| Նռան գույնը The Color of Pomegranates | |
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 DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Sergei Parajanov |
| Screenplay by | Sergei Parajanov |
| Based on | Poems bySayat-Nova |
| Starring | Sofiko Chiaureli Melkon Aleksanyan Vilen Galstyan Giorgi Gegechkori |
| Narrated by | Armen Dzhigarkhanyan |
| Cinematography | Suren Shakhbazyan |
| Edited by | Sergei Parajanov M. Ponomarenko Sergei Yutkevich |
| Music by | Tigran Mansuryan |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Criterion/Janus Films/World Cinema Project (US) Cosmos Film (France) Artkino Pictures (US) IFEX (US) |
Release date |
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Running time | 78 minutes (Armenia) 73 minutes (USSR release) |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Armenian |
The Color of Pomegranates,[a] originally known asSayat-Nova, is a 1969Soviet Armenianavant-garde film written and directed bySergei Parajanov.[1][2][3] The film is a poetic treatment of the life of 18th-centuryArmenian poet and troubadourSayat-Nova.[4] The film is regarded as a landmark in cinema history, and was met with widespread acclaim among filmmakers and critics. It is often considered one of thegreatest films ever made.[5][6][7][8]
The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of theArmenianashugSayat-Nova (1712–1795) that attempts to reveal the poet's life visually and poetically rather than literally. The film is presented with little dialogue, using active tableaux which depict the poet's life in chapters: Childhood, Youth, Prince's Court (where he falls in love with atsarina), The Monastery, The Dream, Old Age, The Angel of Death, and Death.[5] There are sounds, music, and occasional singing, but dialogue is rare.[9] Each chapter is indicated by a title card and framed through both Sergei Parajanov's imagination and Sayat Nova's poems. ActressSofiko Chiaureli plays six roles in the film, both male and female.[10] According to the film critic Frank Williams, Parajanov's film celebrates the survival ofArmenian culture in face of oppression and persecution: "There are specific images that are highly charged—blood-red juice spilling from a cut pomegranate into a cloth and forming a stain in the shape of the boundaries of the ancientKingdom of Armenia; dyers lifting hanks of wool out of vats in the colours of the national flag, and so on".[11][12]
Parajanov said his inspiration was "the Armenian illuminatedminiature," and that he "wanted to create that inner dynamic that comes from inside the picture, the forms and thedramaturgy of colour."[13] He also described this film as a series ofPersian miniatures.[14]
Some Russian versions ofThe Color of Pomegranates have Special Edition features.[15]The Memories of Sayat Nova, by Levon Grigoryan, is a 30-minute synopsis that explains what is happening in the tableaux and in each chapter of the poet's life. G. Smalley asserts that every carefully composed image inThe Color of Pomegranates is coded to a meaning, but the key to interpreting them is missing. He agrees with Parajanov that "If someone sat down to watchThe Color of Pomegranates with no background, they would have no idea what they were seeing."[16] The making of the film and its different versions are explored in the other special features: "Introduction" by writer and filmmaker Daniel Bird;The World Is A Window: Making The Colour of Pomegranates—a new documentary by Daniel Bird; and "Commentary" by Levon Abrahamyan, moderated by Daniel Bird.
