Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Mariiiichkaaaa…..Ivaaane…

By Walter Kish

Тhе  haunting sounds of two star-crossed Hutsul lovers calling out to each other in the stunning Carpathian Mountains were still echoing in my mind hours after I attended the viewing of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors at the UNF Toronto Hall last week.  This classic Ukrainian movie made in 1964 and adapted from a story by modernist Ukrainian writer Mykhajlo Kotsyubynskyj (1864 - 1913), is quite unlike any other movie I’ve ever seen, Ukrainian or otherwise.  It is a difficult and unconventional movie. My kum who also attended the movie calls it “incomprehensible”; my wife calls it “bizarre”. 

The movie is more a sensual experience than a logically flowing narrative.  There is a plot of sorts, but it is secondary to its visuals and sounds.  A handsome young Hutsul named Ivan falls in love at an early age with Marichka, the daughter of a man that killed Ivan’s father after an insult. As they grow into adulthood, their infatuation with each other deepens, but it is a Shakespearean tragedy of doomed love.  While Ivan is away tending sheep in an upper mountain pasture, Marichka meets with an unfortunate accident.  While trying to rescue a stranded lamb on a mountain precipice, she falls off the escarpment into a river and drowns. 

The heartbroken Ivan sinks into despair and dissoluteness.  Although he is seduced and eventually winds up marrying another local girl, Palahna, he can’t forget his original love and the marriage is a loveless one.  The neglected Palahna winds up having an affair with the village sorcerer, and Ivan, wounded after a violent confrontation with him in the village tavern, wanders off into the woods, hallucinating. There, he meets the spirit of Marichka who reaches out to him and he dies, finally re-united with his one and only love.

The plot though, is merely a vehicle for the movie’s director, Sergei Paradzhanov, a Soviet Armenian, to weave a rich tapestry of Hutsul life, customs and culture through all four seasons.   We see both the beauty and the starkness of life in the Carpathian Highlands.  In the several scenes that take place in the wooden Hutsul church, the liturgical chants overwhelm and you can almost smell the incense.  The music is rustic and rich, the costumes are superb and the experience of both every day life as well as feast day celebrations are vividly portrayed as an eclectic weaving of pious religious ceremony interwoven with wild pagan rituals.  The whole movie is rich with Freudian symbolism that often speaks louder than the dialogue. 

Interspersed throughout the action, we see the basic elements of day-to-day Hutsul life framed on a virtual and often visually stunning canvas – the mowing of hay, long rafts of timber being steered down a mountain river, sheep being herded on mountain pastures, hunters returning bearing the carcass of a bear, trembitas blowing their mournful sounds on the mountainsides, a pine tree erupting into flames. 

Paradzhanov’s cinematography in this film was particularly bold and innovative.  The camera often weaves and bobs in time to the music and the action, at times leaving the viewer dizzy and disoriented.  At other times, both the camera and the actors are completely motionless framing the scene like a masterpiece still-life portrait.  Even the colours change to reflect the mood, from brilliant hues to stark black and white.

The movie was quite controversial when it came out and continues to be so even today.  I heard a wide range of opinions from the mostly older audience at this latest screening, and there was no shortage of those who, to put it diplomatically, did not understand or appreciate the director’s vision.  It is surprising that the Soviets even released the film as it ran totally counter to the style of propagandistic realism that permeated Soviet cinema at the time.  What is not surprising is that Paradzhanov’s efforts in this film earned him the wrath of his political masters, and he was soon blacklisted by the Soviet establishment.

As eclectic and difficult as the film may be, it is a worthwhile cinematic experience that should not be missed.

Mariiiichka……Ivaaaane….