4.5/5 ★
Eldar Shengelaia’s 1963 film is a visually alluring and emotional exploration of the age-old conflict between tradition and modernity.
Georgian director Eldar Shengelaia’s third film The White Caravan, co-directed with Tamaz Meliava, is a prime example within a wave of films dedicated to depicting fading traditions and the desire for modernity as something melancholy, violent, and to be fought against.
Shengelaia’s first venture into realism, the opening third of the film can be mistaken for a documentary as main character Gela (Imedo Kakhiani) narrates the traditional annual shepherding trek from the Georgian mountains to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Alongside the narration are stunning shots of hundreds of sheep winding their way through misty mountain glaciers, pouring through tunnels as light filters through the dust, and hopping across the train tracks criss-crossing the empty steppes, punctuated only by oil and gas depots. It is a journey that takes on average one and a half months, after which the shepherds and their flock will remain in the winter pastures until summer comes and they trek all the way back — the shepherds spend only three months of the year in their Georgian village with their wives and children.
This year, Gela narrates, seven men are making the trek together, including Gela’s strong-willed father Martia (Spartak Bagashvili), younger brother and greenhorn Vazhia (Giorgi Kikadze), and the newly married Balta (Merab Eliozishvili). It is only once the men reach the shores of the Caspian and find local woman Maria (Ariadna Shengelaia, then-wife of director Eldar Shengelaia) sheltering in their hut that the film loses some of its realism to become a more classic romantic drama.
Unfortunately, the romance is one of the film’s weaker points. Gela’s courting of Maria comes across, at least to the modern viewer, more as sexual harassment than true affection, with little apparent chemistry between the two. And while Maria originally objects to Gela’s wandering hands, it only takes a cliché galloping horse chase to win her over — the two quickly begin seeing each other, with clear intentions to marry.
A source of conflict between the two emerges, however, after Gela makes a trip to the big city. Just as cinematographers Leonid Kalashnikov and Giorgi Kalatozishvili expertly captured the white caravan of sheep descending through the mountainous valleys, so too do they magnificently express the frantic lifestyle inherent to the city in the dazzling lights and the whirling movement of its denizens. It is here Gela wishes to go, leaving behind his family and their traditions and uprooting Maria from her grandfather’s home on the sea.
In this, Gela stands opposed to all of his loved ones, who wish to remain as they are — eventually, this causes him to break with kith and kin in an attempt to strike out on his own.
Ariadna Shengelaia as Maria shines in this film, carrying the brunt of the emotional load — despite his smaller part and young age, Giorgi Kikadze as Vazhia also gives a stunning performance. It is their acting that carries the film through its final third and to the ultimate tragic climax.
Though a bit melodramatic at times, The White Caravan is a stunningly beautiful film, one that provides great insight into the shifting patterns of Georgian traditions and lifestyles in the 1960s. Despite being early in Eldar Shengelaia’s oeuvre, it is one of his best works, well worth revisiting if just for the cinematography alone.
Film details: The White Caravan (1963), directed by Eldar Shengelaia and Tamaz Meliava. Available to watch on Klassiki.