The film was shot at numerous historic sites in Armenia, including theSanahin Monastery, theHaghpat Monastery, the St. John church atArdvi, and theAkhtala Monastery. All are medieval churches in the northernprovince of Lori. Locations in Georgia included theAlaverdi Monastery, the countryside surrounding theDavid Gareja monastery complex, and theDzveli Shuamta complex nearTelavi. Azerbaijani locations included theOld City of Baku andNardaran Fortress.[17]
Soviet censors and Communist Party officials objected to Parajanov's stylized, poetic treatment of Sayat-Nova's life, and complained that it failed to educate the public about the poet. As a result, the film's title was changed fromSayat-Nova toThe Color of Pomegranates, and all references to Sayat-Nova's name were removed from the credits and chapter titles in the original Armenian release version. The Armenian writerHrant Matevosyan wrote new, abstractly poetic Armenian-language chapter titles. Officials further objected to the film's abundance of religious imagery, although a great deal of religious imagery still remains in both surviving versions of the film. Initially theState Committee for Cinematography in Moscow refused to allow distribution of the film outside of Armenia. It premiered in Armenia in October 1969, with a running time of 77 minutes.[18]
The filmmakerSergei Yutkevich, who had served as a reader for the script in theState Committee for Cinematography's Script Editorial board, recut the film slightly and created new Russian-language chapter titles in order to make the film easier to understand and more palatable to the authorities. In addition to cutting a few minutes' worth of footage—some of it clearly due to its religious content—he changed the order of some sequences. The film ultimately received only a limited release in the rest of the Soviet Union, in Yutkevich's 73-minute version.[19]
Onreview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 18 retrospectively collected reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10.[20] In 1980Janet Maslin ofThe New York Times wrote that "the film is elusive in any circumstances. However, anything this purely mysterious has its magic."[21]The Color of Pomegranates made the Top 10 list for 1982 inCahiers du cinéma.[22]
FilmmakerMikhail Vartanov has said, "Besides the film language suggested byGriffith andEisenstein, the world cinema has not discovered anything revolutionarily new untilThe Color of Pomegranates, not counting the generally unaccepted language of theAndalusian Dog byBuñuel". According toMichelangelo Antonioni, "Parajanov'sColor of Pomegranates is of a stunningly perfect beauty. Parajanov, in my opinion, is one of the best film directors in the world."[23]
French filmmakerJean-Luc Godard said, "In the temple of cinema there are images, light and reality. Sergei Paradjanov was the master of that temple."[24]
Film criticGilbert Adair argued that "although in both style and content it gives us the impression, somehow, of predating the invention of the cinema, no historian of the medium who ignoresThe Color of Pomegranates can ever be taken seriously."[5] The work ranked 84th in the 2012Sight & Sound critics' poll of the world's greatest films[25] and appeared in another list of the greatest films byTime Out.[26]
In 2014 the film was digitally restored and re-edited to be as close as possible to the director's original vision and world premiered at the 67th Cannes Film Festival.[27][28] The US premiere took place on 20 September 2014 at The Academy atLos Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and was introduced by Martiros Vartanov. The East Coast premiere took place at the 52ndNew York Film Festival on 2 October 2014, and was introduced byMartin Scorsese. The restoration was completed by Scorsese'sFilm Foundation in conjunction withCineteca di Bologna, and was described by critic and Toronto festival programmerJames Quandt as "a cinematic Holy Grail".[5] Martin Scorsese received the 2014Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award for the restoration ofThe Color of Pomegranates.[10]
ABlu-ray of the restoration was released in the UK on 19 February 2018,[29] and an American release byCriterion with Mikhail Vartanov's 1969 documentaryThe Color of Armenian Land on 17 April 2018.[30]
The film is further characterized byqueer andandrogynous imagery. For example, the main actressSofiko Chiaureli plays both the Poet and his lover; imagery like the conch shell and feather, symbols of the female and male respectively, are used in tandem by multiple characters; and the young poet's sexual awakening comes when he sees nude male and female bodies in the bath house. This is in line withParajanov’s own life, as he was convicted for homosexual acts, as well as nationalism, multiple times inGeorgia (1948) andUkraine (1973, imprisoned in Russia),[31] whichdiscriminated against homosexual people due to demographic concerns and aStalinist ideological basis: homosexuality was seen as a social disease that threatened the collective Soviet ethos.[32] Thus, this androgyny can be read as parallel to the film’s disruption of the traditional ethnic unity, permeated by state ideology, which it accomplishes by interweaving facets of Armenian, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Russian cultural traditions.[33]
Madonna's 1995 music videoBedtime Story restages some content from the movie (such as the scene of a young child lying in a fetal position on a pentagram on the floor while an adult covers it with a blanket, and another where a naked foot crushes a bunch of grapes lying on an inscribed tablet), among other artistic inspiration depicting dreams and surrealist artwork in the video.[34][35]
Without permission,Nicolas Jaar released the albumPomegranates, described as an "alternative soundtrack" for the movie, in 2015.[36] A screening of the film with a live performance by Jaar was scheduled at Cinefamily in Los Angeles for February 22, 2017, but the performance was replaced with the original soundtrack due to objections from theParajanov-Vartanov Institute and The Film Foundation that the live performance would not present the film as Parajanov intended it.[37]
Lady Gaga's "911" music video released in September 2020 is openly influenced by the movie.[38][39][34][40]
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