besherat
I watched a phenomenal Armenian film by Atom Egoyan from 1993. Great movie with a wonderful presentation of Armenian churches, and nature.
Cameraman goes with his wife (Armenian) to take pictures for the calendar, on which are the Armenian churches. They take a guide, who tells them about the history of these cultural sites. His wife is also a translator. The film is interwoven with shooting staff, and current times when the photographer is thinking about his life. He is trying to establish a relationship with many women, and takes them to dinner .
It's always another one. The most interesting shots in the film are the scenes which are constantly appears. The same romantic dinner, scenes starts with a bottle of wine ,and her question, can I use the phone ? Each of them do the same, called their lover with whom they talk for hours, until he remembers his life and trying something to write about it. The film impressed me with its concept.
lasherxl
There are moments in the film of sheer visual brilliance and even a fantastic narrative, though I doubt anyone could ever deny Atom Egoyan is a visually haunting artist. Between the various ruins and moments of real time captured on the trip making the film you see a true landscape, not only of the area, but of its people and what makes them who and what they are.The problem is that with all that greatness are long moments of unneeded scenes or derivative exposition that remove the warm touching moments and at times just bore the ever loving crap out of you. Mind you I'm not anti art or art-esque films, it's just that these didn't really add a magical moment or create an air of mystery to the overall story or film.I feel like the best part of the film was the Armenian man's story. The added problem here is that you only ever hear his stories second hand via the female translator, and they lack the dramatic impact he has when telling them, only you can't understand his words because there are no subtitles.The 5 rating was mainly I just felt like everything good he captured he lost in being a tad pretentious.
Undead_Master
Coming into this film, I had only seen 3 of Egoyans films but I was very intrigued and I wanted to see some of his earlier work. I ended up really loving this one and it leaves me very excited to see the rest of his films.The first thing to mention about this film is how "bare bones" the production is. Calendar is incredibly minimalist. There are about 4 or 5 camera angles for the scenes in the house... Then there are the static shots of the churches and the video footage without sound, usually with voice overs. With this simple construction and only a few actors he makes a fantastic film that never feels confined or uncinematic.Even more interesting is the fact that the story is really not all that special. I mean if you put it in the right order and told it in a conventional way, it wouldn't amount to much of a film. By taking it apart and telling it out of order, he takes a simple story about marital difficulty and turns it into a mystery film. You quickly find yourself deconstructing everything and piecing it all together like a puzzle. Every line of dialog and even the most insignificant seeming details have some purpose.I was prepared for this kind of structure since I had seen a few of his films already but I can see how a newcomer to his work might take a little time to adjust to it.This is a rare case where the treatment is much more important to the film's success than the content. The fact that it's such a minor story and that it's still so successful is a testament to Egoyan's incredible talent. It's also a perfect case study in how form can sometimes be more important than function or even supersede function completely.The movie is much greater than the sum of its parts. Highly recommended.
zetes
A small project wedged between his first two more mainstream products, The Adjuster and Exotica, Calendar stars the director and his wife, Arsinée Khanjian as a photographer and his wife. They are traveling to different Armenian churches in order to photograph them for a calendar. Both of them are Armenian by heritage, but he is disconnected from it, while she speaks the language (and acts as translator). During the trip, their Armenian guide begins to grow closer to the wife. The film actually takes place much later, as Egoyan, now no longer with his wife, is trying to duplicate her by holding "auditions" with women, presumably re-enacting the first meeting with his ex. It's all rather confusing. I never quite figured it all out. I'm not sure the film works. I liked all the stuff about the Armenian churches (some beautiful images here, and the film's style in these scenes is great), but the whole narrative about the dates never seemed to come to fruition. However, it is an extremely interesting film, and it's rather haunting at the end. Calendar itself may feel somewhat incomplete, but Egoyan is definitely a fully-fledged artist here. The only earlier film of his I've seen, Speaking Parts, did not communicate his talent. This is definitely worth seeing, especially as it only runs at 75 minutes.
AD
