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Georgia, Germany · 2013
1h 41m
Director Tinatin Gurchiani
Starring
Genre Documentary
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The story begins with an experiment. A filmmaker in the country of Georgia posts an ad inviting youth to audition for her film. Facing the camera, the hopefuls confess their struggles and dreams. These raw interviews unfold seamlessly into cinematic slivers of Georgian life.
If it aims to be an inside story of life in Georgia, a kind of people's history of Georgian youth, this documentary sometimes feels like scattershot vox-pop journalism. Its individual threads resonate strongly, but the larger pattern never comes together; the social tapestry meant to be on display seems, to the end, to have holes in it.
The slippages and contradictions between who people are, imagine themselves to be, and present themselves as being inform the structure of Machine, a kind of loose container into which people step and out of which they extract more ideal selves.
Those already well-versed in Georgia’s recent history will get the most from a series of real-life character sketches occasionally cryptic for their lack of contextualizing explanation. But the docu’s ample human interest and handsome lensing, despite much visual evidence of a struggling economy, will hold interest for most viewers.
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
It ever so subtly zeros in on the extreme particularities of a remote place to find something universal, or at the very least easily comprehensible about despair.
The Hollywood Reporter by Duane Byrge
As a National Geographic-style pictorial, The Machine is modestly engaging.
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
Unfortunately, there's a lack of structure, context and point of view to the largely gray, grim, hardscrabble world presented here.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
The film produces moments that catch in the throat.
This is a film about people whose stories are still being written, and who, despite their palpable sense of exhaustion, are still seeking healing and hope. There are no Hollywood endings here. That’s just the truth, which Gurchiani has proved she’s committed to capturing.
The film captures a few surprising similarities to the West: One dead-eyed club kid says she’s “tired of everything,” while a hopeful young actor seems to be trying out for her own reality show, breaking down in front of her estranged mother. The experiment isn’t more than a slice of life, but at least it’s a generous one.
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