Ukrainan Rhapsody

Although this film belongs to Parajanov's conformist era, before he consciously decided to explore a more poetic form of cinema, traces of the armenian filmmaker's aspirations towards the  metaphysical.

It is no doubt that Ukrainan Rhapsody is a film that depicts the Ukrainan experience in function of the Soviet hegemony, as a part of the Union, a concept further enhanced by the use of the russian language in lieu of the ukrainan one, the insistence on the military victory. The semiparodistic depiction of the western allied forces also contributes this sense. This patina of propaganda is however thin, to the point that it could be overlooked, ignored entirely, and not even perceived.

An ode to the resilience of the ukrainan people during war, Parajanov depicts the second world conflict with a maturity that is remarkable: a central question posed is that of the discrepancy between the fascination for a culture that belongs to a country that is hostile - in the film, Germany, the land of Beethoven, but that also built the destructive Panzer tanks seen in some unexpectedly elaborate battle sequences.

Ukrainan Rhsapsody is however first of all a film that tackles an invisible realm, and is built around it: that of music, of its shaping power, manifest through the lyrical quality of folklore. Of course, in the context of the Soviet Union, ukrainan folklore was regarded as a curiosity and thus often aestheticised to a stereotypical extent, but Parajanov's film seems to be somber in its depiction. Moreover, music activates certain oniric sequences, threads together a non-linear narration that becomes more and more surreal, until the final scene.

The narration is non-verbal, often  conveyed more through gestures and evocative images than dialogue. In a scene, Oksana, now a nurse in a war hospital, is asked by a patient's family member to visit him. In the unfolding scene Oksana discovers in the registry that he passed away, tries to hide it by moving it away from the visitor, and the visitor understands, sitting down on a table. It is still a very normative context, and a very standardized acting world, but also a scene that some other filmmaker would have depicted through a dialogue, instead of gestures.

Ukrainan Rhapsody is a film that is worth considering in the canon of the works of Sergei Parajanov, of a beauty and rhythm that anticipates the filmmaker's future accomplishment with Shadows of the Forgotten Ancestors.

RATING: 4/5

Original title: Украинская рапсодия

Directed by: Sergei Parajanov

Country: Ukraine, USSR

Year: 1961

Length: 88 min.

Availability: rarefilmm

Synopsis: Singer Oksana is travelling to a western country for a singing competition, when he remembers Anton and the hardships of the Second World War that divided the two lovers.