War at its worst and best.
Tangerines
Grade: A
Director: Zara Urushadze
Screenplay: Urushadze
Cast: Lembit Ulfsak, Elmo Nuganen
Runtime: 87 min.
by John DeSando
In the Georgia, Apkhazeti region of summer 1992, Georgians were warring with Estonians, forcing them back to their homeland. In Tangerines, an intriguing Oscar nominee for best foreign film, Estonian carpenter Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak) stays behind to make crates for harvested tangerines with his gentle farmer neighbor Margus (Elmo Nuganen). The ensuing drama pits warriors from both sides, who must peacefully co-exist while being tended for their wounds by the caring Ivo at his home.
The story of enemies becoming friends has been writ many times before, and in Tangerines these enemies do not go gently as Muslim Chechen mercenary Ahmed (Giorgi Nakashidze), fighting on the Abkhazi side, badgers Christian Georgian Niko (Mikheil Meskhi), who gives back as good as he gets. Meanwhile Ivo’s role is to comment on war’s absurdities and injustices, like a chorus reflecting writer/director Zara Urushadze’s philosophies about war:
Ahmed: “I will avenge my friend. This is a holy thing for us, Old Man, you don't understand.”
Ivo: “Killing a sleeping man, when he is unconscious, is that a sacred thing too? I didn't know.”
Included in his wisdom is some well-placed sarcasm that serves the anti-war thoughts of everyone watching this film.
The most remarkable trait of Tangerines is Ivo’s humanity, an aging farmer with a world vision that allows him to care for two enemies without taking sides and create an environment that makes them devotees of peace and brothers. The setup tends toward the stagey with speeches dramatizing the universals amid the dung of battle, set in a confined area that could have been out of a Sam Shephard drama.
Other virtues of this unassumingly powerful film are the claustrophobic farm house and its rough exterior, as much an evocation of Winter’s Bones’s impoverished Appalachia as it is of proud but poor Georgia. The actors are every bit as rough-hewn as the fence that keeps no enemies out. The exception is the generous Ivo, whose soft face and meek mien are the markers for peaceful survival amid the dirty and dangerous landscape of farm and humans.
Like Ivo, the tangerines are a promise of peace’s nourishment, an easy metaphor for the contrast between the toxic battle and the bounty of peace. The crates emphasize the tribal environment which can rot only too soon if not tended. Similarly, the oft-referenced photo of Ivo’s lovely granddaughter reminds us that beauty still exists somewhere even if it seems unattainable.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
