The Wishing Tree (1976) User Reviews

Beautiful and Tragic

[samxxxul · 7/10 · 15 November 2020]

The Wishing Tree (1977) is a good movie, sort of a poetic parable with no plot but takes a big dark shift at the end. Showing a realistic display of Georgia before the revolution like a solemn and reflective piece of poetry. The ending is just sorrowful, and the course of events are drawing the attention of viewers easily and it is not easy to forget the scenes from the movie after watching it. The first image of a dying horse in a poppy field sets the tone and becomes a potent metaphor for the film in miniature. Most of the film takes place in a wilderness area cordoned off by the city and revolves around the orphaned girl Marita who has done a fabulous job. This film is so deeply immersive, taking its time to give us an incredibly realistic portrayal of what life was like in pre-revolutionary community. The first hour or so is slow, but it establishes the world these people were living in when societal norms, superstition, ignorance, and religion were so dominant. There are lots of little touches in the film, such as the villager's reaction to the events. Though it is based on 22 stories by Georgian poet and prose writer Giorgi Leonidze, the film is less concerned with the full detail than it is with pondering the philosophical and societal notions of personal faith, innocence, gender imbalance, guilt and desire. The performances are solid, the most vivid coming in the part of Lika Kavzharadze, the innocent Marita. This is part of Tenghiz Abuladze's cinematic triptych: "The Supplication" - "The Wishing Tree" - "Repentance". Highly recommended!!

Tengiz Abuladze.A few statements

[Cristi_Ciopron · 8/10 · 21 February 2008]

Reading various reviews by buffs, moviegoers or cinema critics, I've noticed one prevailing and disturbing trend—the fact that directors like Tarkovsky, Visconti and Tengiz Abuladze are most often underrated and have a very bad reputation. This touches one of the profoundest things in aesthetics. In empirical terms, it is about the directors that use a slow pace; authors, that is, of mainly slow—paced films. The slow pace (as in Tarkovski, Sokurov and Tengiz Abuladze) is the one that details. That deepens. But, on the other hand,is this slow—pace approach (only) an option? It certainly depends—as there are various factors involved—the content, the subject, the style and tone, the aims, the atmosphere, the requirements of a certain story, the optics, etc.—above all, the adequacy .Yet the real subtext is very valid always—the whole may be found within the piece, but it takes some time, an artistically determined time,a certain measure (and hence pace) to know even the piece. The cognition isn't instantaneous. A certain period is needed to get, to understand a thing. Tarkovsky, Sokurov, Visconti, Antonioni, Tengiz Abuladze never use more than it is really needed; nor do they shorten, arbitrarily, the period. A very good example of such adequacy is one of Kurosawa's last films—the dream film. To know the things that Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Sokurov ,Kurosawa, Antonioni set themselves up to understand and seize—to reach this gist—it is not enough for the mind to jump aimlessly—as in the MTV—style of montage or cutting. It is wholly inappropriate to ask them (often contemptuously) to give up their montage, when it is the only one ever that can best serve their subjects and the contents of their movies. On the other hand yet, this is artistic knowledge, one of the highest forms of human fulfillment—so one cannot establish a priori an algebra of montage rules—the time will be used according to the ad hoc needs of the subject and of the content.

In the '40s,'50s,'60s,in several waves, film critics and movie buffs approached the question of the movie's language, semantics, syntax. Several theories were proposed. On the other hand, the bleak assessments didn't lack—many talked about how few the really important authors are, etc..In my view, the opposite statement is the truest one; I cannot help but wonder of how many are the fine directors –those who, throughout a long and fruitful career—or sometimes only sporadically—managed to give a cinematographic shape to their creativity. There are not so few those who succeeded in creating languages able to express their creativity and their world-view.

This stream of uncensored creativity

What is the cinema's aim?Of expressing through an original and suited language, art, style and adequacy an artistic creativity. It is an equation; thereof several terms must be considered when dealing with its aesthetic analysis.

Where from does it take its richness? From a careful balance of elements.

Superb

[Irakli28 · 10/10 · 22 February 2001]

For Georgian Cinema, every film of T.Abuladze was a landmark. Each project was at least the most typical if not the best film of its time. Visually they all are made in different style and form defined (or sometimes defining) the trends in the contemporary Georgian cinema. (! -there are several spoilers ahead).

The Early films (made in co-operation with T. Chkheidze) were definitely influenced by the Italian NeoRealism (though the influence was more stylistical than conceptual). In the first film - Magdanas Lurja- the classic short story of I. Chavchavadze (Writer, Poet and Political Activist of the 19th century, assassinated by the socialists, and later declared a Saint by the Georgian Orthodox Church) was used to make one of the earliest attempts of Georgian cinema alla' Neorealism. The attempt was nice for the debut but was limited by the demands of Official Censorship - the story of a 19th century court case obviously had a Propaganda touch - "Such injustice would never happen in the Soviet Union". Even the happy end of the original story was changed.

