At the end of the film, when sitting paralyzed in the movie hall and listening to the ending music, I was very glad that I had braced myself for almost a whole day without sleeping and was on the verge of disintegration, rushing to see this movie that I had been looking forward to since last year's Golden Horse Film Festival. The plot is very simple and does not intend to explore any profound issues, but the light that eventually faintly shines throughout the oppressive social atmosphere of the entire film is determined and warm, not only shining on the protagonist Merab, who bravely dances against the light, but also on georgia, the hometown of director Levan Akin.
Live in a tradition of denial of fragility
Just in recent months, I have watched two dance-related films, both in Eastern European countries that are more conservative about gender issues, although the times are different and the dilemmas faced by the characters are completely different, but through dancing, they create and show that under the established system, the impulses and desires of personal emotions and life have different possibilities are similar.
However, the Merab of this article "Then We Danced" is not like the protagonist of "The White Crow", Nuriev, who has a strange temper that can be external to the environment since childhood, and a firm confidence in his own ability, Mercab, who likes to dance, while practicing dance in the dance company to seek the opportunity to be selected for the National Dance Company, also has to work to earn money to bear the family economy; and unlike our general neutral imagination of dancers who are both powerful and beautiful, Georgian traditional dance emphasizes the pure masculinity of male dancers - "There is no room for weakness here." That's what the dance teacher said to him in the play.
When character manifestations outside of traditional social values are seen as manifestations of the weak, and Merab represents a double negation of ability and emotion, the questioning eyes from teachers and peers show that no matter how hard he tries to hold on to a stable life, it turns out to be just a shaky illusion.
The sudden disintegration of emotions after the first budding
It was the appearance of Irakli that caused his original world to begin to crack. When dancing with Irakli, he can be more than just the role he has to play when dancing with a long-term female dance partner, the boy who suddenly breaks into the dance practice classroom with earrings and has a completely different temperament, making him gradually realize that his emotions are closer to the real appearance.
Although the rumors of a dancer of the National Dance Company being banished for being exposed for his homosexuality have been circulating among the whispers of his companions since the beginning of the film, Merab, who is accustomed to biting his lip and being patient, still chooses to go to Irakli. I think he may have vaguely felt in his subconscious that not only the enlightenment of sexual orientation, but also the heavy shackles that had long been pressed on his arms holding the plate and on his leaping steps in the process of interacting with Irakli were also loosening little by little.
He had thought that the weight reduction would come from finally having someone who could face the obstacles in front of him, which would give him a space to relax in the face of the financial pressures of his family, so he had the motivation to continue to work hard and become the person who had to be in order to survive on the established path.
Overnight, however, reality mercilessly shattered his beautiful yearning. The boy who broke into his life also had his own personal life problems to face. And when he suddenly disappeared, all the suffering seemed to multiply a thousand times over him, but in fact, the root cause of the suffering was always there, and after all, he had to watch and do it himself.
Re-find the force point in the fragment
That night was almost the most important turning point in Merab's life, with dancing legs, a subsistence job, trust with his family, all the things he had struggled to support and sustain him before he met the boy, all shattered. Perhaps like the crazy spinning and failing of Irakli after he disappeared, he couldn't understand why the way the boy had taught him to exert force suddenly no longer worked.
In hindsight, it was in such a desperate and out-of-control mood that he would follow a stranger he met by chance into a world that was impossible to step into in the past. Although there was some concern at the moment, I was glad that he chose to go inside. At the time of his encounter with Irakli, Merab's eyes were only on the space where Irakli was located, but this night's contact with the LGBT community must have enabled him to have more imagination, about his neutral temperament that was not accepted by the group to which he belonged, about his sexual orientation that was not generally accepted by the society in which he lived.
I think what they brought to Merab in this plot may reflect their image in the director's mind — although they can only live in bars and streets after sunset, compared to the indifference of Merab to dance troupe teachers, peers, and even neighbors during the day, this group of people who dance at night still retain the tenderness and fortitude that can tolerate vulnerability.
This is the first and most real-time support That Merab, who is so vulnerable that he thinks he has nothing. It supported him in the face of setbacks from foot injuries and the blows of falling out of love afterwards, and perhaps, more to come.
Embrace your truest self when dancing
My brother's wedding seemed to remind these young people of the traditional Georgian society that stood firm and could not be ignored. However, it is always on such occasions filled with rituals that people have the opportunity to precipitate and see some personal things.
For Merab, how eager he was to walk through the noisy crowd to Irakli at the banquet, how nerve-wracking was the section of his walk back after saying goodbye to Irakli... Ironically, what caught him at this time was the hug from Mary, the young plum bamboo horse dance partner who was rejected by him, who chased him out of the venue, and the brother who was always unreliable and messed things up, who whispered in his arms on the bed and said, "Get out of here!"
Sorry we didn't understand you in the past, but we'll support you next.
Feel free to get out of here and go to a place that embraces your future.
Somewhat surprisingly, mary and her brother's message to him was so frank and sincere. So after experiencing the sudden collapse of life, on the night that the boy who had led him officially disappeared into his life, he finally understood that even if he could not become the person that the system required to be, such a self was not without a place to live.
Standing in front of the examiner in a red robe dressed in traditional dance, Merab, although his sprained ankle is still not healed, his eyes are clearer than at any moment in the film. Looking at the last one-and-a-half-minute dance, I can't help but think of Alice who used paper cups as dancing shoes under Shunji Iwai's lens.
Those spins that hurt until the bleeding stop, and the chief examiner rolls over his sleeves and still continues to knock on the ground, is the most real Merab at the moment. The person who left the table did not understand, and Mary, who accompanied him into the interview hall, understood; the musician who had been watching him practice without interrupting the accompaniment might understand, and did the teacher who silently saw the last teacher understand?
Maybe, but that doesn't matter anymore. He just wanted to feel it once, without those shackles and weight-bearing himself, where was the limit? What will it be like to be the self who does not have to play the established role?
The director said the film was his love letter to Georgia
The film doesn't give us an answer about his future. After all, this story is not as old as The White Crow's Nuriev, and the open-ended ending may be to tell us that this is all happening in Georgia now, and people in the same predicament as Merab are still looking for answers.
The film is not about revealing reality, and I believe that reality is definitely a million times more difficult than the story. However, when I tearfully looked at the light that accompanied the protagonist's dancing posture, I still couldn't help but thank the director in my heart for everything that Merab had arranged, that is, walking in a bumpy cave, struggling to move forward but feeling the faint tenderness of the light - maybe this is also a kind of gentleness to Georgia.