“Tears were dripping”: imaginary and real worlds of a sad fairy tale by Georgy Danelia

Abstract

The article analyzes the structure of the spatial solution of Georgy Danelia’s film “Tears were dripping”; the three most clearly defined worlds are emerged: this is fairy-tale, real and imaginary areas. Danelia builds the dramaturgy on the subtle interweaving of these realities, on the blurring and permeability of their boundaries. The fairy-tale world passes through the film narrative as counterpoint, creating the effect of high tragedy and “lingering” rock gravitating over the hero. The category of “low” and ordinary is embodied in the everyday reality in which the main character exists. The space of the “real”, as well as the fluctuations in the level of the “sublime”, do not provide for relaxation with laughter – on the contrary, the tension grows, the hero and his world move extensively from misfortune to even greater misfortune. Gradually, in the course of the development of visual dramaturgy, the shell of the “imaginary” world first cracks, and more and more intensively breaks up into fragments, exposing the unfriendly and gray “real” world of the era of stagnation. The director presents this world of the Late Soviet era with general plans or, on the contrary, with extremely large urban spaces that prevent identification. This paradoxical crowding, tightness of objects in the frame is given in the context of emptiness and / or darkness (evening and night shots), which forms the effect of a tense oppressive atmosphere, a brewing catastrophe.