Stuff I Feel I Should Get

For a brief period of time, I was a lit major in college - it was a few majors back and I did write papers that were titled The Significance of... and actually had tons of justification and felt that I really believed it. That was when I was in the amateur leagues - films like The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat Nova) are for the pros only.

I used to get defensive as a college student when I was accused of bs-ing my way to a degree by writing papers on symbolism while they were slaving away at something like chemistry. Perhaps that was because there were times that I knew deep down that symbolism did come down to what I was getting out of the work - so I really wasn't going to be wrong unless I forgot how to read.

Yeah, so how could I forget to see? I don't believe I did, because I do remember The Color of Pomegranates being visually stunning. I read the back of the box where I was informed that this was a biography about the Armenian poet, Sayat Nova - as the title cards reminded me from time to time. There was religious symbolism...and I'm done. Honestly. I felt like I should somehow be getting more out of it, but I really just got, "this is all supposed to mean "something," so be impressed.

In the end, it upset enough people in the Soviet Union that it got the director sent to a gulag on trumped-up charges. Most claim the film was too subversive. I want to believe this, but I found it tedious. If it had not at least been visually stunning, I might have given up all together. Then again, it's on a million Top 100 lists (and this one as well) - anyone want to let me in on the joke?