It Is Like in a Movie
99- Iryna Khalip
- 14.04.2017, 7:39
- 36,030
No one can pretend Frau A and escape.
Thirty years ago Tengiz Abuladze did his best film Repentance, which I have recently remembered very often. Now it is clear to me that it must be not only remembered in details but watched again.
If someone did not watch it or forgot the plot I remind you that this film is about the fate of all tyrants of the world. Abuladze himself said that action happened "nowhere and everywhere, never and always." First, my remarks about the plot concern punitive structures of all kinds and colours.
After the death of the head of the city of Varlam Aravidze, everything goes as follows: bathetic funeral scene, fiery speeches on how "his heart stopped beating", the best place at the best cemetery, flowers. Next morning Aravidze's body was found standing next to the house of his son Abel. Someone disentombed him and brought him to the house. And every day is like a ground-hog day: he is buried again, and the next morning he "stands" next to the house of his son.
Later his tomb is monitored and during night surveillance Ketevan Barateli was captured. In court she tells that Varlam once arrested her parents and ruined her family. And it happened not only to her family. His body will not be safe until she, Ketevan, is alive. The story ends with commitment of suicide by his grandson. After it Varlam's son Abel disentombs his father and pushes his body off a cliff.
Tengiz Abuladze said that the evil that came to power was a dead end. It's so destructive that it punishes itself. I would make this film for mandatory viewing to the entire Belarusian food chain - starting from an officer on duty to the KGB Chairman, from and assistant manager to Prime Minister, from a bailiff to the Chairman of the Supreme Court, from Kolya Lukashenka to his father, from a stupid investigator to the Prosecutor General, from a correspondent of a local newspaper to chief propaganda makers.
We have been laughing for three days already at Yakubovich who wears a pink dirty robe and promenades the streets. By the way, it happens to him not for the first time, once he pretended Katya Pryanik. We laugh at damn KGB officers who seriously interrogate book peddler Ales Evdakh and cutter of embroidered t-shirts Andrei Komlik on preparation of an armed coup. We walk dogs in the district of this ridiculous policeman on purpose to let them foul on this ugly monument. It is right that we laugh at him. Meanwhile, tens of new political prisoners are being tortured in prison. And then, as is usually happens in Belarus, prosecutors, judges, propaganda-makers, bailiffs, perjurers and guards get into the game.
I know that they do not read books but listen to criminal underworld music. They prefer Russian movies about cops than the world cinematography. They did not watch Abuladze - he foresaw their future. Today it is hard to get the number of people repressed over two decades. It is impossible to imagine the number of families who have faced the repressive machine in the form of KGB officers, judges, policemen, bureaucrats. Don't you understand that not those repressed but their children will come to your graves?
They hardly be trying to disentomb you, it is a dirty business. But they will split on you and write "a bastard, murderer and scumbag lies here", and curse you. And you will not be able anymore to put them in jail under false charges, steal from them, slander or kill them. You won't get them. And you will not run away in a dress of Frau A. But you will feel bad not just from your afterlife debility.
You do not believe in justice of Heavenб ща course. You're not afraid of it. You'd better think about your own children. They will witness how the unknown split on graves of their mothers and fathers. You ruin their lives as well. They will be ashamed of you. You'd better stop now. Until you are still alive and you can have at least something fixed.
This is the main thing. Repentance is based on a true story.
Iryna Khalip for Charter97.org