In the next film - Our Yard - in addition to obvious use of Neorealistic traditions one can feel (mostly in camerawork) the influence a new cinematic vogue - Indian Cinema (that used to be very appraised at some period in USSR before becoming a stereotype of mixture of melodrama, singing and fighting-by the way very popular among certain parts of the Soviet audience). Despite (or maybe because of) all these Our Yard was very popular with Georgian viewers .

Others Children - finishes the "NeoRealistic Period" and mixes the extremely melodramatic story with stylish (sometimes excessively stylish) visuals. This film reflects the new fashion of using camera and editing in cinema established in USSR by the director D.Kalatozishvili (sometimes referred as Kalatozov).

Than Abuladze made a screen version of the humoristic bestseller "I, Grandma, Ilia and Illarion". The film was rather popular with Georgian audiences but most admitted that it was not as good as the book. Some criticized the casting for the title character - Zurikela (the "I") looked too much like a well-bred-upper-middle-class-city-boy instead of being a sly and witty provincial. New trend that is sometimes called Intelligent Romanticism of 60-ies abounded in this film. In general the film is no more than just nice, but one of the last episodes (death of the grandmother) was very strong and became the most brilliant screen achievement of the theatre star Cecilia Takaishvili (the Grandmother).

The major achievement of Tengiz Abuladze himself is a trilogy The Plead (Vedreba), Tree of Wishes (Natvris Khe) and Repentance (Monanieba). Whereas I personally regard all three films to be masterpieces, the Non-Georgian Audience will hardly understand their depth as most symbols and allusions used are "Very Georgian". Despite this the last two parts of a trilogy got a wide critical acclaim and Repentance even became the major commercial hit at Soviet Cinemas. But with the magnificent Plead the situation was different. The major problem is that film is not just based on the poetry of Vaja-Pshavela (regarded by many to be the greatest Georgian poet ever), its literally full of it. Poetry of Vaja-Pshavela is very complex one and actually not translatable as he uses a very specific language, symbols, notions and terms of East Georgia Mountain Provinces, the mood of the entire film is based on this verses constantly cited within the film; Retelling just their content gives nothing and foreign audience is left with graphic and extravagant visuals that may seem interesting for 10 minutes but become tiresome during the full-length film. Both visually and conceptually the film is perhaps the most outstanding and controversial Georgian film of its time.

Unlike the Plead, the Tree of Wishes was accepted by Georgian audience without any hesitation. Tree of Wishes is exquisite for its beautiful cinematography and all star casting (from these especially should be noted Lika Kavjaradze as beautiful Marita, Sophico Chiaureli as extravagant Pupala , Ramaz Chikvadze as a corrupt priest, Erosi Manjgaladze as idealistic patriot and Cecilia Takaishvili who once again (since "I, Grandma, Ilia and Illarion") gave a brilliant performance (again as a grandmother and again giving the brilliant ending of the film). The various characters and storylines of Giorgi Leonidze's short stories about his childhood are united in a delicious, poetic and entertaining film.

a horse, a child, a poppies field

[Kirpianuscus · 2 March 2017]

a poem. about love and fear and need to escape from social pressure. a confession. and one of the most powerful films of Abuladze for remind the authority of tradition, for the portraits of each character, for the start scene, for the universe of each meet and for the waters of emotions. nothing surprising. landscapes and colors and words and a profound drama as definition of a state. an aesthetic experience. and discovery of a world who is so seductive in its cruelty and bizarre laws and rituals, faith or brutality than it seems be translation of present events. a village. and its people. from Caucasus or Balkans or Middle Orient. or, just from a form of past who defines us. because the story, so simple and touching and delicate and cold has the great virtue to be , in special way, part of our past.a horse, a child, a poppies field.the face of a young woman. the death/sin. and the words of an old man. and nothing else. as deep treats of a protective circle.

Poetry, Patriarchy, Patchwork

[dmgrundy · 6/10 · 29 September 2020]

Based on 22 stories by Georgian poet and prose writer Giorgi Leonidze, this is a film full of detail: Ertaozi, the father who spends the film searching, first for the 'sacred stone', then the 'golden fish', then the 'magic tree', and who ultimately freezes to death in his quest; the white horse dying amidst a field of poppies (the film's striking opening scene); the shoe flung into the air that 'turns' into a bird-shot in sumptuous brightness (despite the poor quality print in which I viewed it), with a kind of gentle pace that's not so much Tarkovskian-the comparison the film's (very few) English language critics have made-as a gentle stroll through an evocatively-rendered locale, more modest in scope. Sometimes it feel as if there's no through-thread; the film doesn't take its time in the manner of, say, Paradjanov's 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors', for which it compares in its focus on pre-revolutionary community and its construction round a tragic, poignant pair of doomed young lovers, though its stories are perhaps less freighted with the mythic, archetypal resonance of folk myth. Instead, the patchwork construction creates an atmosphere, a mood, a wealth of incident in which telling detail gently emerges then fades.

