It's not about the fruit

Zaza Urushadze's Tangerines. a quiet antiwar film from Estonia, deals with local war and ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe. A local firefight between Georgians and Chechen fighters leaves three dead and two wounded. So Ivo (veteran actor Lembit Ulfsak) and his neighbor and collaborator on tangerine-marketing Margus (Elmo Nüganen) bury the wounded and hide a wrecked van and care for Chechen mercenary Ahmed (Giorgi Nakashidze) and more seriously injured Georgian Nika (Mikhail Meskhi), whom Ahmed is bent on killing at first opportunity in retribution for his fallen comrades. Two topics come up, by implication, here: the arbitrariness of war and the disrupting effect of national boundaries. Urushadze achieves what he sets out to do, but there is nothing earth-shaking or deeply moving.

Of course Ahmed and Nika do not wind up killing each other. To begin with Ivo declares his house a neutral zone, and both men give their word they'll respect it. There is another situation. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, when ethnic conflicts broke out, most of the Estonians living as a minority here in 1992 Abkhazia where the action takes place have returned to Estonia, but Ivo is too tied to the place, despite a beautiful granddaughter who grew up in his house, and other relatives. He is a carpenter, and makes boxes. The pretext for remaining now is to produce the crates for Margus' tangerine crop, which needs to be harvested rapidly. They linger for this. But where they are has become too dangerous as Georgian-Chechen fighting comes closer and closer: witness the encounter right outside Margus' house that has led to the wounding of Ahmed and Nika. It becomes gradually clear that this is not time to be harvesting and packing tangerines, highly profitable thought they will be. Margus and Ivo should have left.

The actors play well together, and Lembit Ulfsak wears his role like a second skin. All the presences are strongly felt, even though Nik and Ahmed seem more gesture than personality. In the end Tangerines is a film of situation rather than event. Despite excellent use of location and handsome soft landscape images (the subtle work of dp Rein Kotov), this feels like a play. It might even work better as a play, where each line of dialogue would get maximum attention. There is no harm in another antiwar film, but this one is hardly earthshaking.

Tangerines/Mandariinid, 87 mins., debuted at Warsaw where it won a jury prize and directing prize, continuing at some other festivals. Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival, 2014.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.