MOVIES
We open with a young man named Asa, played by Ashkat Kuchencherekov, trying to impress the parents of a girl named Tulpan with made-up stories of his adventures in the Russian navy. His purpose is to marry Tulpan, one of the marriageable girls in the area, who is hiding behind a curtain peeking at him while her parents interview him, because only if he gets married will he be allowed by the local boss to own a flock of his own. Unfortunately, as he finds out later, the girl rejects him because his ears are too big.
Asa lives with his sister, her tough herdsman of a husband named Ondas, played by the very impressive Ondas Besikbasov, and their three children. The setting is the southern steppes of Kazakhstan, a plain with shrubs and scarce grass that is flat as far as the eye can see. The yurt they live in is full of life—the daughter sings incessantly, the older boy listens to a radio and then reports the news to his father verbatim, while the mischievous younger boy runs around with a stick and a pet turtle. Dvortsevoy's style is not one of distance—every shot, every sequence, is precisely orchestrated with an incredibly versatile handheld camera so that you are immersed in this world, its hardship and its humor. The animals play as big a part as the people—the sounds of the sheep, camels, horses, a donkey, a dog, fill the brilliant soundtrack like a chorus, along with the humans talking and the sounds of machines such as the jalopy of Asa's lunatic friend, who likes to blast reggae while he drives.
A mysterious illness is causing the lambs to be born dead, and throughout the film there is an intensely vivid sense of the coexistence, the bond between animal and man. Dvortsevoy, who until now has done documentaries, spent months in preparation for the shoot, and I found myself wondering again and again, How did he do that? The actors had to live their parts, and the astounding texture of the film, including huge dust storms, the births of animals, and a particularly comic sequence involving a motorcycle-riding veterinarian and a camel, have the mysterious power and presence of real events.
Asa is a dreamer who wants to gain his own piece of paradise on the steppes, in contrast to his dour and incredibly hard-working brother-in-law, who sees only the task at hand and is at perpetual odds with Asa. Modernity is not absent from the scene—the young men leaf longingly through a tattered old magazine, looking at pictures of cars and houses, and of women. The allure of the outside vies with the strong ties of the only life they've known. This wise, starkly beautiful, unsentimental and drily humorous film is a completely realized work of art.
© Copyright 2012, KXCI
