If there’s one thing modern Georgian Cinema understands, it is that run times are arbitrary. Last year’s excellent Comets, for example, clocked in at a lean 71 minutes, packing a dizzying emotional punch into such a compact story. Keko Cheidze’s Dead Souls’ Vacation (not to be confused with the similarly titled Wang Bing film), goes even further, as if it were playing a cinematic game of limbo. At just sixty-seven minutes, this is about a thin a feature as you can possibly get.
The question you’d expect here is something along the lines of “is this too short?” In actuality, the question I’m asking is if this is already too long. Cheidze’s documentary follows forty-five-year-old bass player Levan Svanidze who used to be a big musician. Recent times have not particularly been kind to him, as he’s found himself broke and living in a small studio apartment with his mother. Levan is in stasis, unable to really advance his career, and unable to exit the game. The film is tremendously observational, with minimal intervention. Scenes merely seem to happen, until they no longer do.
Truth be told, I find documentaries that are like this to be a far superior breed to the talking docs that most associate with the genre. But Dead Souls’ Vacation struggles to hold the interest of its audience and might be better suited to a snappy short format. I find the term boring to be a, well, boring critique, but it might be apt here. The film is very sweet, the banter between son and mother is undoubtedly charming, and the film is particularly well shot. But it needs a little more meat to truly be great. For info on how to see Dead Souls’ Vacation you can visit Hot Docs right here.
- Release Date: 5/28/2020