Friday, December 26, 2008

Michael Kalatozishvili‘s Wild Field in Rabat.




Wild Field is about a doctor who lives alone in the wilderness somewhere in Russia. As we follow the story of its wonderful scenes beautifully fabricated by Michael Kalatozishvili, son of great film director Giorgi Kalatozishvili already realized a brilliant film called “Le Retour Des Seagulls” we notice a certain pace of developing his protagonist,the doctor.Kalatozishvilis are a Russian dynasty of intelligent cinema whose effort are to convey Russian beauty and Art through movies.

In this movie, The doctor,a handsome young man trying to give a hand to the people living around in this deserted place,seems to be calm and more communicative. We do not know at first the reason why he is there ,nor how he happens to work in this harsh place, but we understand that he works there comfortably as he receives each day patients from around his home.Yet,what strikes most is when the doctor cures a peasant from dying,because this latter has been drinking vodka for forty days,I said what strikes most is that choice of an intelligent montage nicely cut by Michel when the doctor goes to check if he gets something from his letter box around his ranch.

The method of subjectivity works beautifully well as we understand that may be our doctor is waiting for something special and that the director wants us to believe that his character is nostalgic and somewhat tragic may be looking for something hidden either love, tenderness or human comfort. This scene becomes more stronger and revealing when a voice off of a sweet Russian song comes out to confirm the feeling of the character’s state of mind.This cut of this scene has a tremendous effect on me and no doubt on the audience . When I ask Michael Kalatozishvili about why we are going to see his movie on DVD, he replies that this matter is out of his control,because he prefers evidently silver screen .Besides, the original copy is only in Russian and that his copy burnt to DVD is subtitled in english, unfortunately Agdal cinema-goers proudly named themselves KAD-M which is an association based in Rabat who organized this cinematic soirée on the 24th of December 2008,have succeeded to make us happy by this genre of films. They know only Russian language, because most of KAD-M audience was x-soviet union students.

As we enjoy the magnificent events of Michael Kalatozishvili’s movie, we are surprised later to find out that our doctor has been surveilled by a silhouette from a mountain near his ranch. The doctor at first does not care much about it .
Yet, we will discover later that this silhouette is about a mysterious man living in the wild who will ironically cause the death of our young doctor after this latter has cured him from his mysterious wounds.

FIFM has honored Michael Kalatozishvili by giving him "l'Etoile D'or Grand prix du festival de Marrakech",because he has simply realized a beautiful film and no doubt that unforgotten soliloquy of that Russian bureaucrat who comes to pay our doctor up to his ranch ,questioning himself “ Why has God abandoned us, we Russians ? “ this echoes may be an attempt of coming back a weary state called Russia .


Written by Allal El Alaoui