“Citizen Saint”
posted by Robin Menken
Tinatin Kajrishvili’s “Citizen Saint” is the official Georgian Entry for Best International Film, 2023.
Kajrishvili has crafted an acid moral fable, a pitch black “Being There”, with elements of Soviet Social Realism.
Inspired by a local living Tablisi "Saint Nicholas" (now known as King Nariman and found on Facebook) and
a Georgian short story Bye Amigo, Tinatin Kajrishvili's proposed dark comedy about religion morphed into this mordant magical realist satire.
Kajrishvili and Bulgarian cinematographer Krum Rodriguez created their exquisite black and white enclave around the mining town of Chiatura in western Georgia, creating images as textured and coruscated as those of Anselm Keifer. The majestic high-res black and white images are pure Art House, like Bela Tarr, Tarkovsky or Laila Pakalnina (The Shoe).
Kajrishvili favors wide shots, with her characters disappearing into the saturated black background mixed with closeups of their moments with the Saint.
Shooting in Rustavi, with it's giant metallurgical factory, they found a Soviet Era mining monorail.
Scabrous rugged hillsides, collapsed bridges, abandoned pit openings and rusted earthmovers surround the tiny mining town. As shot by Rodriguez it's a purgatory.
On a craggy clearing between the town and the mine, stands their miraculous Saint. Locals believe a miner named Valero survived a cave-in, lost his voice and performed miracles before he was tortured, crucified, and three days later turned to stone. The petrified stone saint slumps on his crucifix in full miners’ gear.
Unofficial sexton Berdo (Levan Berikashvili) tends to the Saint, muttering to him and us.
The elder Berdo 'lives' in an abandoned shaft that caved in ten years ago, killing a group of miners, including his son. Berdo lives with a dog Medea and talks with his son's invisible ghost. His shell-shocked wife (Lia Abuladze) wanders the mines hoping to see her dead son.
The townspeople are used to their Saint. They pray to him, confess to him, bribe him with offerings, all to feel secure. Locals line up and mount the steps to the petrified Saint. Miners pray to survive their shift in the mines. Elders bring him sacrifices and pray for blessings.
In a satiric scene, the schoolteacher explains his miracle to her school children and sends them up the step to inspect him. Like all kids on a field trip they are more interesting in running up the stairs, none even glance at the saint.
The statue is about to be removed and "restored".
Town officials arrive, busybody security officer (Gia Burdjanadze), mine owner (Temiko Tchitchinadze) and grimly serious Mari (Mari Kitia), whose husband Vano (George Bochorishvili) is now wheelchair bound after losing his legs in that same cave-in.
Hoping for a personal miracle, Mari is creating a temple museum to the saint and oversees the restoration.
They pull down the crucifix to take it to the unfinished museum for restoration. Exasperated pilgrims drag their animal sacrifices to the museum and beg officials to accept their offerings.
The next day Mari returns to the museum, accompanied by the officious mine owner and gossipy security officer. The statue has vanished from inside the locked room.
When a silent stranger (George Babluani) appears complete with stigmata, the townsfolk realize he is their own saint walking among them.
He is mute visitor, remaining passive as they attempt to incorporate a living saint into their simple rituals.
At first he is feted, posed in pictures with city officials but soon hypocritical villagers realize he is the custodian of their confessed secrets and a danger to them. What if he starts talking, worries the city leader.
Local criminals visit him at night. They expect him to bless their upcoming heist. The leader warns him, “We rule on earth, you protect us from up there or wherever you’ll be. We put our hope in you. But if something happens to us I’ll drag you down to hell with us”. Certain that his warning has landed, he tells his confederates “He's with us…he's our brother” before offering to take him “hunting fishing, whatever you want.”
Mari is the only one who wants to leave the town, a patriarchal enclave where people want nothing to ever change and mining is everything.
She’s begged her husband to leave, now they live together in domestic hell. He's wheelchair bound and enraged. She’s always gone, working on the Museum.
When he was a petrified Saint, Mari did everything for him, restored the crucifix site and built the museum.
Now she spends all her time with him.
Like Magdalene, Mari adopts the mute Saint as her savior. She had begged the Saint to kill her husband and free her. Now she thanks him for ignoring her prayers and attempts an embrace (which he endures) and begs him to free them from the town.
Left alone all day, Vani is depressed and jealous of the Citizen Saint. “I’m the Saint”, he cries but no-one listens.
Eventually the town determines the Saint is to return to the cross because as “both the Offender and the Victim he defaced the statue which belong to the people.” He owes them a complete statue. (Inspired Soviet era apparatchik-speak.)
Tied onto the cross he’s restored to his Calvary, but by the next day he’s gone again.
Vani drags the empty crucifix to the river. Ironically Vani is healed by the sight of the empty crucifix, as he tosses it into the river, liberated by the Saint’s disappearance.
When thankless Berdo, eventually blamed for the Saint’s second disappearance, takes on a new “custodial” role, his "widow" appears like one of the Marys at the foot of Christ's crucifixion.
As in Jules Dassin's 1957 "He Who Must Die", biblical allusion becomes reality.
Shooting in the real mines, the team used helmets with flashlights to light most of the scenes, including the mysterious sequences where headlights created rays of light approaching the camera.
In one magical realist scene, the Saint apparently reunites Berdo and his son, and other miners with their grieving families. The deep black tunnels, lit by headlights, seem a mirage, replete with Fellini-like whispers.
The team shot during the Covid lockdown, and, dressed in safety gear like the miners around them, faced the same dangers as the minors, shooting in the old narrow mines.
Many of Kajrishvili’s actors had worked on her previous films. Berdo was played by a younger stage actor made to look old. Real minors worked as extras. The crew worked as extras, playing miners in the tunnels they knew how to focus their headlights to light the scenes.
Thomas Jaeger’s brilliant sound design and Tako Zhordania’s spare score, charged with drones from the region’s ancient double reed horn, the Duduki, repetitive blares which sound like alarms, and choral passages, creates a mystical riveting atmosphere.
Produced by Lasha Khalvashi. who has developed and worked on Kajrishvili’s previous films.
Funded by CNC from France, the Bulgarian Film Center and the Georgian Film Center (plus some in-kind from the studios) the film premiered in Karlovy Vary where it won the Ecumenical Award.
Originally seen at AWFF, 2023
