Wow, I've never seen anything by Parajanov, and clearly I must!
He's wonderful. The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of the eighteenth-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, "King of Song"—he has a birth name, but he's never known by it. It's done in tableaux, colors, quotations, repeating motifs. The central figure is played by four different actors; another doubles at least five parts. As a boy, the poet is played by a beautiful, clambering, grave-eyed impish child; as a monk in later life, by an actor with the face of an Orthodox saint. As a young man falling in love with a king's sister, he's played by a long-eyed, long-browed, slightly saturnine actor who turns out to be the actress Sofiko Chiaureli, who also plays the poet's female lover, the blind angel, the mime-dancer with the mirror, and a figure at the end whom we interpreted as Mary, although she's crowned with roses and oak leaves and has a chicken on her shoulder. She's absolutely amazing. Photographs don't do her justice. You have to see the film. Even in flickery, faded Netflix transfer, it was an amazing experience.
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He's wonderful. The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of the eighteenth-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, "King of Song"—he has a birth name, but he's never known by it. It's done in tableaux, colors, quotations, repeating motifs. The central figure is played by four different actors; another doubles at least five parts. As a boy, the poet is played by a beautiful, clambering, grave-eyed impish child; as a monk in later life, by an actor with the face of an Orthodox saint. As a young man falling in love with a king's sister, he's played by a long-eyed, long-browed, slightly saturnine actor who turns out to be the actress Sofiko Chiaureli, who also plays the poet's female lover, the blind angel, the mime-dancer with the mirror, and a figure at the end whom we interpreted as Mary, although she's crowned with roses and oak leaves and has a chicken on her shoulder. She's absolutely amazing. Photographs don't do her justice. You have to see the film. Even in flickery, faded Netflix transfer, it was an amazing experience.