Dirs. Gela & Témur Babluani, 2007, France/Georgia, 83 mins, subtitles
Genre: Drama / World
Cast: Sylvie Testud, Pascal Bongard, Georges Babluani, Leo Gaparidze
Review by Joyce Dundas
A road movie with a real emotional centre, Legacy is the kind of film Babel wishes it was. It manages to show how cultural differences can bring about disastrous consequences without all the histrionics employed in Iñárritu's epic. And it manages to do it in 83 minutes.
Three young French friends travel to Tbilisi to take possession of a ruined castle one of them has inherited and see some of the sights of this war-torn city. It is obvious from the shots of the city that Georgia's economy is still in trouble after years of civil war and the black market is healthy. The tourists have their video camera stolen while sightseeing and their laconic translator Nikolai (the wonderful Bongard) takes them to the thief's flat to buy it back without missing a beat. It's their first close up and personal experience of the culture clash with these particular East Europeans.
The castle, or what's left of it, turns out to be in the remote Georgian mountains a trip which Nikolai's clapped out old car is unlikely to survive. So after the tourists' initial shock that they can't fly there, they head off on a two-day bus trip into the mountains with the strangest rest stops at communal water fountains.
Their fellow passengers are an eclectic mix of Georgian peasants and eccentrics. The wonderful Legrand plays The Mute, an ex-soldier who does a great trade in tinned fruit and spam to feed the hungry passengers – his wares become invaluable during an overnight stay in the most unlikeliest of B&Bs, where the only sustenance at this particular farm seems to be home-made vodka. The Mute's tinned peaches go down a storm.
The most intriguing passengers on the bus though are an old man (Gaparidze) and his grandson (Georges Babluani) who are travelling with a coffin, not the kind of carry-on luggage the tourists are used to. The story behind the coffin is that the old man is due to be shot to end a long-running family feud. His death at the hands of his rivals will make the loss of life on both sides equal.
The story then takes an interesting turn in that only one of the tourists is genuinely horrified by this plan, while the other two see it as an opportunity to film the event and presumably make some money from it.
Needless to say things do not quite go according to plan and the presence of the foreigners impacts negatively causing the tragic defining moment of the film. As in Babel the fish out of water is what guides the plot.
The acting in the film is very understated as suits this difficult story. Georges Babluani is particularly moving as the grandson who has no choice but to go through with his task of escorting his beloved grandfather to certain death.
There are no histrionics, the story is presented as a fait accompli. That famous Western interference here only causes grief and forms a cautionary tale against inserting yourself into matters that are not of your concern.
This is a good film, which would have been charged with stereotyping certain characters were it not for the fact that the directors are Georgian with specific knowledge of the sometimes fierce and aggressive dwellers of this beautiful, mountainous region. The legacy those people hand on is not always beneficial.
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