War certainly never changes. And no matter what reasons make people leave their regular lives and go kill each other, it all boils down to the blind rage and bloodthirstiness. There are no noble causes, no right and wrong, just "us" and "them" and killing them before they kill us.
The ugliness of all this mess is best noticed when put against the pure beauty of the land the people are fighting for. Against the nature that knows no war and against people who only wanna live in harmony with it and reap what the land yielded for them. And that's the essence of the story behind Tangerines: a dying Estonian settlement in the Caucasus region, with only a few people left who try to gather the tangerines while there is still time, while the war breaks all around them about which country this land should belong to.
The beauty of Tangerines is in its simplicity. It doesn't try to judge, to separate right from wrong, to label people for what made them go to that war - money or duty. It cares for none of it. The only thing that matters is that we are all human, and killing each other is a pointless and senseless thing per se. That the person you are so desperately trying to kill today might become your only friend tomorrow. Because that's what war does: it makes everybody blind, and the only way to start seeing again is to reject it altogether.
The naivety of that pacifist message may be endearing, but it also demands for an oversimplification. Preaching peace is only possible if you ignore all the complexities that led to the war in the first place. In fact, Tangerines tries a bit too hard to avoid any complexities at all, nipping them in the bud. Why are the Abkhazians fighting for their independence? Why are the Georgians so eager to keep them from getting it? Why are the Russians and their blood money involved? Why is Ivo so reluctant to leave his village and move to Estonia to his family? What will he do when the rest of the settlers leave? The answers to these questions are either blurred or not even hinted at, as if the whole world has suddenly shrunk to these two Estonian guys, their unexpected guests and a tangerine garden.
And while that reclusiveness - both physical and spiritual - may be a powerful personal stance, it deprives Tangerines of a certain cinematographic depth. Of course, there may be no obvious solutions to all the big problems of our world, especially when it comes to war, but sometimes it's simply not enough to put a flower into a barrel of a rifle to fix it all. Even if it's a tangerine blossom.
The ugliness of all this mess is best noticed when put against the pure beauty of the land the people are fighting for. Against the nature that knows no war and against people who only wanna live in harmony with it and reap what the land yielded for them. And that's the essence of the story behind Tangerines: a dying Estonian settlement in the Caucasus region, with only a few people left who try to gather the tangerines while there is still time, while the war breaks all around them about which country this land should belong to.
The beauty of Tangerines is in its simplicity. It doesn't try to judge, to separate right from wrong, to label people for what made them go to that war - money or duty. It cares for none of it. The only thing that matters is that we are all human, and killing each other is a pointless and senseless thing per se. That the person you are so desperately trying to kill today might become your only friend tomorrow. Because that's what war does: it makes everybody blind, and the only way to start seeing again is to reject it altogether.
The naivety of that pacifist message may be endearing, but it also demands for an oversimplification. Preaching peace is only possible if you ignore all the complexities that led to the war in the first place. In fact, Tangerines tries a bit too hard to avoid any complexities at all, nipping them in the bud. Why are the Abkhazians fighting for their independence? Why are the Georgians so eager to keep them from getting it? Why are the Russians and their blood money involved? Why is Ivo so reluctant to leave his village and move to Estonia to his family? What will he do when the rest of the settlers leave? The answers to these questions are either blurred or not even hinted at, as if the whole world has suddenly shrunk to these two Estonian guys, their unexpected guests and a tangerine garden.
And while that reclusiveness - both physical and spiritual - may be a powerful personal stance, it deprives Tangerines of a certain cinematographic depth. Of course, there may be no obvious solutions to all the big problems of our world, especially when it comes to war, but sometimes it's simply not enough to put a flower into a barrel of a rifle to fix it all. Even if it's a tangerine blossom.