Brigands, Chapter VII

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Country:Georgia, France

Director:Otar Ioselliani

Program:Parallel Pathways

Year: 
1996

Summary:

Otar Ioselliani offers up a feast of parallel activity to dice up his trenchant political satire. The movie takes place, like Griffith’s Intolerance, during four periods of time in Ioselliani’s native country of Georgia: in the Middle Ages, in the early 1900s, during the Soviet Stalinist period and in the chaos of the early 90’s Soviet dissolution. The same actors play different characters at different periods of time. The actor playing a medieval king returns as a Stalinist henchman and again as a contemporary smuggler. The movie progresses through vignettes graced by Ioselliani’s characteristic dry deadpan humor. Iosseliani's caustic humor reminds us of the old Latin saying that man is a wolf to man