a good deed does
vanish without a trace
by Douglas Messerli
Vaja
Gigashvili (writer, based on a folk-tale by Daniel Chonkadze), Sergei Paradjanov
and Dodo Abashidze (directors) სურამის
ციხისა (The Legend of Suram Fortress) / 1984
Even as he begins his travels, bad luck prevails, as the horse given to
him by his previous master is demanded to be returned, forcing Durmishkhan to
travel by foot. At one point he encounters a caravansary of Islamic merchants,
headed by Osman Agha (Dodo Abashidze), who takes a liking to the boy and, after
hearing his story, tells his own tale of how as a serf he and his mother were
made to take up a yoke like oxen by his cruel and often drunken master. His
mother dies in harness, and the young Osman Agha (born Nodar Zalikashvili)
flees his owners, joining up with a caravan, and renouncing his Christian faith
to become a Muslim. Awarding Durmishkhan a beautiful robe and a horse, Osman
Agha suggests the young man join the caravan as his partner. When the young man
becomes overwhelmed by his elder’s generosity, Osman Agha proclaims, “A good
deed does not vanish without leaving a trace.”
Becoming a successful merchant, and himself converting from
Christianity, Durmishkhan marries a beautiful girl, who soon after gives birth
to a son, Zurab (Levan Uchaneishvili), who ultimately grows into manhood.
Meanwhile, seeking out her lost lover and
grieving over the events of her life, Vardo visits an aging fortuneteller, who
is near death. In her sorrow, Vardo determines to replace the fortuneteller and
soon gains notoriety throughout the region.Osman Agha, who has had a vision his erring ways, returns to Georgia, giving up nearly all his possessions in penance for having abandoned his faith, and leaving his business to Durmishkhan. When Durmishkhan undertakes another long voyage back into Muslim territory, his son remains in Georgia with Osman Agha.

War between the Christians and the Muslims is brewing, and the
Georgians, protected by large fortresses throughout most of the country, are
fearful because of their vulnerability to attack at Suram, since that
fortresses’ walls have crumbled every time they have attempted to build them up.
Determined to rebuild the Suram Fortress once again, the Czar sends emissaries
to the Vardo, the Fortuneteller, to tell him how to create permanent walls.
Refusing to speak to the emissaries as a group, Vardo sends away all but
one, the handsome Zurab. The Fortuneteller explains, through metaphor, that the
cement must be mixed with the body of blue-eyed young man, and, recognizing
that person as himself, Zurab allows his body to be bricked up within the wall.
The fortress stands, saving his country and the Christian faith.
As the film ends, Vardo returns to the wall, explaining that she has not
acted out of revenge but out of
necessity, for Zurab, in her way of thinking, was also her son.
That final incident gives the
story a strange dimension that it would not otherwise have. In embracing the
boy as her son as well, Vardo has interlinked her life to the life of others in
a way that suggests a commonality among peoples. She has, in a sense, converted
a story that might be read as a struggle between individuals and rulers—an
issue at the center of both Durmishkhan’s and Osman Agha’s tales—into a myth in
which the communal survival outweighs the individual life. And, accordingly, we
see Zurab’s act of self-immolation less as an act of heroism than it is a
societal demand, a death borne not out of a personal decision but a
determination of a social order.
Without making too much of this, it is easy to read Zurab’s entombment
within the walls of Suram Fortress—an burial aided, strangely enough, by Zurab’s
beloved teacher, Osman Agha—as a metaphor of Paradjanov’s own imprisonment. It
is as if the director’s society has insisted upon the spiritual death of one of
their most beautifully vital figures, had required the death of art itself. Yet,
in giving us this new film, Paradjanov has been resurrected, returning to form
with another spectacular vision. It is difficult, in the end, not to read Osman
Agha’s maxim as a statement about the director himself, for surely good deeds,
in my estimation, describe Paradjanov’s four major works of art.
Los
Angeles, November 17, 2012
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