The film gradually finds its focus in the portrayal of Marita, the orphaned teenager who returns with her father to live with her grandmother early on, and who serves as the idealised symbol of female innocence and joy, of communion with nature and living things: every thing is alive, she proclaims on a mountainside; the dew is the sweat of the earth; stars and flowers are gifts, expressions of joy. In love with Gedia-whose tenderness towards his dying horse in the opening scene, and who likewise serves as index of lightness, gentleness and care-she's rendered as the impeccably beautiful, the object of the village's gaze, and then of its hatred, Marita is central to the critical turn taken in the film's final sections. Betrothed to the brooding shepherd Shete, whose family are (relatively) monied, Marita is the object of a financial transaction in which patriarchy reasserts itself and the demands of status and order trump those of love and freedom. As one observer notes, the wedding ceremony feels more like a funeral than a wedding-and occurs literally over the corpse of Gedia, knocked dead to the ground in a fight with her betrothed. Shete proceeds to turn Marita's lack of love into an excuse for rage: coldly checking the livestock outside in the true manner of a boss, then smashing the kitchen in a jealous rage as Marita exults over the presence of a bird flying in through the window. During the long winter, Marita reunites with Gedia, who it turns out is alive and cannot stay away. In the climactic scenes, she's punished by being dragged through the village backwards on a donkey while the inhabitants pelt with her mud and stones. Shot in swirling fog and rain, with each member of the village appearing alone or in groups to the accompaniment of electronically-amplified and treated drips, groans and roars, the apparatus of civilisation-houses (however) crumbling, roads, fields, livestock-of the relatively pain-free social life we've witnessed beforehand, are stripped away to reveal the dark heart of patriarchy that binds this community together, ending as Marita collapses dead in the mud. In this parade-the flipside to the forced marriage ceremony-the only ones who speak up in her favour are Nargiza, flirting with everyone and tied to no one; 'Rebel Ioram' the anarchist, causally bludgeoned out of the way with a wooden club; Gedia himself, running out of the midst and shot from an unknown source; while Marita's grandmother (Sesilia Takaishvili), who's calculatingly blessed the union in the first place, wrings her hands in the mud and the make-up-caked Pupula cries out her loneliness, admitting that she made up the entire story of her lost love, killed in wartime, for sympathy.

The village, previously a humorously-rendered hotbed of gossip and humour, constructed around the loneliness and gender imbalance that humour patches over, turns, even, into pleasure, can only maintain this balance, it seems, through an act of collectively-binding violence. In this light, the authoritarianism of the old-style village head, Tstitsikore, superstitious, suspicious of progress, in collusion with the corrupt priest, selling Marita into marriage for, as one character puts it, 'red banknotes', come to seem more than harmlessly eccentric vestiges of a distant past. However much he's ridiculed, Ioram, the club-footed anarchist who presses his ear to the ground to hear the oncoming thunder of the train of revolution, whether running alone down the village's paths, proclaiming a future of social emancipation, or followed by a gaggle of school children who join him in revolutionary song, articulates an impassioned plea for justice: of a world beyond transactional patriarchal arrangements, the invocation of a mythical national past, and superstitious localism, which brings out the potential instead for a holistic relation between people, and between people and environment-Gedia's and Marita's love for animals, their love for each other, even Ertaozi's doomed and in many ways foolish, yet harmless quests for something better, transformative, utopian. The film's epilogue informs us that, on the site of Marita's body, a pomegranate tree has grown up-the sacrificial rite exposing the fact that the wishing tree the characters had sought was in their midst all along, destroyed by their cruelty and adherence to repressive convention: a kind of mystic transformation of an idealised feminine beauty which seeks to reverse the community's own punishment of challenges to patriarchy. Perhaps this switch in register feels tacked on-a kind of transition to the present (complete with image of the ruined house in which Marita lived) which maintains the archaic beliefs of its past ancestor-and perhaps this has to do with the film's not always easy balance of a general realism and a more archetypal folk register, between a kind of rambunctious humour and a more delicately poetic reflectiveness. But the film's preponderance of image, anecdote, incident nonetheless sticks in the mind: traceries of a spider's web caught in light, flowers emerging from the rock, figures from the fog.

Puzzle

[Vincentiu · 13 January 2012]

Beauty of nature. Force of traditions. Sad love story. A myth. Lost time. Wisdom, fool, expectation, nuances of cruelty. And the verdict - cold and harsh.An Abuladze movie in which poetry and testimony are parts of same chain. A parable, fairy tale or lesson about roots of present. A sick horse, a boy and a field of poppies. A village and Pupala. Freedom as silk and gold embroidery. A world. From Caucasus, Central Asia or Balkans. And an empty circle. So, it is not exactly a film. But object for meditate. For joy. For define secret dreams, desires and escapes. A skull from Hamlet, a game of a jester, confession of a strange lady, fruits of a tree, look of a young girl. And bread for far time. In case you get lost.