13 Tzameti, 2005

A remarkable and haunting movie. Somewhat of a modern version of Kafka's "The Trial," but here the protagonist seems to have exercised modern free will, however foolishly, to get his ticket on a darkly absurd train of events that call into question all forms of making sense of life. What propels him? Curiosity? Greed? Boredom? A desire to know what's hidden? (One manager near the end tells his lost charge that the best way to deal with his horrifying dead end is to take it "philosophically"---said with absolutely no irony.) I am no big fan, with a couple exceptions, of Tarentino, and "13 Tzameti" does violence with a terrifying insouciance that puts him to shame, to say nothing of making meretricious slag like "The Fight Club" seem even more the commercialoid tripe that it was. Filmed in stunning black and white, offering the side benefit of nicely reducing the superfluous gore that might have been. The version I saw not only had rich deep contrasts, but a sort of jaundiced, yellow, silver-gray tone that was like a metallicized gelatin print. (The National Center of French Cinematography was a co-participant.) A painful view into something, but what exactly, I am left wondering----I have never been so hooked and terrified by dismal circumstances, presented almost elegantly in its blank-faced fashion. Very unusual. 4.09 ______ I've leraned the title literally means "13 - 13," (in the language of Georgia, a former Soviet Union dependency), which resonates later in the movie.

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