Corn Island

As a review, I wouldn't go much into detail since the movie itself is minimal in most of the sense but if you are nature loving slow paced artistic movie fan, You will surely love this movie.

Although movie present post-war conflict between two nations, there's hardly any dynamics in visually or audibly.Simple story narration, An old man and his grand daughter find themselves in a small island temporarily formed by river and cultivate corn.

Director portray entire procedure in growing a corn plants which might feel a bit slow but the breezy tone of the cinematography makes the movie intellectually engaging This is a thought provoking beautifully executed art piece.

Every spring the Inguri River, which forms the boundary between Georgia and Abkhazia, washes down rocks and soil creating tiny islands. Local peasants leave the riverbanks for the firm, fertile island soil to grow corn through the summer before they are eroded away by winter. Georgia's submission for Best Foreign Language Film Corn Islanddirected by George Ovashvili follows a nondescript ageing farmer and his naive granddaughter as they migrate to an island and cultivate a year's crop. During such time, border patrols from both Georgia and Abkhaz pass by, causing tensions to rise between each other while the protagonists are caught in the middle.

Corn Island provokes an idea most memorable in the finale of Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion – this illusion being the definitions of land ownership. Through nature's creation of a temporary island and then the Old Man's claim of his own little country, the film poetically points out the irrationality of conflict over differences from being born on different pieces of land. It's thoroughly profound, but one only teased in the otherwise sparse film. Ovashvili's approach is very reminiscent of the work of Ki-duk Kim, especially Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring, with the tranquil relationship with nature, meditative pace and limited dynamics, but equal in their beauty.

The narrative is procedural, simply watching the characters build a hut, plant the seeds and farm the crop. It's lethargic, but engaging. For the most part, the characters are blank slates, but it's about what they represent. It's all about the elements, and they're always fragile and unbalanced, as the film works on the natural tension of impending and inevitable expiration. Tensions do rise when the soldiers pass by in the boats, and there is character development with the granddaughter, who's in the throes of puberty. As she catches their eye and they to her, her internal conflict about her desires for outsiders illustrates the fateful and fatal sparks between nations.

The film's elegance is owed to the precise and impressive aesthetics. Veteran Hungarian cinematographer Elemer Ragalyi's serene gliding photography captures the world on a grand but desolate scale. In essence, the film is a soundscape, with no dialogue and hardly any score until near the end. The sharp sound work creates a palpable atmosphere like last year's All is Lost. The film does suffer in its rare moments of dialogue as Ovashvili is more confident in the naturalistic poetry of man against man and man against nature but those scenes don't drag the film down. Corn Island is a slow-burning but well-executed thought- provoking film that's worth watching, especially for fans of art cinema on the lookout for fresh faces.

8/10

Read more @ The Awards Circuit (http://www.awardscircuit.com/)

"Corn island" is about islands that run dry in early spring and are swallowed up by the river again during winter. In the meantime it is very fertile land and farmers from the neigbourhood are keen to occupy such an island in order to sow and harvest corn.

From the above description it is clear that "Corn island" is a slow movie about a slow and peaceful live. You can nearly see the corn crow. This slow and peaceful live however is disrupted in multiple ways.

In the first place is the corn island of this movie situated in a disputed territory between two countries. Rival soldiers are regularly passing by the island. The farmer is determined to stay out of this war. Will he succeed? This aspect of the film reminded me of the Dutch novel "The house of refuge" (1952, Willem Frederik Hermans).

A farmers live is always governed by the seasons, but that is especially true if your field is on a temporary island. The second cause of disruption.

Not only the corn is growing, but also the granddaughter of the farmer. This fact does not pass unnoticed by the passing soldiers, forming the third disruptive force. This third aspect of the film is in my opinion the weakest. The coming of age is portrayed using a lot of clichés such as suddenly being tired of your favorite doll or experiencing the first menstrual cycle.

After "In bloom" (2013, Nana Ekvtimishvili) "Corn island" was the second film from Georgia I saw within a year. Remarkable was the large share that the grandparents had in both films in raising their grandchildren. A coincidence?

About cinema it is said that sometimes images convey perfectly what words fail to express. When words are uttered they make sense only when they merely suit the situations for which they were spoken. This effect is shown in Georgian film "Corn Island" with utmost austerity as an old man and his young grand-daughter set foot on a small island in the middle of a river. Their sudden arrival sets off a climate of distrust in the minds of other people. This is the start of a difficult life for them as there are also others who would like to see them defeated in their mission. There are some films which develop at their own pace. It is likely that laymen would call them slow whereas true admirers of cinema would label them as poetic works of art. Corn Island is one such film which would immensely appeal anybody who appreciates cinema as a poetic art. One can see how the entire process of planting a seed until the final stages of agriculture is carried out. The origin of this poetic film can be traced back to a day in August 1992 when an Abkhazian person ordered Georgian director George Ovashvili to leave Abkhazian black sea coast. According to him the war had started.

I actually stumbled upon this film by accident. In my search for all things horror, I came across "Corn Island" somewhere. Maybe there is another "Corn Island" movie lurking about, but this definitely wasn't it. About 15 or 20 minutes in, when I realized that this wasn't horror, I kept it playing anyway because it did seem interesting.

Really, it was almost a silent feature as the characters didn't speak much. What intrigued me was the Georgian setting, the picturesque cinematography, the backdrop of war, and the whole idea about planting corn on an island year after year. Acting all around was good, too.

When I was younger I spent a lot of time watching foreign language dramas from France, Russia, Turkey, Japan, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and other places. I think it's time to give films from Georgia my full attention, too, since they seem to rate so high right here on IMDb.