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jdintr's review
4.0
Sorry this diverges so much, but I'm simply copying in a blog post that I wrote, comparing this book with the 2014 film, I Love You, Tbilisi which I also read ahead of my visit to Georgia in 2015.
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This weekend I streamed the 2014 film, Tbilisi, I Love You. Watching the film--a collection of nine vignettes--coincided with my mad rush to finish the last of the Georgia-related books that I have ordered, including Contemporary Georgian Fiction (CGF).
This gives me 18 points of reference from which to discuss Georgian storytelling, not just the nine of the film.
First to the film. The nine vignettes vary in focus and quality. Together, though, they provide a full, fascinating look at Tbilisi from many different angles--Georgian mostly, but American and British as well.
The best vignette is one I will call "Happy Meal." An out-of-work father gives in to his son's wish to eat a Happy Meal at the Tbilisi McDonald's. To do this, he must raid the stash of money that his wife has earned during her day job. The relationships between the father and the son, the father and the mother are touching and real, setting up an ending that is...(I don't want to give it away)...amazing, heartbreaking, ironic.
In his short story, "Once Upon a Time in Georgia," Aka Morchiladze sums up Georgian storytelling in this way:
It's such a strange priority for fiction: (1) romance, (2) irony, (3) destiny and (4) fortune = everything. Yet in my reading and watching, I have found that the episodes in the film and the stories in the collection follow the form that Morchiladze describes. I have already mentioned the irony of "Happy Meal." There's more.
For me, the finest story in CGF was "November Rain" by Nugzar Shataidze, which welds fortune, romance and heartbreaking irony in the plight of a man living in the 1930s during the purges. A teacher in a local school, he gets angry with a student only to learn later that that student works with the secret police.
Fearing that they will come for him at any time, his health declines, much to the concern of his loving wife. He has a past--years spent working in labor camps in Siberia because of political action against the Tsar before the November Revolution. For the foreign reader, the story provides an insight into the Georgia of Stalin and Berea, but the characters are moving and the end is biting whether the reader is looking for
As for destiny, another of my favorite stories was "Once Upon a Time in Georgia" a fragmented, modernist look at late-Soviet Georgia, where the main characters sit around talking about American films like The Magnificent Seven, Once Upon a Time in America, and Scarface. The further I read, the more I realized why movies like this were so popular in the Soviet Union: gangster films fed into the theme of western decadence and malaise that the propaganda wanted everyone to believe. But there was also a deep fascination there. In many ways the American gangsters took people's minds off crime and troubles there at home.
Destiny is also a theme of Mamuka Kherkheulidze's "A Caucasian Chronicle" which sends up the vendetta culture of the mountains. Batka is a man who refuses to declare vendetta against Stalin Petre, the killer of his father. Because of this the village shuns him and no woman will marry a sap like him. Of course, in the end Petre dies, and the irony is waiting to help the reader end with a laugh.
I don't have time to describe all the delights of CGF. I loved the characterization in Zaza Burchuladze's "The Dubbing," an extended monologue by an actor on location who's craving his next fix of heroin. Guram Dochanashvili's "The Happy Hillock" is a Persian-style fable that is also a highlight.
The stories of I Love You, Tbilisi wield their share of irony, destiny, romance and fortune, too. On a film set, an actress plays the part of the heartbreaker, slapping her man and leading him to threaten suicide. Once the cameras are off, however, we learn that she is the one who years for her co-star.
Destiny shows its hand when a handsome movie star returns to Tbilisi and takes time to visit a long lost love--he still wears her watch--only to watch her pick up her five-year-old daughter and realize that it is all over.
The film is filled with many beautiful views of Tbilisi. It's bridge is a locale for a Georgian "Runaway Bride" short, and the film contains many poignant moments. A Georgian girl, now an emigree in Munich during the 90s, turns the lights in her apartment off and on, off and on, a sign of her homesickness for Tbilisi; a woman puts her wedding ring back on her hand in the subway; the American motorcyclist played by Ron Perlman reads John Steinbeck's A Russian Journal in his hotel room, a visiting British actor realizes that Tbilisi is 12 hours different from his home in Los Angeles.
This book and this film have given me definite insights into recent Georgian culture. As for sharing, I would probably share "Happy Meal" and "The Slap" in a class of students grades 6-12, but some of the other films are appropriate only for adults.
Works Cited
Heighway, Elizabeth. Contemporary Georgian Fiction. Champaign: Dalkey Archive, 2012. Print.
Tbilisi, I Love You. Dir. Nika Agiashvili, Tamar Shavguilidze, Irakli Chkhikvadze, Levon Tutberidze, and Levan Glonti. Storyman Pictures, 2014. Vimeo Stream.
