The Color of Pomegranates is one of the most singular works of late-1960s cinema. Made in the Soviet Union at a moment when artistic expression was both cautiously permitted and tightly controlled, the film resists conventional narrative altogether. Instead of telling the life of the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova in dramatic scenes, Parajanov constructs a sequence of visual tableaux; iconic, symbolic, liturgical.

The film unfolds like a series of illuminated manuscripts brought to life. Each frame is composed with painterly precision: flat perspectives, frontal figures, ritual gestures. Dialogue is sparse, meaning is carried by texture; wool, stone, fruit, fabric- and by the repetition of symbolic objects. Parajanov directs with absolute control of image and rhythm. Actors often appear less as characters than as embodiments of states; youth, faith, longing, mortality. Sofiko Chiaureli, in multiple roles, becomes a fluid presence across gender and age, reinforcing the film’s dreamlike structure.

The film stands at the edge of modernist cinema, alongside Tarkovsky and Pasolini, yet it feels even more distilled, it does not seek immersion but rather contemplationof as an experience of sacred art.

Merthes' choice

The Fountainhead (1949), directed by King Vidor and based on Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel, is a film of fierce conviction. Emerging in the early years of the Cold War, it carries the tone of its time: ideological, declarative, unafraid of grand statements about the individual and society.

Rand adapted her own novel for the screen, preserving much of its philosophical spine. The story follows Howard Roark, an uncompromising architect who refuses to bend his designs to popular taste. In both book and film, Roark stands as the embodiment of radical individualism. The narrative is less concerned with realism than with principle. Characters serve as positions in an argument.

Visually, Vidor embraces monumentality. Architecture is filmed as destiny: stark lines, towering structures, clean horizons. The climactic courtroom speech- lifted almost verbatim from the novel- is staged not as subtle drama but as proclamation. It is less about persuasion than declaration.

Whether one agrees with Rand’s philosophy or not, the film stands as a clear artifact of postwar American thought: ambitious, ideological, and unapologetically serious about the power of the lone creator.

Andreas' choice