Me, bebia, Iliko da Ilarioni (1962) Online

This is a very nice comedy but probably one has to be Georgian to fully understand it.

What may come as a surprise for some western viewers - is that in a soviet film of 1962 - there is virtually nothing spoken about communism and politics. Even WWII that has definite impact on the life of residents of small Georgian village goes on somewhere far away and can be felt but not seen.

Film is based on one of the most popular novels of N. Dumbadze - writer whose humoristic, touching, very insightful and at the same time easy to read novels and short stories made him incredibly popular among Georgians. Of course, fans of the book find the film inferior to the novel, but still quite nice. The only real complain that was ever made about it - that the male lead seems to be more of a well-brought middle-class city boy, than a smart, sly, provincial, but still adorable character of the book.

As I mentioned the film is a comedy but contains one rather sad episode where S. Takaishvili provides really stellar performance.

The director - T. Abuladze later made Tree of Wishes and Repentance that are among the greatest films ever made in Georgia.

far from basic adaptation, it is picture of rural Georgia in Abuladze style. nuances of feelings, levels of gestures, war, love story, hope, sacrifice, beauty of a life way out of common rules. a not complicated film , fruit of one of great teenagers book. in fact, it is arena for delicate - precise art of Sesilia Takaishvili as wise, nice, powerful grandmother and occasion to reveal the rules of friendship, end of an age, purity of love and faces of village. nothing great. just Abuladze exploring a Georgia in which Soviet regime is only a small shadow and freedom - just definition of each image. a touching meeting between Abuladze science of detail and Dumbadze novel.

for me , it is a special film. and the motif is simple - the evening when I read the novel of Dumbadze and my love for Abuladze work. sure, it is not real different by many other Georgian films from the same period. but its air is unique for the colors and emotions of childhood, for the portraits of adults, for the image of village, for the end. it is a film about freedom in a period who was not real comfortable. it is a film about nostalgia and miracles preserved by only an age and about grow up.and the air of meet with an old universe, so familiar and strange is the source, basic source of seduction in this case. because it is more than the happy meet between a popular novelist and a great director. it is almost a confession about yourself, to you.