The story of a weirdo, which perhaps no one noticed For the first time I watched this film as a schoolboy, somewhere in the second half of the 80s (apparently, immediately after its release), on television. I didn’t understand much at the time, but... I had this movie in my head, and as an adult I wanted to watch it again. However, it was not so easy to find it: I remember the basis of the plot, but the title of the film completely escaped my mind. I only remember that the word “England” is somehow present in this very name. However, as they say, who is looking - he will always find: my search was eventually crowned with success, and I was able to watch this film again, already through the eyes of an adult.
The first thing that catches the eye is the stylization of the film for a documentary (or semi-documentary) film. The director even played with the color scheme: shots related to modernity (although, to what modernity - 80-ies - this is also history) are given in color. And the past is in black and white (or rather brown and white) as if we were watching a documentary chronicle. Which, however, is also present in the film, organically woven into its canvas.
The second is the courage with which the filmmakers talk about Georgia. In the film, it is actually presented not as part of some amorphous USSR, but as a separate country with its own destiny, different from distant Russia. And this, I recall, is in the mid-80s! Of course, it was not without the traditional cliches for that time, such as the mention of the “Menshevik” government or the “victory of the revolution in Georgia” (the fact that the country was simply occupied by the Red Army, of course, not a word).
Of course, the film is not about politics. In the center of the plot is the English telegraphist Christopher Hughes, whom the British Royal Telegraph Company sent to distant Georgia to serve a small, lost in the mountains, section of the London-Delhi telegraph line. I sent and eventually forgot: due to the political situation, the telegraph line stopped working, all telegraphers were recalled home to Britain. But Hughes did not get information about this - he continued to walk, inspect and put in order the 10 kilometers of telegraph wire entrusted to him daily. Loyalty to his native Britain, its king and the defunct telegraph company. And also – the young Georgian girl Anna, who loved him, who taught him Georgian songs and the only one dared to ask her brother-Bolshevik Nestor the question of why, speaking about the love of the new government for Man, this new power threw this very man out of the village, into the cold. However, the Bolshevik brother mentioned above sees in Hughes only a “misguided proletarian”, dreaming of painting him “in red”, and so – if lucky – the whole of England. However, in the end, Nestor changes anger to mercy, but - too late: Hughes dies a ridiculous death at the hands of another victim of Nestor - landlord Lawrence.
The ending of the film is also interesting. A few years later, Anna finds Lawrence in the city in a bid to avenge Hughes' murder. But... No one noticed the shot – Georgia was actively celebrating the tenth anniversary of the establishment of Soviet power. And these very words sound like a verdict of the Soviet government, which behind the high facade of beautiful slogans about love for people did not care at all about these very people, their lives and problems.
Perhaps no one noticed the film in the same way - everyone was engaged in something else, more grandiose but aimless. It’s never too late to watch a movie, is it?
10 out of 10