A Georgian film of reconciliation has HEATHER MURRAY TOBIAS questioning the anger displayed by both sides in last weekend’s clash in Melbourne.
LAST Sunday, while Team Australia and the Anti-Racists were gathering to express hatred and counter sentiments about the “other”, I went to the Wonthaggi Cinema to see Tangerines.
Film critic Dennis Harvey describes Georgian writer-director Zara Urushadze’s film as poignant and accessible, which it is, but to classify it as a “seriocomic drama” is to trivialise its message.
Thanks to Bass Coast Fine Film Group and the Wonthaggi Cinema for showing Tangerines.
It has humour and a dry, intelligent wit, but there is no intent to bring it to the door of facetious comedy. Harvey’s summary of the narrative is informative but misses the most important aspect: its humanity and the plight of minorities.
The Estonian refugees who settled the village 100 years before the dissolution of the USSR raised ethnic tensions have returned to Estonia. Ivo, a grandfather, remains behind, making fruit boxes for his neighbour’s crop of tangerines. Margus is desperate for help to pick his fruit, not because of the threat to lost income but so as not to waste such a wonderful bounty. He waits for a promised team from a nearby military camp.
When a skirmish between opposing forces results in death and injury, Ivo, with the help of Margus, brings a Chechen and a Georgian into his house. They are treated by the village doctor, who, about to follow his family to Estonia, gives Ivo the medicines necessary for their recovery. Then two men bury the dead and hide the vehicles to prevent discovery.
It is Ivo’s calm determination and respect that gradually overcomes the soldiers’ antagonism toward each other during their recovery. His simple life of basic needs and his concern for his fellow humans of whatever persuasion underpin the story.
Wars happen. They are fed by rhetoric that fires the fear of the “other”, the unknown.
Sunday was an ironic day for me. I wish those people who seem determine to fuel friction within the rich diversity of multi-cultural Australia could have spent 87 minutes entering Ivo’s world and learned something about the futility of war.
We all have a commonality: we are human, and our basic needs are shared. Our differences colour our lives if we allow it to happen.
Yesterday’s news about searching for extra-terrestrial life raises a question.
If we have so much difficulty in accepting our human differences, what happens if we receive an answer to our signals?
COMMENTS
July 28, 2015
Tangerines is a grim, powerful and ultimately compassionate anti war film that examines up close the role of combatants who have waged horrible war at close quarters, even hand to hand combat, who then are forced to develop a wider knowledge and closer relationship with each other. I became invested with each character in the film, waiting to discover how this incredibly tense modern situational drama would be resolved. The end is not pretty, as life sometimes isn't. This film shows If we are forced to face our real and paper tigers, we find the things that bind us are more than those that divide us.
Kay Setches
Film critic Dennis Harvey describes Georgian writer-director Zara Urushadze’s film as poignant and accessible, which it is, but to classify it as a “seriocomic drama” is to trivialise its message.
Thanks to Bass Coast Fine Film Group and the Wonthaggi Cinema for showing Tangerines.
It has humour and a dry, intelligent wit, but there is no intent to bring it to the door of facetious comedy. Harvey’s summary of the narrative is informative but misses the most important aspect: its humanity and the plight of minorities.
The Estonian refugees who settled the village 100 years before the dissolution of the USSR raised ethnic tensions have returned to Estonia. Ivo, a grandfather, remains behind, making fruit boxes for his neighbour’s crop of tangerines. Margus is desperate for help to pick his fruit, not because of the threat to lost income but so as not to waste such a wonderful bounty. He waits for a promised team from a nearby military camp.
When a skirmish between opposing forces results in death and injury, Ivo, with the help of Margus, brings a Chechen and a Georgian into his house. They are treated by the village doctor, who, about to follow his family to Estonia, gives Ivo the medicines necessary for their recovery. Then two men bury the dead and hide the vehicles to prevent discovery.
It is Ivo’s calm determination and respect that gradually overcomes the soldiers’ antagonism toward each other during their recovery. His simple life of basic needs and his concern for his fellow humans of whatever persuasion underpin the story.
Wars happen. They are fed by rhetoric that fires the fear of the “other”, the unknown.
Sunday was an ironic day for me. I wish those people who seem determine to fuel friction within the rich diversity of multi-cultural Australia could have spent 87 minutes entering Ivo’s world and learned something about the futility of war.
We all have a commonality: we are human, and our basic needs are shared. Our differences colour our lives if we allow it to happen.
Yesterday’s news about searching for extra-terrestrial life raises a question.
If we have so much difficulty in accepting our human differences, what happens if we receive an answer to our signals?
COMMENTS
July 28, 2015
Tangerines is a grim, powerful and ultimately compassionate anti war film that examines up close the role of combatants who have waged horrible war at close quarters, even hand to hand combat, who then are forced to develop a wider knowledge and closer relationship with each other. I became invested with each character in the film, waiting to discover how this incredibly tense modern situational drama would be resolved. The end is not pretty, as life sometimes isn't. This film shows If we are forced to face our real and paper tigers, we find the things that bind us are more than those that divide us.
Kay Setches