Color of Pomegranates
film — USSR — 1968

7.0
Since I did not get the meaning of this film at all I`ll just shit on my rules of fair-play and copy/paste here the plot summary for this film from the IMDb: "One of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century, Sergei Parajanov`s "Color of the Pomegranate", a biography of the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova (King of Song) reveals the poet`s life more through his poetry than a conventional narration of important events in Sayat Nova`s life. We see the poet grow up, fall in love, enter a monastery and die, but these incidents are depicted in the context of what are images from Sergei Parajanov`s imagination and Sayat Nova`s poems, poems that are seen and rarely heard. Sofiko Chiaureli plays 6 roles, both male and female, and Sergei Parajanov writes, directs, edits, choreographs, works on costumes, design and decor and virtually every aspect of this revolutionary work void of any dialog or camera movement."
I can agree that this is revolutionary, daring etc., etc. Yet I can also agree that this is way too high for a person of my caliber. I don`t watch films for the sake of art but for the sake of entertainment (ok, sometimes I can enjoy something really artsy but not when it`s impossible to enjoy it). And this film I can not enjoy. Maybe, had I watched it over and over again I would start to "dig it" but for now I`m just clueless. The only thing that really stuck in my mind from this film was a man preaching to sheep in a church. The other image was a man slaughtering animals one by one. I may understand that we go quite biblical here and that this film was something totally outrageous for the Soviet Union yet it`s not made for me. Maybe when I`ll be at least ten years older I`ll give this work by the Armenian grand master one more chance but for now on - no, thank you.
The last thing bothering me is - how am I going to rate this film? I know that I just didn`t get it therefore I can`t rate it badly, but I didn`t like it either so I can`t rate it high, and it wasn`t average also. I wonder what will my system do if I give this a sub-zero value? Not that it`s worse than anything I`ve seen in my life, but it`s just different.
Update: the rating is set to 7.0 not because it`s what the film deserved but I just didn`t want it to influence the average ratings much and I have no possibility to leave something unrated.
2006-02-27
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