INCENSE

Armenia, 2006, 95 minutes, Colour.
Michael Dovlatyan.
Directed by Gevorg Gevorgyan.

The incense of the title is what a newly released prisoner in Armenia, 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, searches for to pay honour to his dead mother. Incense is forbidden by law.

While the Armenian people are trying to raise consciousness of the 1915 genocide, there is also the story of the country during more than four decades of Soviet domination. Armenia can boast that it was the first nation to accept Christianity (in 301 AD). Commentators say that it was the church which kept hopes alive during the Soviet era. However, this picture of life in a country village, where simple people are made to live in fear and religion is a crime against the state (and where the people have to gather as the local church is to be blown up and listen to jingoistic, idealist socialist rants) reminds its audience that this was a period of repression of freedoms.

Director Mikayel Dovlatyan, a tall, almost gaunt and commanding figure plays Pogos, a local worker who has spent time in gaol as a young man because of a friend’s betrayal and who returns in the late 1940s, the era of the church explosion – which he stops by cutting the burning fuse. He also secretly buries the school teacher who is hanged because of his opposition to the destruction. However, a spy reports him and his school companion is now the local police officer who basks in puffed-up position and power. He arrests Pogos and he is sent into exile. He comes back in 1953 only to find himself again in conflict with the policeman and the powers that be.

The ending is not what we might expect. More hope than we anticipated.

The film is straightforward though it moves back and forth between the two returns of Pogos. The style is also straightforward, how the film might have been made in the era in which it is set. But, it is an opportunity to go back and experience what the Soviet era was like in the Armenian countryside.

1.An Armenian production? Story? Nationalist? Religious issues? Atheism and its imposition? The Soviet domination, persecution? Mistreatment, injustice?

2.The impact for an Armenian audience, wider? The style of the film, as if made in the 1950s? The title, the filial devotion of Pogos for his mother, her funeral? The religious dimension? As a symbol of the issues of repression?

3.The prologue, the boys, the donkey, the bandits coming at them, their lives being saved, the memory of the grandfather? Their arrest, the boy having to make a confession, writing it under dictation, prison?

4.The structure of the film: Pogos, the two returns from his imprisonment, the 40s and the first return, 1953 and the second return? The parallels?

5.The character of Pogos, quiet, austere? The 1940s? His relationship with his mother, helping her? His friendship with Nho, the dwarf? The relationship with the officer, his success, the administration of the village? Having been with him at school? The contrast of success and failure between the two? Pogos and his life in the village, the stonemason? The church, about to be blown up? The patriotic speeches? His cutting the fuse? The hanging of the teacher, going to the coffin maker and getting the coffin in the night? Mathos and his witness, spying? Signing the document? The officer, his subordination to the Soviet authorities? The speeches in the town, the woman and her rabid speech? The officer and his catching Pogos, marching him through the desert, the taunts, the horse, not allowing him to see his mother? Pogos going into exile?

6.The second return, seeing the child being bathed, pouring the hot water? Finding his mother dead? The burial, the stone, working with Nho? The grave? The authorities and making him report in? Nho and his bashing the officer – and demonstrating how he did it by standing on the chair? The quiet life, the teacher’s wife and her child? His being summoned to Yerevan? Stalin’s death? The officer and the horse, his taunts? Yerevan, the officials, his being declared innocent? The officer arrested and being taken to Siberia? His long plea for Pogos’s mercy? Pogos and his angry reaction? Walking back to the village, finding the horse? His return, the smoking of the cigarette – and the irony that Nho had used his official paper for the cigarette paper?

7.The portrait of the officer, his success, kowtowing to superiors? The Soviet domination, the pictures of Stalin? Blowing up the church? The antagonism with Pogos? The death of the teacher, the burial, his molesting the wife, the rape? The final taunts, his plea to Pogos – and his being taken to Siberia?

8.Religion, the closing of the church, setting it up for explosion, the patriotic speeches about socialism? The priest and his ranting, going? Pogos and his watching, cutting the fuse? His devotion for the dead teacher?

9.The details of village life, the range of people, peasants, Pogos’s mother, her neighbours, generosity? Yet Pogos’s reputation, enemy of the state? His friends? Nho as a cheerful character?

10.The film as a re-creation of a period, Stalinist repression? A memoir?