Directed by:
Sergei ParajanovScreenplay:
Sergei ParajanovCinematography:
Yuriy IlyenkoComposer:
Miroslav SkorikPlots(1)
"There is no devil in church, only among men." Deep in the Carpathian Mountains of 19th-century Ukraine, love, hate, life, and death among the Hutsul people are as they've been since time began. While young Ivan's mother mourns her husband's brutal murder, Ivan is drawn to Marichka, the beautiful young daughter of the man who killed his father. But fate tragically decrees that the two lovers will remain apart. Unhappily married to another woman and cursed by a sorcerer in this life, Ivan's obsession with his lost love lures him ever closer to a reunion with Marichka in death. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (3)
I always have a perception problem with poetic films, which may (or may not) be reflected in the rating, but Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors failed to win me over as a viewer. The cinematography and the scenes depicted are indeed beautiful and colourfully stylised, but that's about all that appealed to me about it. To be honest, I don't even know what to write about the film, because nothing has stayed in my head. In short, from a historical and artistic point of view, it is undoubtedly an unforgettable piece of filmmaking, but despite its qualities it did not impress me.
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It's definitely interesting cinematically because you won't see something like this just anywhere. The combination of poetics and film with classical Russian national elements, in a form that almost resembles a fairy tale. And basically without there being any plot. Interesting, but contradictory feelings eventually prevailed over enthusiasm.
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An ethnographic film exhibition about the Carpathian Hutsuls that takes your breath away with its wild formal techniques and often confuses you with its perspective in what the scene actually wants to tell us and from what position we’re actually observing it. But in this way, Parajanov purposefully achieves a portrayal of these Carpathian highlanders as a full-blooded, savage people battered by an unforgiving climate, for whom the constant presence of hardship and death often forces them into a malicious fatalism. It is interesting how the lives of these remote peoples some one hundred and fifty years ago actually bore a realistic resemblance to the settings of classic Howardian fantasy stories. The tragic tale of Ivan's madness contains events beyond the reach of man that affect his life and the weight of everyday life to a degree where mere existence is a dramatic adventure. We are promised the arrival of distant pilgrims or an encounter with a real magician. How universal all the stories actually are in their foundations is demonstrated by the moment when, after Ivan's second wife fails to conceive, he begins to practice witchcraft. In our country today, we call them Aesopians.
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Gallery (40)
Photo © Dovzhenko Film Studios
![Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/162/087/162087896_baae2a.jpg)
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