Susa (2010)
Cast: Gia Gogishvili, Ekaterine Kobakhidze, Avtandil Tetradze
Director: Rusudan Pirveli
Country: Georgia
Genre: Drama
Websites: TIFF
Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage for TIFF’s Discovering Georgian Cinema which runs until April 19th. For more information on this TIFF film series visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.
The texture of wood in desperate need of paint brings us into the impoverished world of Susa, the woodwork scarred with painful memories and neglect offers a wordlessly poignant backdrop as a child breaks a soda bottle to create a handmade kaleidoscope. When the world is bleak one must bring their own beauty into the world. The world of Susa is depressing and without hope as everyone who occupies it is in service to the business of dulling senses as an entire economy has emerged from the production and distribution of illegal bootleg alcohol, brining temporary solace to locals that have no other escape from the husk of failed industrialization that envelops them. Drinking, gambling, making vodka, delivering vodka, and collecting the empty bottles are the only apparent source of industry and entertainment in this crumbling wasteland of long forgotten dreams.
The world of Susa is depressing and without hope as everyone who occupies it is in service to the business of dulling senses.
We see this world through the eyes of Susa, a young man who has already been brought into this system of soul sedation as a delivery boy, remaining uncorrupted as he navigates through a world of lost souls. He finds time to be a child despite the realities of life as a delivery boy for an illegal vodka distillery, using a homemade kaleidoscope to bring wonder to a simple marketplace, creating magic out of packed mud roadways and the dispirited eyes of hopeless alcoholics. He is tormented by older teenagers that rob him of his money and dignity and hassled by police officers that work from their tin shed to create the illusion of law and order, but through it all he maintains a sense of youth and a sense of wonder in a bleak and unforgiving world.
Susa’s fate seems inevitable and without social change or the opportunity for growth he too will be stripped of his soul to become another cog in the hopeless machinery of exploitation.
Despite living with his parents the boy faces these challenges alone as his mother has lost her soul to the distillery. She spends her days scrubbing vats that bring about the ruin of her people for a thankless taskmaster to try and provide a meager living for the two of them. She hangs her hopes on the return of her husband who was recently released from prison, but without opportunities there is little hope for change. Susa’s fate seems inevitable and without social change or the opportunity for growth he too will be stripped of his soul to become another cog in the hopeless machinery of exploitation.
Susa paints a bleak portrait of life near the Georgian capital of Tbilsi and offers no prospects of the social changes necessary to make life better for its titular character, but for all its bleakness it remains a beautiful exploration of the indomitable human spirit through the eyes of a child living a life of inescapable desolation. Susa is much like Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows, but his tears are lost on mud-packed roads instead of Parisian beaches and solutions for the broken systems that brought about his misfortune remain elusive as there are no easy answers that will fix the crumbling wasteland of failed industrialization he has been forced to try and survive in.
Susa paints a bleak portrait of life near the Georgian capital of Tbilsi and offers no prospects of the social changes necessary to make life better for its titular character, but for all its bleakness it remains a beautiful exploration of the indomitable human spirit through the eyes of a child living a life of inescapable desolation.
