Repentance is a film one would expect to come out of Perestroika and Glasnost. It is a Stalinist/early Soviet metaphor that would have never been seen before this time. The story begins in present day, or in this case 1984. In a small Georgian town, the mayor, Varlam Aravidze, dies. The seemingly important citizens of the community come to pay their condolences at his funeral. However, one day after the funeral, the corpse is found at the home of the mayor's son. The corpse is reburied . . . but is removed from the crypt a second and third time. A woman is taken into custody and put on trial. She admits to having done it; much of this part of the film is full of flashbacks focusing on Varlam's terrible reign, revealing her motives for having done it. Varlam looks like a combination of dictators. There are traces of Hitler (the mustache) and Mussolini (the black shirt), but of course he can also be compared to Stalin and Beria, two of the cruelest names known in Soviet history, both who were of Georgian origin. Varlam was the Stalinist figure, and the two other generations of his family could be considered a lot of the rest of Soviet history. His grandson clearly represents the period of Glasnost and Perestroika. He has trouble accepting what his family has done, and he commits suicide because of it (I'm sure it was not meant to be this way, but it could be considered a foreshadowing of the end of the Soviet Union). The son of Varlam is sort of everything in between Stalin and Perestroika (except the anti-Stalin Krushchev years).
This was a very interesting movie; it was a little too full of symbolism, but beautifully made. It was a very interesting change watching a Georgian Soviet film instead of a Russian made Soviet film.
This was a very interesting movie; it was a little too full of symbolism, but beautifully made. It was a very interesting change watching a Georgian Soviet film instead of a Russian made Soviet film.