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Atlanta Journal Constitution
Trip shows power's corrupting force
By Edward Guthmann
San Francisco Chronicle
Documentary. Directed by Paul Devlin. Not rated. In English and Georgian with English subtitles. At Madstone Theaters Parkside. 1 hour, 25 minutes.
The verdict: Documentary captures the disconnect when capitalism invades the former U.S.S.R.
Before the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the citizens of Soviet Georgia never paid for electricity. Today an American multinational, Applied Energy Services, is regulating utilities for the capital city of Tbilisi, population 1.2 million, where the typical utility bill runs $24 and monthly incomes average $15 to $75.
New York documentarian Paul Devlin finds a city in chaos, with politicians lying, enraged people stealing power and AES employees gloating over creepy methods of scaring consumers into paying delinquent bills. It's a bleak picture, symbolized by the illegal wires and cables, frayed and stripped of insulation, that snake through the city's tenements.
Devlin tells his story without bias but with shards of gallows humor, finding a central figure in Piers Lewis, the British-born strategic projects director for AES. A vagabond who lived in the United States and Central America before coming to Georgia, Lewis speaks fondly of the exotic "mystery" of Tbilisi, making us believe that he has the best interests of the Georgian people in mind. But it's his job to enforce payment from consumers, and when AES has a 10 percent payment rate, the gloves come off. Power is disconnected, angry citizens revolt and Lewis vows not to cut his hair until collection rates reach 50 percent.
It's Akaki Gogichaishvili, a Georgian broadcast journalist, who best describes the incursion of AES and its hard-line policy: "If you don't have power, it means you are hungry, you are cold. You're in the dark. No information. It's like being dead."
"Electricity is very much connected with the hope in human nature," says another journalist, Leeka Basilaia. "It's difficult to understand for people who are living in the 'civilized world.' "