Les Chevaux de feu

An ethnographic film exhibition about the Carpathian Hutsuls that takes your breath away with its wild formal techniques and often confuses you with its perspective in what the scene actually wants to tell us and from what position we’re actually observing it. But in this way, Parajanov purposefully achieves a portrayal of these Carpathian highlanders as a full-blooded, savage people battered by an unforgiving climate, for whom the constant presence of hardship and death often forces them into a malicious fatalism. It is interesting how the lives of these remote peoples some one hundred and fifty years ago actually bore a realistic resemblance to the settings of classic Howardian fantasy stories. The tragic tale of Ivan's madness contains events beyond the reach of man that affect his life and the weight of everyday life to a degree where mere existence is a dramatic adventure. We are promised the arrival of distant pilgrims or an encounter with a real magician. How universal all the stories actually are in their foundations is demonstrated by the moment when, after Ivan's second wife fails to conceive, he begins to practice witchcraft. In our country today, we call them Aesopians. (31/05/2020)

Filmwise, it is definitely interesting because you simply won't see this anywhere else. The combination of poetics and film with classical Russian national elements, in a form that almost resembles a fairytale. And essentially without any plot. Though interesting, conflicting feelings ultimately outweighed enthusiasm. (16/05/2015)