An apparently miraculous resurrection sends shockwaves through a superstitious mining community in Citizen Saint, the hauntingly beautiful third feature from Georgian writer-director Tinatin Kajrishvili. Blending elements of dark fairy tale, social realism and bitterly absurd satire, this Karlovy Vary competition contender is firmly pitched at old-school art-house connoisseurs with its layered, allegorical plot and ravishing Tarkovsky-level visuals. Even so, this is Kajrishvili’s strongest work to date, with pleasing echoes of Pasolini’s Theorem (1968) and Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987). It should enjoy healthy festival traction and niche audience interest, building on Georgia’s recent rebirth as a quality cinema powerhouse.
Kajrishvili’s two previous features, Brides (2014) and Horizon (2018), earned positive reviews and festival prizes. Both were essentially small-scale domestic dramas with a naturalistic tone, though the latter unfolded in a remote lakeside location with a dreamlike, off-the-map aura. That fable-like otherness is foregrounded much more in Citizen Saint, which takes place in a mountainous milieu that looks almost post-apocalyptic at times. Kajrishvili filmed around the city of Chiatura in western Georgia, whose stark landscape is a major visual asset. Shot in timeless monochrome, this purgatorial wasteland of rusting cable cars, pockmarked roads, crumbling bridges, lunar valleys and rugged rocky vistas has a bleakly elemental beauty. Some luminously lovely scenes were even shot deep underground, inside the mine.
A locally revered “saint” watches over this remote community from a hillside perch, a Christ-like figure on a giant wooden crucifix, believed to be petrified body of a former miner with supernatural powers. When town museum officals take the statue down for restoration, the residents become uneasy, especially the miners, who fear their guardian angel will no longer protect them during risky underground work.
After the statue mysteriously vanishes, and a mute stranger (George Babluani) arrives in town, many are quick to presume that the saint has returned to corporeal human form. The mystery man’s presence does indeed seem to have a magical effect on the townsfolk. The sick are healed, estranged couples reunited. In a dazzling, hallucinatory sequence shot inside the mine, Berdo (Levan Berikashvili) is reunited with his long-dead son.
But since the saint says nothing, he quickly becomes a blank screen on which everybody projects their secret desires and unspoken regrets. For Mari (Brides veteran Mari Kitia in compellingly flinty mode), the stranger reawakens thwarted romantic and sexual yearnings that only bring her narrow, blighted life into sharper relief. Instead of healing the community, the stranger ultimately taps into decades of hidden wounds and festering resentments. A bitterly absurd finale hammers several rusty nails into the hollow promise of religion, a con trick that people willingly play on themselves in the absence of any genuine consoling faith.
Kajrishvili initially conceived Citizen Saint seven years ago as more of a satirical comic fable, which might have made it more marketable beyond elevated art-house circles. While some mordant humour remains, the finished film is now ostensibly a sombre allegory about the incurable human hunger to cling onto tiny flickers of hope in a callous, godless universe. Although the cultural references here are obviously Christian and Biblical, Kajrishvili insists she did not intend to make a specifically religious story, more a universal parable.
As a piece of drama, Citizen Saint is opaque and cryptic, leaving many loose ends unresolved. Even so, it is never boring, holding our attention with outlandish plot twists and strong performances. But its key strength is as an exquisite visual artwork, largely thanks to Krum Rodriguez’s gorgeous high-resolution monochrome cinematography, which makes every shot an Old Master tableaux of fine-grained detail and chiaroscuro shadow. The liturgigal drones and ghostly sirens of Tako Zhordania’s score deepen this sense of solemn, mystical beauty.
Director: Tinatin Kajrishvili
Cast: Levan Berikashvili, George Babluani, Mari Kitia, Gia Burjanadze
Screenplay: Tinatin Kajrishvili, Basa Janikashvili
Cinematography: Krum Rodriguez
Editing: David Apkhaidze
Art director: George Gordzamashvili
Producer: Lasha Khalvashi, Tinatin Kajrishvili
Music: Tako Zhordania
Production: Studio Artizm (Georgia), Gemini (Georgia)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe Competition)
In Georgian
100 minutes
