74 Books & arts The EconomistAugust 31st 2019
2T
he balkanshave been described as a
region that produces more history than
it can absorb. About Georgia—another
craggy, contested place—it might be said
that there is a chronic surplus of culture.
Start with indigenous traditions such as
epic poetry and polyphonic singing; then
factor in the ability of Georgians to master
cultural forms born elsewhere, including
theatre and classical music.
When Georgia was pickled in Soviet as-
pic, those gifts were a lifeline to the world.
Its theatre and film directors, with their
quietly subversive messages, were revered
across the Soviet Union. To Western audi-ences, they were a reminder that not all was
drab in the communist bloc. Now that
Georgia is a democracy, many of its artists
thrive abroad yet retain close ties to their
homeland. Amid the chaos after the Soviet
collapse, Luka Okros, now a 28-year-old pi-
anist, startled his parents by showing signs
of genius at the age of four. He trained in
Moscow and is now based in London, inter-
preting Liszt, Chopin and Rachmaninov in
concert halls around the world, and—like
other expatriate maestros—giving at least
one big recital a year in Tbilisi.
But for all the sophistication of Geor-
gia’s capital, there is still a gap between theatmosphere of diaspora communities and
the cultural mores of the old country,
where the Orthodox church is dominated
by ultra-conservatives and has a violent
fringe. The reception of a Georgian-lan-
guage film that deals with a gay romance
has brought that divide into focus.
“And Then We Danced” drew a standing
ovation at Cannes in May and has since
won praise and prizes across Europe; it will
be screened in London and Paris in the near
future. But the Georgian authorities, who
usually encourage film-making in the
country’s ancient, expressive tongue, have
kept their distance and refused to provide
any funding. In Georgia’s homophobic cli-
mate, the shooting of the film—about an
affair between two young male dancers—
had to be semi-clandestine, says Levan
Akin, a Swede of Georgian origin and the ti-
tle’s director.
Mr Akin calls the film a love-letter to
Georgia, which he often visited as a child.
Unlike many of today’s young Georgians,
who prefer techno to tradition, he adores
the indigenous heritage. But he feels it
must be liberated from its self-appointed
guardians: people like the film’s steely
dance teacher who insists, implausibly,
that there is nothing sensual about the gy-
rations he demands. Mr Akin was inspired
to make the movie after reading in 2013 that
a gay-pride event in Tbilisi had been ha-
rassed by thugs and zealots. (The hand of
Russia, which occupies a chunk of the
country, may lurk behind such ructions.)
Towards the film’s end there is a funny,
touching exchange between Merab, a dan-
cer and the hero (pictured right), and his
boozy, just-married brother David. “I’ll just
be another fat, drunk Georgian...and that’s
fine,” says David. “But you, Merab, are spe-
cial and that’s why you must leave Georgia
now.” For their part, the dancer-actors who
play Merab and Irakli, his partner in a fleet-
ing, passionate relationship, are adamant
that they will not emigrate. Both Levan Gel-
bakhiani and Bachi Valishvili (left) say they
will stay and fight for a more tolerant soci-
ety. “When there’s a leak in your home you
don’t leave, you fix it,” says Mr Valishvili.
That is brave, given the hate mail (roughly
balanced by fan mail) that they have re-
ceived from compatriots.
In the main, spiky ideas—as well as peo-
ple—slide backwards and forwards be-
tween Georgia and the world with an ease
that would astound a Soviet time-traveller.
David Papava, for example, left home in the
1990s and made a name as a director of ex-
perimental theatre in London, before re-
turning to Tbilisi. His rendering of Aris-
tophanes’s comedy, “The Birds”, took digs
at the country’s extravagant political class.
“Some critics didn’t like my work,” Mr Pa-
pava recalls, “but I never felt threatened.”
Many censorious old habits have waned—
but some endure. 7A film has set up a culture clash between Georgia and its diasporaCulture in the CaucasusThe dancer and the dance
Mr Meek throws ropes from the present
to the past. His noblewoman is headstrong
and emancipated—almost a millennial—
who dreams of a storybook lover and self-
harms in secret. Will is pursued by a besot-
ted friend who plays provocatively with bi-
nary conceptions of gender. Thomas, the
proctor, may live in the 14th century, but
his musings carry a powerful message for
stratified Brexit-era Britain:How radically the space I traverse differs
from the mental chart of those, like Will
Quate, whose universe might be circumnav-
igated in an hour. My Europe is his Outen
Green; my continent his manor.This is a book about the power of perspec-
tive and the importance of broadening ho-rizons. The Black Death is a kind of hold-all
catastrophic metaphor: for climate change,
political meltdown and moral decay.
Like all fiction, but perhaps more so,
historical novels live or die by their use of
language. Few attempt an accurate repre-
sentation of the speech of a bygone era,
seeking rather to forge their own idiom to
give the reader the impression of that time.
Mr Meek goes further: each protagonist
speaks in a different register. Will’s tale is
related in a kind of Chaucer-lite; in accor-
dance with her reading, Bernadine’s narra-
tive is French-inflected; Thomas is reso-
lutely Latinate. This tapestry makes for a
compelling story that, like all great histori-
cal fiction, is not only about the past, but
says profound things about the present. 7