13 Tzameti
August 28th 2008 08:13
During the First World War, isolated Russian soldiers entertained themselves by putting loaded revolvers to the heads of their prisoners. They would remove all bullets from the cylinder barring one. They'd spin the cylinder, snap it back into place and put the gun to the prisoner's head. They pulled the trigger while other soldiers bet on the outcome. Mostly the gun never went off, but sometimes it did... and what's one life sacrificed as entertainment?
Okay, so that's just one of many legends. Nobody can say how it really began, but the "sport" of Russian roulette has become a fixture in popular culture ever since The Deer Hunter. I even contributed with my debut novel Rush (which sports a few parallels with the movie I'm about to review). I've come to learn that most people have some familiarity with the game even if they've never heard the phrase "Russian roulette". What it boils down to is risking a life on pure chance. One bullet and five empty chambers.
13 Tzameti puts a unique twist on a very sick game. It's a black and white French film, but this shouldn't put off everybody who just groaned upon reading it. You forget how powerful a black and white image can be. The film has a timeless quality. It's representative of no particular historical frame, but it shows the inherent greed in human nature that can drive men to do horrible things. There's a statement about money and power in there somewhere, too.
I'm not going into detail on the story here, because getting there is a large part of the fun when you already know where things are headed. 13 Tzameti takes a while before getting there, but it's not giving away too much to say the heart of the film lies in a tense Russian roulette competition. It probably would be giving away too much to reveal how the game is played here (the poster hints).
These gun-to-the-head sequences are some very tense material. Director Géla Babluani deserves much credit: the film could've been filled with exploding heads, but he never resorts to graphic violence. It's stark, but there's also a cold sense of detachment. The characters aren't overly compelling, so it's more to Babluani's credit that he can extract such thrills from situations involving people I never cared about. I'd like to imagine how intense this film could've been if I'd had an emotional investment in anybody onscreen.
Despite some wasted potential there's still plenty to like about 13 Tzameti. You might not care once it's over, but you'll definitely remember the anxious wait before the pull of a trigger.
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