Calendar (1993)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Before you sit to watch this movie, please make sure that you are enough open-minded to see a movie that is there not to entertain, but to express feelings, and that you have patience to see it through even if after first half of it you feel bored to death. Because, at one point, I felt that I was watching a movie with almost no plot, and with numerous repetitions of similar scenes that I could not comprehend.But then things began to unfold, I began to pick up symbols and feel emotions plugged into characters. There is no guarantee that all I understood was exactly what the director wanted me to, but I guess that is how art should be.Let me just mention some of my ideas that shouldn't spoil the movie for you. (1) The girls Photographer meets are all very beautiful, and also seem to form a sort of calendar. (2) Note that they ask for a phone exactly at the moment when he pours the last drop of wine into the glasses. I feel that this is the moment when purely physical relationship ceases to satisfy. (3) Translator and Driver entering the churches, and the Photographer staying outside, reflect perfectly different relations to life that they have, and the reason why the distance between them grows. (4) The sheep scene at the beginning seems endless and making no sense, but the same scene at the end hurts the most, because by that time you can also feel Driver's hand on yours.I watched many "art" movies that were praised by critics, and in which I felt there was nothing to feel or understand. This is not one of them, so please don't give it low votes just because you couldn't relate to it (or even worse, if you were not able to see it through)!

A small project wedged between his first two more mainstream products, The Adjuster and Exotica, Calendar stars the director and his wife, Arsinée Khanjian as a photographer and his wife. They are traveling to different Armenian churches in order to photograph them for a calendar. Both of them are Armenian by heritage, but he is disconnected from it, while she speaks the language (and acts as translator). During the trip, their Armenian guide begins to grow closer to the wife. The film actually takes place much later, as Egoyan, now no longer with his wife, is trying to duplicate her by holding "auditions" with women, presumably re-enacting the first meeting with his ex. It's all rather confusing. I never quite figured it all out. I'm not sure the film works. I liked all the stuff about the Armenian churches (some beautiful images here, and the film's style in these scenes is great), but the whole narrative about the dates never seemed to come to fruition. However, it is an extremely interesting film, and it's rather haunting at the end. Calendar itself may feel somewhat incomplete, but Egoyan is definitely a fully-fledged artist here. The only earlier film of his I've seen, Speaking Parts, did not communicate his talent. This is definitely worth seeing, especially as it only runs at 75 minutes.

Atom Egoyan's been very consistent in his career about two things. He likes messing with time frames, and his movies can come across as distant bordering on pretentious. Over the years he's been perfecting the former, and making improvements on the latter, as evidenced in Exotica, and, especially, in the beautiful, devastating The Sweet Hereafter. Calendar came before those films, and it is even more experimental than they are. It would feel pretentious if it wasn't for the fact that Egoyan (more or less playing himself) portrays himself in a very unflattering light. But the whole enterprise does have that familiar Egoyan chill. He plays a photographer who is taking pictures of old Armenian churches for a calendar.In what is perhaps an expression of self-doubt regarding his aesthetic instincts, his character seeks only to capture the superficial beauty of the churches, paying little attention to the history behind them. He is on this trip with his wife (played by Egoyan's wife), and both of them are of Armenian origin. In Calendar, Egoyan could be trying to comment on any number of things, about his relationship to his wife, to his roots, and to his art. At times it seems like you can almost discern a message coming through, and the film does become somewhat intriguing, but in the end the director is simply too subtle for his own good. And thus he keeps his audience at arm's length.The shots of churches, though, are beautiful enough to make one want to visit Armenia.

I have to speak out at how mediocre I felt this film to be. It has some creative gestures, such as the use of the calendar sequence and the once a month dinner dates, but these wore thin; I found the film not to be dynamic and highly predictable, if not in its outcome then at least in its process. The dialogue lacks, consisting mostly of monologues. It can be perceived as poignant and inventive, but not nearly enough to redeem it.