting the tale of how he fought for the film to retain its original language, the Ukrainian intellectual and emerging nationalist and Soviet dissident Ivan Dziuba grabbed the microphone from Parajanov and began to decry the crackdown on the intelligentsia in Kiev by the authorities, calling on people to take the to the streets and protest, which in fact many people did. This event and the film’s embrace by the Ukrainian nationalist movement did more to situate Parajanov in relation to dissident politics than anything he ever produced artistically. His friendships with the people involved in the Ukrainian nationalist movement, I believe, would affect not only how the authorities of the era, but also in hindsight how people in the West and post-Soviet Armenia often read The Colour of Pomegranates. Simply put, his work was mischaracterized by ideologues on all sides, and appropriated to suit their own varying agendas—whether that led to the director’s persecution or canonization.
As for the nationalist characterization of The Colour of Pomegranates this is really misconstrued, and indicative of a post-Soviet reading of the film. In reality the film’s treatment of ethno-national cultures is very much in line with the Soviet ideology of the 1960s, as was similarly the case with Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. At that time, there was an official policy to showcase the different national cultures of the USSR and celebrate the diversity and brotherhood of nations. The films subject, Sayat Nova, was an 18th century poet and minstrel known to all the peoples of the Caucasus, he was an ethnic Armenian born in Tbilisi that wrote the majority of his songs and poems in Azeri-Turkish, but many others in Armenian and Georgian. In the first Russian language publication of Sayat Nova’s poetry the Georgian scholar Ioseb Grishahvili offers us a glimpse into the standard Soviet perception of the poet, writing he “is synonymous of friendship, a banner of internationalism and brotherhood between the peoples of Transcaucasia.” (Steffan 2013: 122). These three republics consequently began life in the Soviet Union as a single Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Only a few years before the release of Parajanov’s film, the USSR had celebrated the 250th anniversary of Sayat Nova’s birth. Thus, we can further conclude there was nothing subversive in creating a film about a regionally specific, multicultural historical icon.
This is not to say that The Colour of Pomegranates was not a subversive film or that Sergei Parajanov was not subverting the status quo of Soviet artistic production. However, I believe the notion that he had a dissident political ideology, which informed his work, or which was expressed through the symbolism in his films, is unfounded. To locate the subversiveness in this film requires a different analytical lens than that of Soviet dissident or ethno-nationalist. The subversiveness of this film lies instead in the highly personal themes relating to Parajanov’s inner subjectivity. The Colour of Pomegranates is essentially an autobiographical work, disguised in poetic-cinematic visions of the life of Sayat Nova. Parajanov is associated and self-identified as being part of the poetic school of Soviet cinema and he saw parallels between himself and the 18th century troubadour. Their life stories shared similar hardships, banishment, and tragedy, the loss of great loves, both poets were Armenians born in Tbilisi in a Georgian state, surrounded by the multiculturalism of the Caucasus.
In the Socialist Realist environment that still predominated the bureaucracy of the Soviet film industry apparatus this type of introspective reflection without obvious connections to party doctrine was quite radical, and unprecedented. I suspect one reason that Parajanov was able to get away with as much as he did was simply the fact that the Goskino review board were so distracted by the overwhelming visual style and atypical approach to narrative that they generally did not understand what they were watching. For example, allusions to Parajanov’s own sexuality seem apparent throughout the film. As seen through the sexual awakening of the young Sayat Nova, in a scene where he rushes between two opposite facing windows on the roof of a bathhouse first peering into watch the King and other men bathing and then over to the other to see the nude torso of a female. The following shot shows the boy, center frame, contemplatively gazing to one side then shifting his head to the other, seemingly torn between the two windows. Parajanov never really hid his sexuality and it was common knowledge that he was bisexual, but as Steffen claims had a preference for men. Homosexuality was illegal in the Soviet Union at the time, so obviously a sensualized homoerotic gaze would not have been sanctioned had it actually been understood for what it was.