-----------------
This weekend I streamed the 2014 film, Tbilisi, I Love You. Watching the film--a collection of nine vignettes--coincided with my mad rush to finish the last of the Georgia-related books that I have ordered, including Contemporary Georgian Fiction (CGF).
This gives me 18 points of reference from which to discuss Georgian storytelling, not just the nine of the film.
First to the film. The nine vignettes vary in focus and quality. Together, though, they provide a full, fascinating look at Tbilisi from many different angles--Georgian mostly, but American and British as well.
The best vignette is one I will call "Happy Meal." An out-of-work father gives in to his son's wish to eat a Happy Meal at the Tbilisi McDonald's. To do this, he must raid the stash of money that his wife has earned during her day job. The relationships between the father and the son, the father and the mother are touching and real, setting up an ending that is...(I don't want to give it away)...amazing, heartbreaking, ironic.
In his short story, "Once Upon a Time in Georgia," Aka Morchiladze sums up Georgian storytelling in this way:
Had this been an episode from the golden age of Georgian cinema, what happened next would have been amazing: we would follow the hero on his adventures, there would be romance, irony, destiny, fortune--everything. But unfortunately this was Georgian reality and not a Georgian movie where roadworkers chase butterflies through the meadows (273)
It's such a strange priority for fiction: (1) romance, (2) irony, (3) destiny and (4) fortune = everything. Yet in my reading and watching, I have found that the episodes in the film and the stories in the collection follow the form that Morchiladze describes. I have already mentioned the irony of "Happy Meal." There's more.
For me, the finest story in CGF was "November Rain" by Nugzar Shataidze, which welds fortune, romance and heartbreaking irony in the plight of a man living in the 1930s during the purges. A teacher in a local school, he gets angry with a student only to learn later that that student works with the secret police.
Fearing that they will come for him at any time, his health declines, much to the concern of his loving wife. He has a past--years spent working in labor camps in Siberia because of political action against the Tsar before the November Revolution. For the foreign reader, the story provides an insight into the Georgia of Stalin and Berea, but the characters are moving and the end is biting whether the reader is looking for
As for destiny, another of my favorite stories was "Once Upon a Time in Georgia" a fragmented, modernist look at late-Soviet Georgia, where the main characters sit around talking about American films like The Magnificent Seven, Once Upon a Time in America, and Scarface. The further I read, the more I realized why movies like this were so popular in the Soviet Union: gangster films fed into the theme of western decadence and malaise that the propaganda wanted everyone to believe. But there was also a deep fascination there. In many ways the American gangsters took people's minds off crime and troubles there at home.
Destiny is also a theme of Mamuka Kherkheulidze's "A Caucasian Chronicle" which sends up the vendetta culture of the mountains. Batka is a man who refuses to declare vendetta against Stalin Petre, the killer of his father. Because of this the village shuns him and no woman will marry a sap like him. Of course, in the end Petre dies, and the irony is waiting to help the reader end with a laugh.
I don't have time to describe all the delights of CGF. I loved the characterization in Zaza Burchuladze's "The Dubbing," an extended monologue by an actor on location who's craving his next fix of heroin. Guram Dochanashvili's "The Happy Hillock" is a Persian-style fable that is also a highlight.
The stories of I Love You, Tbilisi wield their share of irony, destiny, romance and fortune, too. On a film set, an actress plays the part of the heartbreaker, slapping her man and leading him to threaten suicide. Once the cameras are off, however, we learn that she is the one who years for her co-star.
Destiny shows its hand when a handsome movie star returns to Tbilisi and takes time to visit a long lost love--he still wears her watch--only to watch her pick up her five-year-old daughter and realize that it is all over.
The film is filled with many beautiful views of Tbilisi. It's bridge is a locale for a Georgian "Runaway Bride" short, and the film contains many poignant moments. A Georgian girl, now an emigree in Munich during the 90s, turns the lights in her apartment off and on, off and on, a sign of her homesickness for Tbilisi; a woman puts her wedding ring back on her hand in the subway; the American motorcyclist played by Ron Perlman reads John Steinbeck's A Russian Journal in his hotel room, a visiting British actor realizes that Tbilisi is 12 hours different from his home in Los Angeles.
This book and this film have given me definite insights into recent Georgian culture. As for sharing, I would probably share "Happy Meal" and "The Slap" in a class of students grades 6-12, but some of the other films are appropriate only for adults.
Works Cited
Heighway, Elizabeth. Contemporary Georgian Fiction. Champaign: Dalkey Archive, 2012. Print.
Tbilisi, I Love You. Dir. Nika Agiashvili, Tamar Shavguilidze, Irakli Chkhikvadze, Levon Tutberidze, and Levan Glonti. Storyman Pictures, 2014. Vimeo Stream.
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