Yahoo News How François Truffaut’s ‘400 Blows’ Inspired George Sikharulidze’s Coming-of-Age Tale ‘Panopticon’
George Sikharulidze’s feature debut “Panopticon” is, the director says, a very personal movie.
The film, screening as a world premiere in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s main competition, is a coming-of-age story about a young man floundering to find himself in the absence of any meaningful parental authority.
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Sikharulidze, who grew up in a rough neighborhood of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, in the 1990s, where he lived with his grandmother, mother and sister, says he was inspired to draw on his own experiences in his first film by watching François Truffaut’s seminal 1959 film “The 400 Blows.”
“I am a graduate of New York University’s Media and Communications program,” the New York-based director tells Variety. “At the time, I was not sure that I wanted to make films, but saw a couple of movies, including the Truffaut, that led me to go to Columbia Film School to study directing.”
Truffaut’s film – about Antoine Doinel, a disturbed young man who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior – gave Sikharulidze the impetus to draw upon his own story of estrangement with his father, including a tribute to Truffaut when the film’s titles are glimpsed on a television set in one scene.
“Panopticon” – about the challenges a deeply religious young man, Sandro, faces as he struggles with his sexual feelings, and a difficult relationship with a largely absent father – reflects themes the director has met in his own life.
“I did not grow up in a religious family; when we were teenagers – as a result of specific social pressures – my sister and I turned to religions, to Christian Orthodoxy,” he notes. “We created a little prayer corner, with icons and candles. We would pray and go to church. I was the one who dragged my father to church.”
The film also reflects a broader view of where Georgian social and political culture is now, he adds.
“From the very beginning, the script is dealing with two worlds – the old traditional world, and the contemporary. Sandro is stuck between those two worlds.
“In the absence of his father, Sandro radicalizes and finds belonging in a movement I would call Christian Fascism – you see this in elements of what the current [Georgian] government is doing, using Christian fundamentalism to gain power and push Georgia further away from the liberal ideas of tolerance, independence and freedom. This is what is happening right now.”
A deeply intellectual director, Sikharulidze says the title, “Panopticon,” reflects the way in which society imprisons people by keeping them visible, while agents of power and authority remain invisible themselves. When Sandro’s father leaves for a monastery, he hands his powers of observation over to an unseen God. Sandro’s physical sexual impulses conflict with his internalized concepts of sin, and he attempts to hide his yearnings by pretending he has “accidently” touched a young woman’s behind as he passes her on the street, or dropped a bath towel so a woman in a neighboring flat can seem him naked from her window.
The director refers to the film’s final scene – where Sandro appears to have a chance of redemption – in which a college professor talks of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s reflection on Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison design, stating that “visibility is trap.”
“Actually, what we are seeing today in Georgia is a generation of young people who are making themselves visible. This is quite different from entrapment. It is visibility to gain freedom and to fight for the right cause – a European future, independence. To do that you have to make yourself visible and put yourself out there. It is very honest, genuine and commendable; it is what makes this generation hopeful.”
Looking toward the future, and trying to maintain faith in humanity seem to be part of Sikharulidze’s intellectual outlook: currently he is researching two projects. One is about a blind female therapist, and the other about Artificial Intelligence, trans-humanism and body transformation.
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