(84b is Casablanca, which I’ve previously seen. It’s excellent, more than just its many many famous lines.)

So this movie is one of the strangest in the list so far. It’s an Armenian movie that’s a biography of a famous 18th century poet… but it’s not a conventional biography, it’s kind of scenes from his life rendered in poetic fashion, with (as the intro title card says) symbolism and allegory drawn from the Armenian troubadour tradition.

I’m going to be honest with you and admit that I know absolutely fucking nothing about the Armenian troubadour tradition and its symbols, so it’s very clear that much of this went whoosh right over my head. It’d be like somebody reading Ready Player One without ever having encountered American ’80s nerd culture before, just a complete pile of missing references, one after the other. Reading websites was enough to give me some rudimentary understanding of what was happening in most of the scenes, but honestly, the narrative I pulled out of this is pretty darn thin.

But that’s at least somewhat okay, because there’s a lot in it just from the angle of pure visual “poetry.” Scenes are staged as tableaux, with a fixed camera looking at a composed set of actors and other visual elements (rugs, chickens, books, sheep, whatever). The actors move in almost dance-like ways, generally, and actions are heavily stylized. Even if you don’t know what’s going on, it’s visually striking and immediately compelling. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, my glances at Twitter were pretty frequent during this movie, but there were definitely parts of it that kept me captivated.

The one downside to watching this right now is that the versions available to watch are pretty awful. There are actually two versions of the movie floating around on Youtube (it’s basically impossible to find anywhere else). One is the original Armenian one, the other is the Soviet one that has some minor censorship in it (they cut out some religious scenes because Communism, which is bizarre as the whole movie is suffused with religious scenes), and was for many decades the only available version. I watched the Armenian one, which is in pretty awful 480p, which is really unfortunate for a movie where visuals are so important.

There was actually a restoration done in 2014, with a high-def transfer of the Armenian version available on the indie film circuit; apparently, they’re going to make a Blu-ray of it later this year, so I guess for once I’ve just missed a newly restored version of one of these movies, which is kind of a pity.

Anyway, you should go play it on Youtube, fast forward to a random point, and watch at least a few minutes, because it really is something that deserves a few minutes of your time. But I kinda feel like if you’re going to watch the whole thing, you probably also ought to find some kind of reference key explaining the allegory, and what all the symbols in each scene mean, because watching it all uncomprehending probably isn’t as rewarding as it could be.