Художественная культура (Mar 2024)
The Adventures of Road Workers (1974–1980): National Specificity of the Georgian Trio
Abstract
The author focuses on a series of short films about road workers, created in 1974–1980 by different directors of the Georgia Film studio based on the scripts by Rezo Gabriadze. Despite the light comedic structure, each of the films in the cycle correlates with traditional art forms and is a kind of a parable about the important work of three friends who continue the work of their great ancestors in an already built-up world. This comedy cycle turns to the aesthetic foundations of Georgian cinema, which allows drawing conclusions about transformations in cinema, the processes of irony over the established film traditions, and nostalgia for the national cultural heritage. There is no large-scale epic background in the cinematic reality; it is introduced by a thin visual-semantic layer, paying tribute to national pride and history with the winding road surface, hills, endless fields, and the temperament of the characters. In the narrative and visual form, the three road workers can be interpreted as a homage to the Coward, the Fool and the Pro — the famous characters of Leonid Gaidai. With their undoubted masculinity, the Georgian trio paradoxically corresponds not only with Gaidai’s characters; it also represents a family where a strict ‘mother’ energetically raises a fidgety ‘child’ under the stern and gloomy gaze of a ‘father’. The spatial design of the filmic reality is dominated by road; most of the troubles happen when the characters consciously or forcedly deviate from the asphalt road itself. Overcoming the boundaries of this extended field, the characters find themselves in a moderately hostile world, salvation from which lies in returning to their road ‘Eden’.
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