Word: pasha
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first tableau showed a little owl-and-pussycat boat foundering in a tempest of billowing waves and lyrical lightning. For the next scenes, set in the land of some randy, warlike Pasha, the Soviets seemed to have unwound their every bolt of gaudy cloth. No fewer than five composers are credited with contributing to the noisy score; the choreography, some of it by Marius Petipa, is strictly cut and paste; the plot went down with the ship. But Le Corsaire provides the occasion for some florid dancing, especially in the hands of bravura technicians like Tatyana Terekhova and Farukh Ruzimatov...
...almost nobody was interested in religion" in the 1960s. Now, he reports, large numbers are becoming active believers, many of them young people. "None of the philosophies except the religious ones are able to satisfy men's needs," he maintains. The leader of the Muslim board for Transcaucasia, Allahshukur Pasha-zada, declares that until recently "freedom of conscience was on paper only." The pre-Gorbachev regimes, he says, "destroyed all the values of the people." Just a few years ago, no officials would have dared utter such words except in intimate conversations with friends...
...literary project with this many rules and games could easily become sterile and precious. Fortunately, Pavic's imagination is equal to the task. He peoples his history of the history of the Khazars with vampires, religious ascetics, devils, golems, star-crossed lovers and a Turkish pasha who makes love only to the dying. Exotic details or metaphors not only impart a flavor of strangeness to the book, but also send a reader scurrying back and forth through the pages, trying to remember where he has come across a hand with two thumbs, a grave shaped like a goat...
Doublecrossing and savagery are the ingredients of this plot, and the only thoroughly likeable character is a Viennese expatriate (Helen Miorren), who supplies arms to the Greek rebels seeking to overthrow the Ottomans. The Pasha is greedy, his minister conniving and threatening to those who stand in his way. His Turkish subjects are best described by their predilection for sacrificing sheep. One scene shows a man selling knives used for this purpose, with an American woman shrinking in horror at the thought of this barbarity. And later in the film, the title character sees such a sacrifice and recoils...
...translate for Mr. Bowles, a visiting archaeologist (Charles Dance.) Bowles makes his living by obtaining a lease on land, then tricking its owners into buying it back at an exorbitant price. But this time, he really finds something on the property and refuses to sell it back when the Pasha who owns it gets suspicious. Pascali as the interpreter, is held repsonsible, and he finds himself in a bit of a bind. He can't decide whether to be loyal to the Englishmen. Can he be trusted...