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Repentance Movie Review

Repentance is a 1987 Georgian drama film directed by Tengiz Abuladze. It’s a solid, effective movie in its messaging, but messy in pacing and overabundance of elements.

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“Why have a road that doesn’t lead to a church?“

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Varlam, the despotic mayor of a small town, dies. After his funeral, his body is repeatedly unearthed and buried again. Through flashbacks and dreamlike scenes, we witness his rise to power. This movie has a lot to say about Soviet history and its painful rulers, in particular Stalin himself.

The film is definitely effective in its criticism of despotic rulers and the central storyline’s framing with the unearthing of the body was fantastic. However, this is the type of overly complicated movie that ended up being strong individually, but the parts are stronger than the sum of them unfortunately.

This extreme dearth of ideas is best exemplified in the despotic mayor himself. Yes, Varlam has a moustache that is similar to the one Hitler wore, but he also is similar to Stalin and other famous historical figures, thus the movie is very ambiguous in time period, setting and historical figures.

I personally prefer a historical drama based on real events from history and people that existed than these made-up stories that are just alternate versions of real history. Again, the movie’s impact in the criticism of these leaders is definitely strong, but I do feel that it was blunted due to these ambiguous elements and that it would have fared much better had it been a period piece.

Repentance is very well acted. The main actor did a lot to elevate his dialogue and the material at hand. The woman who is being judged for unearthing him was also quite memorable. The characterization is mostly solid and the dialogue is pretty good in this instance.

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Unfortunately, Repentance turned out way too long un its runtime of two and half hours and problematic structure with the pacing that is all over the place. Again, the sum of its parts is not as effective, but the directing and some of the choices in cinematography are quite strong.