Cinematography
1920. Last days of the first Armenian Republic. Armenian Army fights on two fronts: war with Turkish army in the west, and Red Army incursion and Bolshevik mutiny in the northeast. Hayk Saroyan returns to his native provincial town from Russia to assume a minor post at Dashnak Army command center. His brother Gevorg, captain at the same command center, is a real patriot prefering death to "eternal exile", army power to relegious mercifullness. Very soon a suspicion creeps inside him: his beloved brother is Bolshevik spy.
Director of Photography
Working with children led Barskaya to create superb direct sound and an inspired style of shooting. Don’t look for conventional cinematic syntax here. The film is chaotic in the way that Soviet films still knew how to be, and Langlois couldn’t help but be seduced by its rebellious spirit, its anarchy and love of children, comparable to Vigo’s Zero de conduite.
As well as being a film made with and for children, it offers a complex take on Western society. Pre-Nazi Germany is not named as such but is carefully reconstructed, possibly under advice from Karl Radek, and children offer a playful reflection of class struggle – doubly excluded, as proletarians and as minors. “They play in the same way that they live”, one intertitle says. The interaction between their comical games and the yet more ludicrous ones played by adults is developed on several levels.