The subjectivity and artistic license Parajanov took with the legend of Sayat Nova was problematic for officials in Moscow and Armenia. However circumstances allowed for him to carry on with the production. The Armenfilm studios (the state studio of Armenia) would not step on Parajanov’s toes; prior to his arrival they had been severely criticized by Moscow for lack of organization and inability to reach the production quotas. They saw his arrival and the production of this film as an opportunity to show Moscow it could produce an international success, which would in turn bring increased funding for the studio (Steffan, 2013: 117). This gave Parajanov an amount of freedom and control over his productions that was not typical at all for most directors in the USSR at the time. For example, despite it being one point of major contention, at least initially, Parajanov enlisted Sofiko Chiaureli the Georgian actress to play not only the Princess Anna (first and greatest love and muse of Sayat Nova) but also Sayat Nova himself, as a young man (The World is a Window). The Colour of Pomegranates was exploring ideas of gender performativity in front of a Soviet audience, depicting an androgynous version of Sayat Nova, a far cry from the hyper-masculine supermen of the Stalinist era.
Parajanov’s unapologetic problematization of notions of authenticity and his reinterpretation of canonized popular myths, was an affront to what was essentially the policy of Soviet film and art, in general. Narratives should be simple enough to be understood by citizens from any background or region in the union, yet The Colour of Pomegranates is a film-poem about a poet (Steffan, 2013: 114). Rather than a historically accurate biopic, Parajanov said he was going to show the life of Sayat Nova as imagined by Sayat Nova himself. Although referring to his previous film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors it is equally applicable to the film on which this paper focuses, David A. Cook asserts that Parajanov’s style of filmmaking:
destabilize[s] the viewer perceptually, and therefore psychologically, in order to present a tale that operates not at the level of narrative but of myth, a tale that is an archetype of life itself: youth passes from innocence to experience solitude and death in a recurring cycle, eons upon eons. (Steffan, 2013: 62)
This was especially subversive given that what the officials had requested time and time again, and what was part of their criticism as early as the script phase, was a film that would introduce Sayat Nova to the Soviet masses and educate them about his life.
Conclusion
The Colour of Pomegranates was not subversive to Communist political doctrine in that it had a precise political ideology that was dissident: its ethno-national focus was in keeping with the doctrine of the time concerning the promotion of the non-Russian republics’ cultural accomplishments. Its reading as an exclusively Armenian film or Sayat Nova being the exclusive cultural property of any one of the three Caucasian nations is really a more modern post-Soviet reading. It is subversive to the aesthetics and structure of narrative film that was status quo in the USSR, as it also would have been in the West, although perhaps it could have existed outside the mainstream in the realm of independent art-house cinema. It is obviously its locale of production within the Soviet ideological space and state film industry that makes it radical and something more than just another state funded production. More significantly, it was a statement of artistic freedom and subjective expression in opposition to the standards of the system in which its creator lived and produced art. If Sergei Parajanov had not produced this film in the Soviet Union would The Colour of Pomegranates have been lost to time as just another obscure art film? Perhaps for the Western viewer it is in part the exotic imagery and his otherness as a perceived dissident artist from behind the “iron curtain” that drew their attention. Perhaps, not surprisingly, it is only in his later years, after his third imprisonment, that he more openly expressed antagonism towards the Soviet system. “I worked and suffered under three despots. The despots were in the Kremlin […] The Soviet films of that era, and not only mine, are like a cardiogram of terror. They are cardiograms of fear, the fear of losing your film, the fear of starving. You feared for your work” (Holloway, 1988). This quote is revealing for what it tells us about what he considered most important, it was not the sanctioned ideological message, but rather his vision, his personal poetry, his life story.
Bibliography
Ardzagang Armenian TV (2017) Sergei Parajanov Documentary, Director unknown, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyy5gClt0Po&t=2973s
Bird, Daniel dir. (2011) The World is a Window: Making the Colour of Pomegranates, Cave Canem Films.
Christie, Ian (2010) ‘Out of the Shadows,’ Sight & Sound, March, pp. 24-27.
Holloway, Ron (1988) ‘Sergei Parajanov interview,‘ Menggang, http://www.menggang.com/movie/russia/paradjanov/e-paradjanov-b.html
Lehmann, Maike (2015) ‘Apricot Socialism: The National Past, the Soviet Project, and the Imagining of Community in Late Soviet Armenia,’ Slavic Review, 74 (1), pp. 9-31.
Pfeifer, Moritz (2015) Life History of a Fruit: Symbol and Tradition in Parajanov’s Caucasian Trilogy [online] Available at: https://eefb.org/archive/october-2015/pomegranates-in-parajanovs-caucasian-trilogy/
Steffen, James (2013) The Cinema of Sergei Parjanov, University of Wisconsin Press.
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