Under a Different Sky "Another land and another sky. They might exist somewhere in a distance..." - Merab Mamardashvili. This is an epigraph to this literary script and, accordingly, the key inspiration of the title and the film. "Another Sky" is a synonym for the other world. The main characters in Dmitri Mamulia's film are a father and son, ethnic Tajiks who arrive in a big city to find their wife/mother. The big city is supposedly Moscow, but some specifics are out of place. There are two parallel mutually impenetrable spaces. "Another" in this case means "alien". The main character is "alien" but not alienated. The farce discussed by the characters is one of the attributes of "Another" reality. The language field is, after all, the space in which man exists, be it communicatively or creatively and spiritually. Human feelings likely do not fall within this universe. Moreover, the two concepts – humanity and life – are incompatible. There is only mimicry, a social stereotype to which a subject adjusts. For Mamulia, being different is of value. The over38
>> Irina Demetradze
arching task of the director is to ignore conventionality. The characters reject the language spoken by the universe. The road movie in Mamulia's interpretation is monotonous. The archetypal subject lines (Biblical and cinema allusions) are not developed in a classical way. The very act of sacrifice (only after his son's death does the main character find his wife) does not imply any impersonal act. The author points out that nothing occurs in reality. Any kind of dynamics and genesis is related only to cognition. In a sense, "to find" means to get an indirect viewpoint, i.e. reject the perception conditioned by civilization and culture, the average language norm. The rhythm of the film either forms this new viewpoint, or vice versa. Elliott wrote that the world will end not with an explosion but with a sigh. There is no explosion in Mamulia's film either, nor any other visible cataclysm. The parallel world simply takes precedence. Absence equals presence. This has conditioned the new philosophy in Mamulia's film. The heroes of the 20th century were characterized by a certain "committed existential-
ism". Non-conformism and rejection of reality arose from other causes. "Another Sky" almost ignores external existence. Only the inner world of the main characters is universal. This is not an "absurd world"; it is neither unreal nor super-real. This is more quasi-reality. Is the language of the film subject to rationalization? Not really. These days, rational mostly means committed. The myth, in this case the story of Abraham and Isaac, is not a device that illustrates the life of the main characters. For the author, the death of the son is not a sacrifice. It is an ethical dilemma (as is the case with S. Kierkegaard). This is also conventionality. A son is a symbol of life and the future. But in the parallel world beneath "Another sky", similar motivation is out of place. The signs of the times, the social backdrop, existence, and the problem of migration are wholly realistic, but this does not make the film an example of so-called "direct cinema". It is impossible to identify oneself with the characters and the environment. Again and again, this is a different sky. Each episode is